Hull manufacturing history

 ‘It presents the eye an interesting spectacle of numerous vessels floating to and from the port of Hull: while that opulent and commercial town in its low situation close to the banks and surrounded by the masts of the shipping in the docks seems to rise like Venice from amidst the sea, the whole comprising a scene which for beauty and grandeur can scarcely be exceeded.’

This quotation from Bradshaw’s Guide had, behind it, a profound change in the lot of the British home. The railway had opened the inland but had also made accessible the shore to inland dwellers, and, in particular, had brought to the tables of ordinary people food never previously dreamed of. Hull, which had been a home of whaling, became the home of the British fishing fleet landing vast quantities of cod and haddock which would be whisked away by railway train to all parts of the country. That though is for later in the story.

Hull was first and foremost a port. In his book History of Kingston upon Hull, Hugh Calvert writes that Hull along with Liverpool were the major ports serving the Industrial Revolution and so were busy with both imports and exports. Hull at the mouth of the Humber was by the eighteenth century linked by rivers to Sheffield, Leeds, Huddersfield, Wakefield and Halifax. Soon canals would also link to Birmingham, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire and Leicestershire and East Lancashire. Exports comprised iron, lead and metal goods but also pottery, hosiery and beer. Imports were of Swedish and Russian iron, timber, corn, linseed, flax, turpentine and tar. The Continent of Europe was the major destination but Hull also competed with Liverpool for the trade with America. With trade grew banking and the Smith's Bank also in Nottingham and Lincoln was just one of the progeny.

Shipbuilding had flourished in Hull since the fourteenth century or even earlier. Ships built included whalers, ships for the carriage of wine and naval vessels. The most important shipbuilder by the eighteenth century was the Blaydes family. Notoriously, a Hull shipyard built the Bounty later known for the mutiny against Captain Bligh. Steam and iron came successfully to Hull at the hands of the Earle family. In terms of shipping companies, it was the Wilson family that took pride of place.

The Earle family was also responsible for bringing the making of Roman Cement to Hull just three years before the invention of modern Portland Cement in 1824. The company would become part of the Blue Circle Group.

Manufacturing was the order of the day and Hull was not to be left out. It tried mills for both flax and cotton, but neither took off. Seeds for the oil they contained were more promising and factories for rolling and crushing seeds began to be built alongside businesses manufacturing the machinery required. In terms oil for margarine and soap, much later Unilever bought into the local industry. Oil was also used for paint, especially when combined with lead, and a paint industry emerged with Blundells, but also Reckitts which would become Reckitt and Colman manufacturing laundry starch, black lead and household polish.

The latter part of the nineteenth century saw a dramatic increase in the number of ships fishing from Hull. A rich area of fish had been discovered, growing urban areas were seeking sources of food and the technique of trawling for fish had been adopted. Ships powered by steam and then diesel added to the activity as did the invention of a means of making ice. Fish had to be kept cold from the point of being caught up to the point of sale at the fish market, and ice had been imported from Norway to achieve this. The Hull Ice Manufacturing Company began making its own ice in 1891. The Fylde Ice Company may take issue and suggest that its founder Joseph Marr, a Hull trawler man, had begun importing ice in 1860 and his son James set up the Ice Company in Fylde in 1908. That company expanded in to cold storage and still makes ice. One spin off from deep water fishing was the processing of cod liver oil, much 'loved' by those of us of a certain age.

The twentieth century saw Distillers set up plant to produce industrial alcohol and other chemical products of which I write in Vehicles to Vaccines. Smith + Nephew started out in Hull and still manufacture in the town. Hull is also still home to Ideal Heating formed in 1906. In nearby Brough, BAE Systems run the engineering centre for the Hawk trainer. This builds on the legacy of Hawker Siddeley and before then Robert Blackburn who set up the Brough factory at the start of the First World War.

Further reading:

Hugh Calvert History of Kingston upon Hull (Chichester: Phillimore, 1978)

Hartlepool manufacturing history

Hartlepool on the north east coast was a quiet market town, its heart beating in time with the agricultural community it served. A little further up the coast, the Tyne and Wear was exporting thousands of tons of coal to the hungry growing urban areas of early 19th century Britain and the Continent.

Robert Wood, in his book West Hartlepool – The Rise and Development of a Victorian New Town, in effect places at the feet of the Quakers of Darlington the sequence of railway developments that led to West Hartlepool becoming one of the great ports of the east coast. The challenge was how to bring coal from the Durham coalfields to waiting ships at the lowest cost. In the early days, transport was by packhorse, but, without the benefit of turnpike roads, at a cost that would double the price of coal every two miles travelled (p6). The alternative of a rail track along which coal wagons could be pulled by horses dramatically reduced the cost of carriage. It is hardly surprising that this incentive created stiff competition and thus a number of competing railway lines were built, the Stockton and Darlington being the best known and I write about this in my blog on Middlesbrough. In time, horses were replaced by steam locomotives and the commercial imperative to rationalise led to amalgamations of railway companies; the name George Hudson entered the picture with his North Eastern Railway.

For West Hartlepool manufacturing, the massive growth in its port business led to shipbuilding with the major player being Pile, Spence and Co, and ironworks run by West Hartlepool Rolling Mills. Much of the development of West Hartlepool had been financed by banks and the collapse of Overend and Gurney in 1866 resulted also in the closure of Pile.

The resilience of Victorian shipbuilders was such that the Pile yard was taken over and enlarged, and two well known names enter the story. Samuel Plimsoll, a Bristol man, was travelling round the shipbuilding areas of the country arguing for regulations to govern the loading of merchant vessels, something that resulted in the Plimsoll line. It was a Hartlepool builder Denton, Gray which devised the well-deck design which improved the stability of the ship. These ships were screw-steamers built of iron. In time steel would take the place of iron and engines would increase in both power and efficiency. The other name was Marcus Samuel who wanted ships to transport the oil he discovered and which would be traded under the Shell name. The Denton, Gray yard was pipped at the post by Armstrongs in Newcastle for the accolade of building the world’s first oil tanker. Denton, Gray continued to build to the specification laid down by the newly opened Suez Canal. Shipbuilding at Hartlepool reached its height just before the First World War. Gray continued in business until the sixties.

Iron and Steel was the other industry to take root in Hartlepool. The source was the same as Middlesbrough and Consett: the Cleveland Hills. Thomas Richardson, an iron master and engineer, moved to the Hartlepool Iron Works in 1847 and built a substantial business. The Furness shipping company combined with the Hartlepool shipbuilder Edward Withy to form Furness Withy and this in turn in 1898 formed the South Durham Steel Company to buy Stockton Malleable Ironworks and West Hartlepool Steel and Iron. The ensuing story is one of the rule of the economic cycle combined with the need constantly to upgrade and improve. Steel making in West Hartlepool survived and received much need investment after the Second World War to become a major player in steel plate production. After the sixties, the world of steel began to change with the British industry suffering greatly. The South Durham Steel and Iron Co closed in 1977.

Furness Withy later focused on transport and containerisation.

Further reading:

• Robert Wood, West Hartlepool – the Rise and Development of a Victorian New Town (West Hartlepool Corporation, 1967)
• J.C. Carr and W. Taplin, History of the British Steel Industry (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962)
• How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World and Vehicles to Vaccines.

Doncaster manufacturing history

Doncaster, in the early nineteenth century, was a town that had escaped the ravages of industrialisation. It had no iron or steel as had its neighbour Sheffield and had avoided the building of mills for cotton or wool. This was despite one of the town's clock makers, Benjamin Huntsman, inventing the crucible process for steel making and Thomas Cartwright the mechanical weaving machine; both men had taken their inventions elsewhere. The town was well laid out with fine houses and an acclaimed race course; it was a good place to live.

The town had long been a place through which travellers passed; it was on the Great North Road. When the railways came, no fewer than seven eventually linked to the town and its surroundings. One of these was the Great North Eastern which ran the route from London to Edinburgh. It seems to have been good fortune or skilled argument that persuaded the directors to adopt the route close to the Great North Road rather than it rival through Lincoln and Gainsborough. The process of merger had resulted in the Great North Eastern Railway having a route from Peterborough through Spalding and Boston and on to Lincoln, and its first main workshop was in Boston. The re-routing prompted the directors to move the workshops to Doncaster where they became a major employer.

I have written elsewhere about the railway workshops at Swindon and Crewe. At Doncaster, Ernest Phillips writes in The Story of Doncaster that there were 'forges, smithies, foundries, turning shops, erecting shops, joiners', cabinet makers', and wheelwrights' shops' manufacuring at the rate of a locomotive each week. In 1920, under the Chief Engineer, Mr H.N. Gresley, the workshop produced a giant engine weighing 71 tons capable of pulling 800 tons at 70 mph. Famously the workshop then built the Flying Scotsman and the Mallard. The Flying Scotsman was the first steam passenger locomotive to travel at over one hundred miles per hour and the Mallard holds the record of one hundred and thirteen miles on hour for the fastest steam locomotive in the world. This was engineering of the highest order.

In the twenties everything changed, for a rich coal seem had been discovered running far below the town and surrounding villages. The seem was deep but modern technology enabled pits to be sunk 900 yards or more. The sleepy villages around the town grew pit heads and gathered populations in their thousands, with trams linking the villages to the town. The once pristine streets became grimy with coal dust and the shops busy with miner's wives. The railways came into their own with pits each producing up to 4,000 tons of coal a day which needed transport.

Some years ago I explored population increases in the interwar years and Doncaster was in the list with 34% alongside towns which were all in the south. I attributed the Doncaster growth to boundary changes which were on reflection were clearly the result of the burgeoning of coal mining.

Ancillary industries developed such as Cementation for the construction of pit shafts and British Ropes (now Bridon). Other industries came to the town. Pilkington and Rockware set up glass making and a Lancashire firm established weaving. International Harvester began tractor production in 1934; the plant was closed in 2007.

The image is of contemporary Doncaster manufacturing is with thanks to Ben Harrison and Visit Doncaster

Further reading:

• Ernest Phillips, The Story of Doncaster (London: Pitman, 1921)

Consett manufacturing history

 There is evidence of metalurgical activity in the Derwent valley in County Durham from early times. There was a rich deposit of coal under a thick layer of limestone from which lead could be extracted. Iron ore was abundant and led to the manufacture of swords at Shotley Bridge.

In his book, Thread of Iron, Douglas Vernon traces the history of the industry and notes the date of 1839 as the point when entrepreneur, Jonathan Richardson took the plunge and formed The Derwent Iron company to take advantage of local coal, the rights to which he bought, local iron ore which he discovered and importantly the Consett to South Shields Railway which could bring the resulting iron to a national and international market hungry for it. Once finance was raised, the beginning was a period of success with quality iron winning prizes at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Already both the amount and quality of local ore was being called into question and a cheaper source was found in the nearby Cleveland Hills. Transport presented a challenge with a gorge to be crossed. Initially this was address by an ingenious system of pulleys; later a magnificent viaduct was built. Ore was also brought in by train from the northwest.

Consett was big, having fourteen furnaces compared to four at Bolckow and Vaughan at Witton, Middlesbrough. Interestingly it joined with Krupp of Germany and the Dowlais Iron Company in exploiting iron ore reserves discovered in northern Spain.

The works survived financial crises, one of which resulted in the formation of a new company, the Consett Iron Company, and a period of highly profitable growth. This company entered the late nineteenth century ready to embrace the move to steel. I wrote about Bessemer and Siemens and steel making in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World but also in my blog pieces on Middlesbrough and Sheffield. In Consett, investment was made in Siemens open hearth furnaces and the plant expanded and prospered with some six thousand employees working in coal mines, mills, foundries, melting shops, a brick works and an engine and wagon shops. Consett survived the First World War despite problems with raw materials and shortages of labour, but it was a weakened company which entered the economic storms of the twenties. It was then part of the reconstruction of the national steel industry of which I wrote in Vehicles to Vaccines.

Years after the Second World War saw the strongest growth ever in the British steel indsutry from 13 million tons in 1939 to 24 million in 1960. Nationalisation meant that Consett lost both its coal mines, power stations and its rail and rolling stock. For a previously integrated business, this loss was devastating. Nevertheless improvements were commissioned including a new ore handling system. Nationalisation of the steel industry followed only to be reversed by the next Conservative government. I write about the subsequent passage of the steel industry in Vehicles to Vaccines.

Consett Iron Co closed in 1980 and here is a link to a comprehensive blog of its history.

Further reading:

• Douglas Vernon, Thread of Iron (Knebworth: Able Publishing, 2003)
• J.C. Carr and W. Taplin, History of the British Steel Industry (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962)
• How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World and Vehicles to Vaccines.

Sunderland manufacturing history

As a port on the Wear, Sunderland grew from handling exports of coal from the Northumberland coal field. Coal went to London and the southwest as well as over the North Sea.

Along with coal, two related industries can be traced back to before the industrial revolution: glass making and pottery. These industries were present elsewhere in the northeast and indeed elsewhere in the UK. Glass was for bottles, for windows and tableware and, as the urban areas grew and prosperity spread from the fruits of industry, so the demand for all three types of glass grew. Sunderland's Wear Glassworks became a producer of national importance. Pottery tended to be earthenware for general use and was some glass tableware. However, Wear Flint Glass could boast the Marquess of Londonderry among its customers.

Like many coastal towns, Sunderland had a long history in shipbuilding and, alongside this, rope making was significant in the town. Ropes were also needed for railways where trucks were pulled along by static steam engines. Webster's rope works at Depford boasted the first machine-made rope in the country.

For shipbuilding, we can look to Austin and Pickersgill, Doxfords, J.L. Thompson and Sir James Laing & Son. In early days it was wood and sail, in particular keels to bring coal from the mines to the waiting colliers. The use of iron and steel and the advent of the steam engine enabled Sunderland's shipbuilding to boom in the mid nineteenth century making it one of the prime shipbuilding ports on the world. Decline followed boom and, with the exception of busy wars and short periods of catch up after the wars, the days of large scale shipbuilding on the Wear were numbered. I write in Vehicles to Vaccines of the last gasp with the combination into North East Shipbuilders Limited.

Sunderland was very far from lost, for Nissan chose to build its British motor car factory near to the town and this continues to prosper.

Further reading:

• Glen Lyndon Dodds, A History of Sunderland (Sunderland: Albion Press, 1995)
• Anthony Slaven, British Shipbuilding 1500-2010 (Lancaster: Crucible, 2013)
• How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World
• Vehicles to Vaccines

Newcastle and Gateshead manfacturing history

 Coal was at the heart of the economy of Tyneside which, with its long navigable estuary, was able to ship many of the millions of tons produced by the Northumberland coalfield. The presence of so many mines attracted talented engineers who rose to the challenge of tackling flooding and poor ventilation that made mining so dangerous. They also addressed the economic imperative of cost effective transport. The answer was steam as I wrote in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World (HBSTMW) and men like George and Robert Stephenson. It is well known that the eminent scientist Humphrey Davy invented the safety lamp, but George Stephenson produced a lamp equally safe only a few weeks later and this was widely used. Stephenson with his son Robert did go on to produce the Rocket and many more railway locomotives. Again, I cover this at some length in HBSTMW.

Shipbuilding was at the heart of the Tyne with the river in the mid nineteenth century 'positively bristling with ship yards'. Of these the most famous were T&W Smith, Wood Skinner, Wigham Richardson, William Cleland & Co, John Couts, Andrew Leslie & Co and one of the most successful, Charles Mitchell, with his yard at Walker. Mitchell added to his success by marrying Anne Swan through whom he acquired two brothers in law Charles and Henry Swan. Charles Swan merged with the Sunderland George Hunter, to form Swan Hunter; Henry later took over the Mitchell yard.

William Armstrong trained as a solicitor but was irresistibly drawn by the power of water which he had witnessed in his walks across Northumberland. He went into business first in hydraulics and then became a master of the technology of big guns which he manufactured at Elswick working closely with Mitchell on naval vessels. The two companies eventually merged in 1882. He was rightly included as one of the 'Deadly Triumvirate'. He later merged with Joseph Whitworth of Manchester and together they joined with Vickers of Sheffield. I write about all three at some length in HBSTMW. The Newcastle works built tanks, made presses for the newspaper and motor industry, and rolling mill equipment for the steel industry.

Like a number of other cities, Newcastle boasted its Lit and Phil Society, founded in 1793. One lecturer was Joseph Swan who demonstrated the electric light bulb at the same time as Edison was revealing his work on the other side of the Atlantic. Pragmatism prevailed and the two came together in the company known as Ediswan.

The shipbuilding and engineering industries were fertile ground for CA Parsons who invented the revolutionary steam turbine, equally useful in propelling ships and powering electricity generators. German born John Merz married into the Wigham Richardson family and with his brother championed the production of cheap electricity to power the growing city and its industries.

Over the river in Gateshead iron foundries prospered and the production of Alkali using the Leblanc process was championed by local entrepreneur William Losh. This was followed by soap works and a chemical plant run by Christian Allhusen which covered a massive 137 acres of the south shore. By the time of the electrical revolution the highly polluting Leblanc process was replaced by that invented by Solvay but this gravitated towards the Cheshire salt fields. Tyneside would get their own back when cheap electricity attracted Castner Kellner from Cheshire. Gateshead was also home to the workshops of the North Eastern Railway Company which at one time employed 3,300 men before it moved to Darlington. R&W Hawthorn manufactured steam locomotives. Clarke Chapman built steam engines and later nuclear generation plant, and, together with Hebburn engineers A Reyrolle & Co, CA Parsons and others, joined to become Northern Engineering Industries which was bought first by Rolls-Royce and then by the German Siemens. I write about these energy companies in Vehicles to Vaccines.

In the early twentieth century the Wigham Richardson yard specialised in cable laying ships, Armstrong Whitworth focused on the Russian market and, at their naval yard, produced warships not only for the Royal Navy but also for Norway and Japan. Swan Hunter and Wigham Richardson built the renowned RMS Muretania at their Wallsend yard. I write of their contribution to the First World War effort in Ordnance.

The interwar years saw the demand for coal plummet which drew the response of reduced wages and lay offs which in turn partly provoked the National Strike of 1926. Tragically the strike handed export markets to competing coal producing countries, Germany and Poland, and so the decline of coal began. Along with coal, ship building suffered. Jarrow was home to Palmers shipyard which closed in 1936 creating mass unemployment and triggering the Jarrow march. Some help was provided through the Special Areas (Development and Improvement) Act of 1934, but the days of being the workshop of the world would never return. I write of the post-war story of British shipbuilding in Vehicles to Vaccines.

At nearby Fawdon, Rowntree manufactured Fruit Gum, Pastilles and Jelly. Imperial Tobacco built a factory at Heaton in the forties to make Wills cigarettes. There were, and are, many independent smaller manufacturing businesses, not least Jackson the Taylor which merged with Burtons. 

In South Shields, Plessey built a factory to manufacture electronic telephone exchanges. In the nineties, the German Siemens set up a plant to manufacture semi-conductors but, with falling demand, it closed after two years.

Further reading

Alistair Moffat and George Rosie, Tyneside - A History of Newcastle and Gateshead from Earliest Times (Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 2005) 

How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World

Vehicles to Vaccines

Ordnance

Henrietta Heald , William Armstrong, Magician of the North

Anthony Slaven, British Shipbuilding 1500-2010 (Lancaster: Crucible, 2013)

Giants of British Manufacturing

 If I look at the years from the start of the Industrial Revolution up to the Festival of Britain, I can draw up a list a relatively well known names of the movers and shakers of British Manufacturing. Indeed I have written about them in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World  

Looking at the years since then, I have found names perhaps not as well known, many of which I remember from years gone by, but whose efforts and talents shine out.

Kelvin Bray was managing director of Ruston Gas Turbines (and its successors) for a quarter of a century. The company manufactured gas turbines which would be used by 80% of the world’s oil industry. Kelvin was a Grammar School boy who unusually for the time won a scholarship to Kings College, Cambridge. He went on to work on the development of the gas turbine from Frank Whittle’s jet engine. The company, now under the ownership of Siemens, continues to manufacture gas turbines in Lincoln for world markets. The image is of Bray and his colleagues receiving the MacRobert award.

Ronald Weeks was chairman of Vickers which had been brave enough to invest in a new plant at Tinsley Park in Sheffield in the period between nationalisations when other steel makers held back. Weeks was the son of a north country mining engineer who like Bray had studied at Cambridge. He served in the First World War and then worked at Pilkington pioneering new methods of management. In the Second World War he had responsibility for army equipment as Deputy Chief of the Imperial General Staff. After the war he joined Vickers as chairman of English Steel where he negotiated first its nationalisation and then its denationalisation. He held the chair of Vickers through a time of radical change.

John Harvey-Jones of ICI had the job of rebuilding the chemical giant after the recession of the seventies. His approach was to allow one thousand flowers to bloom knowing that that way the successes of the future would be found. Affirmation of his approach is perhaps found in ICI’s offspring Astra-Zeneca and its lifesaving Covid vaccine. The ICI bureaucracy remained to be tackled later.

David McMurtry at Renishaw in 1973 invented a touch-trigger probe to meet an inspection requirement of the Olympus engine which powered Concorde. His company, Renishaw plc, has since grown into a major international force leading amongst much else additive manufacturing - the 3D printing of complex components.

William Weir of Weir Group was not only a member of the founding family of the company that bears his name, but he led that company through challenging times and then wrote a very personal account of its history. William Weir was the grandson of the company’s founder and worked in the business from 1954 until he relinquished the post of chairman.

Arnold Weinstock at GEC made money. He took over both AEC and EE and created a massively strong company. He was followed by George Simpson who made fatal decisions in the dot com boom which led to the end of what was then GEC Marconi. The company’s defence interests then combined with the rump of the British aircraft industry and the remnants of the Royal Ordnance factories to become the highly successful defence manufacturer BAE Systems  

Oliver Littleton, at AEI which manufactured the first jet engines, wrestled with the impossible task of bringing together long standing rivals, British Westinghouse and British Thompson Houston. 

George Nelson of English Electric was a truly energetic entrepreneur. English Electric would manufacture iconic aircraft and railway locomotives, as well as giving birth to ICL, not least because Nelson had had the wisdom to buy Marconi.

F.N. Sutherland, was a man with an MA from Cambridge who had worked an apprenticeship at English Electric and who had grown with that company’s overseas operations. He was appointed by George Nelson to lead the Marconi companies following their acquisition by EE. He turned out to be the perfect man for the job. Interestingly, he followed the tradition set by Marconi’s former boss, Admiral Grant, of involving his wife in the welfare of his employees, something I had only ever seen at the Central Ordnance Depot at Greenford in the early years of the Second World War.

Dr Eric Eastwood was recruited by Marconi after the war to lead its work on radar. He undoubtedly enhanced the technical expertise within the company which in turn led to it being the most significant part of GEC prior to that company’s breakup. Marconi Defence Systems was the perfect fit for British Aerospace with which it merged to become BAE Systems, now a respected and successful British company.

Jules Thorn was the driving force behind Thorn Electric making television widely available and forming the powerhouse of Thorn EMI  

Ferranti is a name forever associated with computers and semiconductors as well as early electricity generation and meters for measuring consumption. When the NEB took a stake in the Ferranti company to save it, there were voices who condemned what had become known as the ‘Ferranti spirit’. This spirit was the beating heart of this family company and was a determination to push back the boundaries of technology. In this the Ferranti company was hugely successful. Ferranti’s problem was money. The family was determined not to seek external investors for fear of the constraints they would impose.

George Turnbull was a gifted manager and engineer who had served his time with Standard Triumph. Following the creation of BLMC, he was asked by Donald Stokes to tackle the underperformance of Austin-Morris. He was successful and Austin-Morris was producing half of the profits of the group. His reward was to tackle the Leyland truck and bus business, once more with success. On the reorganisation of the BL group in 1973, Turnbull was passed over for the role of deputy CEO and so the expectation of becoming CEO in due course. He left, and took up the challenge of creating a world class motor company out of the Korean Hyundai. Success followed him once more. For BLMC the story would be less promising.

William Lyons created and Jon Egan saved Jaguar. Lyons’ genius creates the E type and Mk 10. Sir John Egan brought his wide experience in the motor industry to Jaguar where he took a once famous brand which had been seriously neglected and painstakingly addressed areas of shortcoming restoring it to its former glory as evidenced in the price Ford paid for it.

Oliver Lucas embraced vital aspects of manufacturing. He was as interested in the manufacturing process as in the product and so achieved great economies. Above all he was committed to what we now know as life-long learning. He encouraged his managers to learn from each other and from other companies. He espoused relationships with academia including financing a chair, the Lucas Professor of Production Engineering, at the University of Birmingham.Peter Bennett at Lucas built an astonishingly inventive supplier to the British motor and aircraft industries. Once again it was George Simpson who sold out to the Americans.

Sir Arnold Hall was chairman and managing director of Hawker Siddeley from 1967 to 1977. He achieved much but top of the list must be Hawker’s decision to remain with the Airbus project when the government decided to end its involvement.

Rolls Royce had to be rescued from overspending on the RB211 which would become the highly successful Trent engine. Thereafter the aircraft engine manufacturer became number two in the world to the giant GE. I don't think there is one particular CEO to mention. The company has gone through a tumultuous half century since the RB211 and is now exploring the potential for the nuclear technology it has quietly developed since the war.

Sir John Parker studied naval architecture and mechanical engineering at Belfast College of Technology and at Queen’s University Belfast also learning on the job at Harland and Wolff. His first management role was at Austin Pickersgill after which he returned to Harlands as CEO from 1983 to 1993. He then moved to Babcock International from 1994 to 2000 first as CEO and then also as chairman. In his first stint at Harland, he championed the introduction of computers. At Babcock he transformed a revered but troubled engineering company into one focused on naval shipbuilding and repair

Dr Richard Beeching is remembered for closing a great many stations and miles of track. What he also did was to modernise the railways in its management of its workforce, in containerising freight and improving the experience of the traveller with more comfortable trains.

Alastair Pilkington, a Cambridge graduate of Mechanical Sciences, served during the Second World War and returned to Cambridge to complete his degree. He was only very distantly related to the family owning the glass manufacturer. He was discovered by a family member exploring family trees, was interviewed and employed. He rose quickly. His massive contribution was in the invention of the float glass process.

Joe Bamford created and his son developed a massive fiercely independent but private company. In terms of size and privacy they might rank alongside Ineos and Tata. However, they have a passion for engineering innovation.

Anita Roddick founded the Body Shop which championed women, sought natural ingredients, demanded fair trade and refused animal testing.

Garfield Weston set his family company on course to become the anchor man of British food manufacturing. The company is now called Associated British Food. He gave much of his wealth to a charitable trust which supports the built heritage.

Laura Ashley was born in Dowlais, Glamorgan in 1925, moved to London but was evacuated back to Wales during the war. She trained as a secretary and worked first in the War Office and then for the Women’s Institute and it was their exhibition at the V&A which inspired her to try her hand at fabric printing in her Pimlico basement kitchen. From this beginning, she and her husband Bernard created a fashion following counter to the swinging sixties trend, and which espoused something altogether more homely.

Michael Perrin was an ICI chemist who had been involved first with the discovery of polythene and then with the nuclear bomb project. He moved out of research into a more managerial role in which he excelled. He was appointed chairman of the Wellcome Foundation in 1953. Research was key. He championed the company’s investment, whilst at the same time distributing millions to the Wellcome Trust for medical projects.

These are just my selection of post war manufacturing heroes; there are many more most of whom are unsung.

Further reading: Vehicles to Vaccines