Stourbridge manufacturing history

 Wool was the business of Stourbridge as it was for a great deal of the kingdom from the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries. Yet it was not all.

The power source for early manufacturing was strongly flowing water and the river Stour did not disappoint. All that then was needed were raw materials and here the local area provided clay, iron ore, sand and nearby Dudley had limestone. Potash, needed to make glass, was first made locally by burning bracken, later seaweed was imported from Scotland and Spain.

Bricks were made in many places across Britain, but the banks of the Stour had red clay which produced a very high quality of building brick and white clay for firebricks essential for making glass. It was very heavy work done mainly by women producing some 14 million bricks a year.

Stourbridge is famous for its high quality glass. This is probably linked to the arrival in the district of glass makers fleeing persecution in Lorraine. The Huguenots set up in Stourbridge and surrounding villages employing local workers who too gained skills. The product was window glass but also bottles for cider, and fine glass. The finest piece was said to be a chandelier for the sultan of Turkey as a cost of £10,000. A key development was the invention of a way to make glass using coal as the source of heat. The Heath Glass Works was the Stourbridge works that can be traced through the transitions. It was however not linked by the first canal bringing coal from Dudley, handing the advantage to others better located.

In 1897 the firm of Webb Corbett was founded when they took over the White House Glass Works which had been run by WH , B & J Richardson in nearby Wordsley which was on the canal. A century earlier Royal Brierley had established at nearby Brierley Hill.

The glass making inheritance has been taken up by designer makers. The most prominent of whom, Allister Malcolm Glass at Broadfield House Glass Museum the former home of Stuart Chrystal Glass also at Wordsley, has focused on sustainability. Glass requires 1200 degrees of heat and so is energy hungry. Gas took over from coal but is still carbon based. The sustainable answer is electricity powered by solar. This perhaps begs the question of whether makers could return to Stourbridge's original source of power: the river Stour.

Coal was key to the substantial iron trade of the town. The origin predates the use of coal when charcoal was used to smelt the ore. There is evidence of hand nail making from this iron. As smelting developed so too did the process of nail manufacture but it remained heavy and dangerous work. Chains, locks and scythes were other staple products of the town.

Skills in metal work translated into metal fabrication and light engineering. For example, the German Sunlight Industries set up in the town manufacturing mobility solutions for people with disabilities.

Further reading:

Nigel Perry, A History of Stourbridge (Chichester: Phillimore, 2001)

Dudley Manufacturing History

 There is evidence of iron working in Dudley in the Domesday Book. It shared the availability of raw materials with its neighbour, Stourbridge. The source of energy for Dudley though was from the surrounding forest. This it had in common with its iron smelting rivals in the Weald in Sussex. In contrast the work coming out of blacksmiths in Dudley were more utilitarian with little evidence remaining of decorative work.

Dudley took the lead over Sussex by virtue of its reserves of coal, once the secret of smelting with coal had been discovered.

The Earl of Dudley and his son, known as Dud, were strongly influential in the way the iron industry and industry generally developed in the area between the towns of Dudley and Stourbridge. Dud claimed to have used coal to smelt iron, but nothing came of it until Abraham Darby succeeded in Telford in 1765. From then on the town of Dudley's future was mapped out until reserves of raw materials ran out.

In the early days it was nails that the men and women of Dudley made. Many of them worked for Richard Foley who had discovered the Swedish method of splitting which revolutionised the industry. Along with nails, chains were made and locks and tools. The coming of the canal both enabled Dudley to export coal to other areas particularly for glass making but also to find a larger market for its produce.

Of course the reserves of raw materials did run out but the companies of Dudley adapted.

Michael Grazebrook took over some collieries and an old blast furnace at Netherton. He installed a Boulton & Watt steam engine and then electricity and the internal combustion engine. In the 1930s he established welding and foundry shops. In the Second World War he made block buster bombs. Anther business with which eventually bought Grazebrook was Hingleys which specialised in chain making and file manufacture. Hingleys installed a Naysmyth steam hammer allowing the manufacture of large anchors. Hingleys were bought by metal workers FH Lloyd which eventually became part of Triplex Lloyd.

Samuel Lewis is another company still in business making pressings, forgings, farm harrows and hand made chains. Files are still manufactured at Vaughan's Hope Works.

National businesses came to Dudley attracted by the skills base. John Thompson of Wolverhampton came to make boilers, chimneys and tanks. Ewarts made motor accessories and we can glory in brass petrol taps, bonnet fasteners, caps and nuts. Dudley became a centre for the covering of metal tanks with protective material. Metallisation Ltd is still in operation. Nearby Brierley Hill was home to the Round Oak Steel Works which became part of Tube Investments.

Further reading:

G. Chandler and I.C. Hannah, Dudley - As it was and as it is today (London: Batsford, 1949)

Kidderminster manufacturing history

Kidderminster is of course known for carpets, along with Wilton and Axminister and a number of Yorkshire wool towns including Halifax. With the suffix 'minster', it was quite possibly established as a minster church as early as the arrival of St Augustine in 597 AD. Oddly, or perhaps not, Axminster is a similar name.

The town was well placed being near to Wales and the hard wearing wool of hill sheep and the growing population of the Black Country. Wool weavers turned their attention to floor covering. Wilton was a clear rival and Kidderminster man, John Broom determined not to let them get ahead, visited Belgium to learn the latest techniques. These he brought back together with a Belgian weaver and the town went from strength to strength. By 1800 there were 1,000 looms in the town with most weavers working from their own dwelling. The arrival of the canals in the 1770s gave the town vital access both to more distant markets and to fuel.

The progression of carpet making was a mix of the technical and economic. The raw material was wool but a carpet that made best use of the least material has an economic attraction. Then came the speed of weaving and effective mechanisation even in the small dwellings where most carpets were still made. Lastly came design and colour. Here we have the science of dyeing and the Jacquard technique which enabled the weaving of complex patterns by machine.

In time weavers were collected together in manufactories with machines powered by steam engines. Kidderminster was making half of the carpets made in England. The town’s businesses led the field. Brintons, which remains a major employer in the town, began in the late eighteenth century and were best known for the invention of the Brinton Jacquard gripper Axminster loom. There were then the companies that would join with Halifax carpet makers to form Carpets International which fell into receivership in 2003. A third company, Brockways, only set up in the 1930s, is still trading. Kidderminster has now lost most of its carpet industry to foreign competition.

In time cheaper materials were sought to make the less visible parts of the carpet. Jute was used to back certain carpets. I write in Vehicles to Vaccines how manmade fibres were brought into carpet making.

Now it is jute that is made into a variety of products by Jute Products Ltd some of which are still used in carpet making. Jute, as a natural sustainable material is seen to have great potential in a post plastics world.

In the Second World War, the Rover company managed a shadow factory in Drakelow Tunnels manufacturing aircraft parts. The tunnels later became a cold war bunker. In my auditing days, I recall visiting a hot water bottle manufacturing business in the town.

Further reading:

Ken Tomkinson and George Hall, Kidderminster since 1800 (Kidderminster: Kenneth Tomlinson, 1975)

 

Redditch manufacturing history

 From needle making to alloys for aerospace.

Redditch, to the south of Birmingham, was one of a group of towns and villages where needles were made. It was a labour intensive cottage industry, and one not conducive to good health with the sharpening of the needles. The needle makers were fiercely protective of their trade and resisted mechanisation even for ventilation which would transform the work environment.

As was always the case, mechanisation crept in with steam power. The coming of the canals and railways enabled Redditch to assume pole position, attracting needle makers from towns across the country as much as from neighbouring villages. It was big business; we are talking of five million needles a week in 1824 rising to fifteen million in 1840. Needles were made for textile workers but also for surgeons. Redditch became renowned the world over. The same skills were appropriate for fish hooks and from there, fishing tackle more generally.

Needle making demanded a range of metal working skills: wire drawers, file makers, tool makers, bellow makers, grindstone trimmers, and miilwrights. This held the town in good stead for it attracted light metal industry in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Metal workers could make springs which were in demand in the new industries of the bicycle and motor cycle. Royal Enfield and Herbert Terry bicycles were made in Redditch. BSA relocated their manufacturing to the town making motor cycles, motor cars and, of course, small arms. In the First World War, Nife Alkaline Batteries supplied power for the new submarines.

With the coming of the Second World War, a number of businesses set up in the town: Cadmium and Chromium plating, machine tools, wire drawing and springing machinery and air compressors.

High Duty Alloys were one of those companies which became part of the shadow factory initiative. Their business was the making and moulding of alloys used in aircraft production. They were based in Slough which was thought vulnerable to enemy bombing and so they built a factory in Redditch but also one in Cumbria. When the Slough factory was hit by bombs Redditch came into its own.

During the Second World War the company supplied pistons and other aircraft parts by the thousand to engine manufacturers including Rolls-Royce, Napier, de Havilland and Bristol. By 1945 the company employed 13,000 people over its three sites, Slough having returned to production and importantly research.

In the post war world it was the jet engine that demanded the skills that HDA had to offer. High temperatures, massive power - all these demanded the alloy with the right properties. HDA alloy castings were to be found in structural aluminium, Concorde and the British missiles of the Cold War. The company is now called Ferris Aerospace and it continues to supply the aerospace industry from Redditch.

In the sixties Redditch was designated a new town and attracted inward investment and the attention of a new generation of town planners and architects. The plan placed emphasis on public transport with residents working in the town where they live.

John James still make needles in Redditch as part of ENTACO (English Needle and Fishing Tackle Company) formed in the thirties from the combination of long standing needle manufacturers Milward and Hall. The main business of ENTACO are medical products including needles.

Further reading:

• https://www.aerosociety.com/media/21427/paper-2023-03-buttler-high-duty-alloys.pdf
• John G Rollins, A History of Redditch (Chichester: Phillimore, 1984)

Isle of Wight manufacturing history

 King Harold stationed his navy off the Isle of Wight to fend off the fleet of William the Conqueror. The attack was delayed by bad weather for three months and the fleet returned to port. William attacked at Hastings and the rest is history. The island had been a centre for pottery in Roman times. Shipbuilding and the sea were in its DNA

Samuel White shipbuilding based at Cowes originated at Broadstairs but moved to the island in 1802. The company built frigates and other vessels for the Royal Navy. It also built seaplanes before the First World War.

In the Second World War the island became famous for being the terminal for the PLUTO pipeline of which I wrote in War on Wheels.

The island has many smaller shipbuilding and repairing yards and remains at the heart of the yachting world. Clare Lallow built Morning Cloud for Edward Heath.

The seaplane originated across the Solent at Pemberton-Billing in Southampton. For the island it was Saunders-Roe which developed the aircraft eventually becoming involved in Helicopters and hovercraft which Christopher Cockerel invented on the Solent. I write more on Saunders-Roe in Vehicles to Vaccines.

In 1964 Decca built a factory to manufacture radar for non marine applications. Group Captain Edward Fennessy had worked in radar during the Second World War and then became managing director of Decca Navigation as they developed systems for both military and civil use. The Cowes factory was later owned by Plessey, then GEC and is now part of BAE Systems.

In the sixties Britten-Norman began manufacturing small aircraft near Bembridge. Production moved abroad but recently returned to the island.

Skills in shipbuilding and aircraft production are perfectly suited to the design and manufacture of wind turbine blades. Vestas manufacture wind turbine blades just outside Cowes.

Basingstoke manufacturing history

 Basingstoke was a small Hampshire market town with a history of wool and then malting. The industrial revolution arrived in the form of Wallis's foundry which produced farm equipment and in time powered threshing machines. The town had already been linked to the Thames via the Basingstoke canal and Wey navigation. Railways arrived between 1840 and 1854 and could have brought railway workshops but for the town's resistance. These went instead to Eastleigh.

In 1856 Thomas Burberry noticed that the coats that shepherds wore tended not to soak up rain and he concluded that this must be because of the natural oil in fleeces. He took the idea and began manufacturing coats that also did not absorb rain. This was a product of the process he invented to produce woollen material called gabardine. Coats made of this were, and indeed are, sold under his name. Some half a million were worn as trench coats by British troops in the First World War. The Basingstoke factories closed in 1959 but production continues in Castleford In Yorkshire.

John Isaac Thornycroft of Chiswick built ships and in the later nineteenth century built a vertical steam engine to power a wheeled wagon. In the early twentieth century he moved this activity to Basingstoke and developed petrol engines capable of powering trucks. In 1905 the company produced a bus with capacity for 36 passengers. In the First World War the company supplied 5,000 'J' type trucks for various uses including having an anti-aircraft gun mounted on the back. Further buses and trucks were developed and in the Second World War Thornycroft again provided many heavy vehicles. The company joined Leyland in 1962 with specialist vehicles going to Scammells in Watford. The Basingstoke factory was sold to the American axle manufacturer, the Eaton Corporation, and now manufactures power solutions.

In 1960 Basingstoke was designated as a London over-spill town and this required new housing but also employment. The companies which chose to set up in Basingstoke included the British fork lift truck maker, Lansing Bagnall, Honeywell, Thermo-Fisher, De La Rue, Albright International and the AA.

Paper maker Wiggins Teape had their headquarters in the town. The predecessor partnerships were founded in Aldgate in the eighteenth century. Gateway House was opened in 1977 by which time the Group had mills across the UK and around the world. It later merged with the French Arjo but was forced into administration in 2021 partly as a result of rising gas prices.

At nearby Laverstoke Henry Portal set up his second paper mill in the early eighteenth century. It began printing bank notes for the Bank of England. The company bought the Bathford mill in Bath in 1970.

Further reading:

Anne Hawker, The Story of Basingstoke (Newbury: Local Heritage Books, 1984)

Southampton manufacturing history

 Southampton was one of the great English ports first identified as so used in Roman times. The port was later ravaged by the Vikings. Henry V, having won the battle of Agincourt, set about building a navy to defeat the French. His largest ship the Grace Dieu was built in Southampton. The port grew as the benefit of Agincourt flowed in terms of comparative peace and the taking of Normandy. With the shift in opponents from Spain to France, Portsmouth became the primary naval port and Southampton was called upon to supplement its ship building resources as needed. It later prospered with yards for smaller ships and yachts.

Southampton as a port thrived with deliveries of coal from the Tyne. In time it added imports and exports to and from the empire. The nearby oil refinery at Fawley is run by Esso. It has long handled imports of timber and chemicals.

The city is now forever associated with ocean going liners taking their mix of passengers to the new world. We can think of the Titanic, but many more. The Southampton story started much smaller, although P&O made the port its home from the early nineteenth century. It was the years following Waterloo and the defeat of Napoleon that the peaceful and pleasurable use of the sea took off. Steam was fundamental and it was smaller steam packets that busied themselves in the Solent crossing to the Isle of Wight and taking trippers round the island. Bigger vessels also made regular trips to the Channel Islands. The coming of the railway in 1840 opened up Southampton to the growing London population and steam packets prospered. It was then that Southampton really featured in trans Atlantic travel, although the Thames still held on to much passenger and freight business. P&O moved back to London, but Cunard White Star took its place in Southampton. In the 1930s P&O moved back to Southampton.

The Chiswick based shipbuilding company owned by John Thornycroft moved to Woolston Southampton in 1900 and continued their manufacture of specialist naval vessels in the yard built by T.L. Oswald of Sunderland in 1870. During the Second World War they built seventeen destroyers, torpedo boats, mine sweepers and landing-craft and numerous other craft. In 1968 they amalgamated with Gosport-based Vospers to form Vosper Thornycroft. Harland & Wolff had a ship repair operation in Southampton from 1907 until 1973 when it was sold to Vosper Thornycroft. The ship building activity of the company is now part of BAE Systems Maritime based in Portsmouth.

Ship building also focused on yachts. Camper and Nicholson, founded at Gosport, but with a yard in Southampton, built Gypsy Moth IV for Sir Francis Chichester for his single handed journey around the globe. Oyster at Hythe and also Wroxham in Norfolk build and manage super yachts. Moody founded in Swanwick in 1827 made world class yachts until 2007 when the company was sold to the German Hanse Yachts.

The city became home to aircraft manufacture at the time when take off and landing on the sea was seen as more convenient than building land based air-ports. The company that championed this just outside Southampton was Pemberton-Billing Ltd, later named Supermarine and later still bought by Vickers. My mother included in her diaries (transcribed in my book Dunkirk to D Day) her account of travelling in a flying boat in the Second World War.

At Woolston, Supermarine in the thirties designed Spitfires and built their fuselages, the remainder being subcontracted to other aircraft manufacturers around the country. Avro had built aircraft at Hamble in the First World War. The site was subsequently used by Hawker Siddeley Aviation for their advanced training aircraft.

In electronics, Phillips (formerly Mullard) made integrated circuits in their Southampton factory. BAE Systems manufacture radar with its Digital Intelligence unit on the Isle of Wight and Combat Management Systems at Portsmouth. They were building on the legacy of Marconi whose experiments on the Solent resulted in wireless radio as I wrote in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World.

Southampton has been the recipient of inward investment from Pirelli with their cable works, Goodyear Tyres, Ford Motor Company, IBM, Apple and GE of America. BAT has made cigarettes in Southampton since 1912, but now the focus has shifted to non-combustible nicotine products.

As elsewhere, Southampton major employers are now in the service industries

Further reading:

A. Temple Patterson, Southampton - a biography (London: Macmillan, 1970)