Kingston upon Thames manufacturing history

Kingston was possibly the most important market town in Surrey. Like so many places, its history was built on the wool trade. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries it supplied London first with Surrey Whitewear pottery and then with Redwear. As London grew, Kingston supplied many of its needs using the Thames as the vital transport link. Turnpikes were built, but the Thames reigned supreme until the railways arrived in 1838. This first Kingston station was in Surbiton, but Kingston was becoming a centre for the growing residential areas of Surbiton, New Malden and Chessington.

Manufacturing came in earnest in the First World War, first with Thomas Sopwith manufacturing aircraft which would become iconic for the part they played in the war effort. It was all about the internal combustion engine. Racing driver, Kenelm Lee Guinness formed the KLG spark plug company to manufacture the version of the spark plug which he had invented. Bus and lorry manufacturer, Leyland, built their vehicles for the war effort.

Harry Hawker, who was Sopwith's chief test pilot, formed his own Hawker Aircraft Company after the war and it was agreed that the companies should be joined. Tragically he died in a flying accident in 1921 the year his company merged with Sopwith. Thomas Sopwith became chairman of the combined company which continued to develop aircraft in Kingston. In 1934 Hawker Siddeley was formed which drew together Hawker, Gloster of Cheltenham, Sir William Armstrong of Elswick, Newcastle and Armstrong Siddeley of Coventry.

In the Second World War, Hawkers manufactured their equally iconic Hurricane Fighter using also factory space at Langley near Slough. Leyland manufactured lorries and also tanks including Churchills, Centaurs and Comets. They built bombs at a rate of 400,000 a month. John Perrings made radio sets in a secret workshop above his furniture shop using employees seconded from the Hoover factory at Perrivale to teach his staff the necessary skills. Siebe Gorman in nearby Chessington made rubber suits for navy divers.

After the war Hawker Siddeley went on to produce further acclaimed aircraft not least the Harrier and it became part of the British Aircraft Corporation and then British Aerospace. The successor, BAE Systems, closed the Kingston factory in 1992. I write of the post war aircraft industry in Vehicles to Vaccines. The Hawk jet, produced by BAE Systems flown by the Red Arrows, was developed under Hawker ownership.

Decca Radar had a significant presence in Chessington and Tolworth and also in nearby Addlestone. The company emerged from the Decca Record Company in 1947 and moved to Tolworth in 1951. Three years later premises were taken in Chessington. Heavy radar for air traffic control and air defence was based in Tolworth. In the mid fifties, government informed the company that any further expansion had to be outside the immediate Surrey area and a site was taken on the Isle of Wight. Heavy radar was sold to Plessey in 1964. The remaining Surrey operations were focused on marine radar and this was bought by Racal in 1979. The legacy of Decca radar is now within BAE Systems.

Further reading:

• Shaan Butters, The Book of Kingston (Cardiff: Baron Books, 1995)
• https://woottonbridgeiow.org.uk/decca-legacy/index.php

Weybridge and Brooklands manufacturing history

Brooklands Motor Racing Circuit was close to Weybridge and brought motor racing enthusiasts and manufacturers including the Itala Automobile Company. It was the first purpose built race track in the world and had banked curves, very much the place where enthusiasts of the internal combustion engine gathered whether on the track or in the air. Alliot Verdan Roe carried out his flight trials there as did Sopwith of Kingston which had a training school there.

In 1915, the Itala factory was taken by Vickers to manufacture aircraft. They began with the Bentley designed BE.2 but then the government decided on the Farnborough designed SE5a and production began with a Hispano-Souza engine. Some 1,000 were produce exceeding the number of aircraft produced by any of the National Aircraft Factories. Vickers were in the aircraft business.

In the interwar years, the Brooklands track became the venue for many races including the British Grand Prix and the British Racing Drivers Club 500 mile race. Drivers including Malcolm Campbell and John Cobb raced there.

Another arrival in the twenties was the Airscrew Company which manufactured propellors. Over the years the business developed to include propeller blades for variable pitch aircrews. An artificial wood was developed called Weyroc. The company diversified into all manner of fans.

During the Second World War, the Vickers Weybridge factory manufactured Wellesley and Wellington bombers. The airfield was also where the Hawker Hurricane was brought for testing from its Kingston factory.

The Vickers design team at Weybridge came up with one winner in particular in the post war world: the Viscount passenger aircraft which was flown by BEA and many other operators.

The Vickers research department was headed by Dr Barnes Wallis who had created the Dam Busters bomb. His team went on to design some of the early missiles.

Aircraft production came up with the Valiant as a stop gap before the V Bombers came into service and then the civil Vanguard and VC10 neither of which lived up to the success of the Viscount. The factory closed in 1986. I write much more about Vickers in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World.

Further reading:

J.D. Scott, Vickers - A History (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1962)

 

Farnborough manufacturing history

The Factory, as the Royal Aircraft Factory was known to the early aircraft manufacturers, came to Farnborough as the Army School of Ballooning which had been formed at Woolwich during the Boer War and then moved to nearby Aldershot before coming home to Farnborough with the formation of the Army Balloon Factory.

In the early days its mission was to try to impose safety standards on the reckless adventurers who were the first to take to the air. When the Wright Brothers succeeded with powered flight the army turned its attention to the marriage of aircraft and the internal combustion engine and the Royal Aircraft Factory was born.

All this came just in time for the First World War and initially the use of aircraft for reconnaissance. The Factory came up with designs alongside the commercial manufacturers and, as I suggest in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World, played leapfrog with the Germans, and aeroplanes became ever more technically advanced. I write about this in my chapter on the First World War.

The interwar years presented something of a hiatus of aircraft design until re-armament began. The Factory was once again up with the pack in aircraft design.

After the Second World War, the British aircraft industry was vast but, unlike the Americans and Germans, relied too much on old technology. The Royal Aircraft Establishment as it had been renamed was tasked with the challenge of leading the drive to ever more advanced technology. We were at war, but it was a Cold War demanding a whole different approach.

In 1962 the Establishment employed 8,500 people including 1,500 scientists.

This remarkable team of people tackled a good number of knotty problems.

• jet lift and the control of vertical takeoff aircraft, culminating in the Hawker Harrier
• supersonic interception aircraft culminating in the English Electric Lightning
• the V bombers
• the enquiry into the Comet crashes to understand why it happened and how it could be avoided in future
• Concorde and supersonic transport, employing the wind tunnels to full effect.

The site comprised a range of buildings:

• Q121 24ft wind tunnel
• R133 Transonic wind tunnel
• R52 1916 wind tunnel building
• R136 11.5 ft x 8.5ft wind tunnel
• R178 Materials and chemistry building
• R51 Forge and Foundry
• Q120/Q146 Seaplane test tank
• R173 Romney buildings
• Q134 Weapons testing building
• Q65 The fabric shop
• Q170 Telephone exchange
• Q153 Structural test building

The site was decommissioned in 1998 and had been redeveloped as Farnborough Business Park. However the legacy was preserved to an extent in the air tunnel buildings owned by the Farnborough Air Sciences Trust, a museum in the Balloon Factory named Trenchard House and a massive portable airship hangar. There is of course the annual Farnborough International Airshow held at the Farnborough International Exhibition and Conference Centre.

Further reading:

Adam Wilkinson, Save Farnborough: The Cradle of British Aviation (London: SAVE Britain's Heritage, 2001)

Bracknell manufacturing history

 A small village on the road to the west of England was how Bracknell was described in the mid nineteenth century. It then set about growing. Thomas Lawrence founded a brickworks producing twelve million bricks a year by the end of the nineteenth century, bricks that would find their way into buildings including Eton College, 10 Downing Street and Westminster Cathedral.

Its designation as a new town came in the late forties with work beginning in 1950. The plan was ambitious and provided for employment as well as homes and leisure. Work on the first factory for Fluidrive began in 1951 followed by Kent Bros. & Phillips. In 1961 the numbers employed in factories passed 6,000.

George Rowney & Co, founded in 1783, opened their factory in Bracknell moving from units in Chalk Farm and the Euston Road. Rowney became part of Morgan Crucible and set up their head office in Bracknell. They were later bought by Dale Board, another artist materials business, and still manufacture in the town. Rowney are one of the few companies at both the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the Festival of Britain a century later.

The American Sperry, with their artificial horizon equipment for aircraft, moved their whole UK establishment from Brentford in 1968. Sperry would remain the largest employer until the plant was closed under the ownership of BAE Systems.

Racal set up their first factory in the fifties bussing their workforce of one hundred daily from Isleworth until houses were completed. By 1981, Racal had a worldwide workforce of 18,000. Racal spun off Vodaphone which continued a presence in the town.

Expandite, a supplier to the construction industry, bought Secomastic in 1956 and manufactured alongside operating a contracting division. ICI's agricultural research centre was nearby at Jealott's Hill. Ferranti digital systems and aircraft design was based here.

Honeywell Control Systems, ICL (now Fujitsu), 3M, Dell, NetGear, Panasonic, Hewlett Packard Techologies and Micron Technologies semi-conductors are some of the companies with a presence in Bracknell making it a technological hub and part of the Thames Valley 'Silicon Valley'.

Further reading:

Henry and Judith Parris, Bracknell - The making of a New Town (Bracknell Development Corporation, 1981)

Fareham manufacturing history

Fareham is a coastal town just about half way between Southampton and Portsmouth and it is to Portsmouth I look for clues to the town's commercial success.

I write in my blog piece on Portsmouth of the key role it had in British naval history. It looked to Fareham for key manufactures at its time of greatest need: the Napoleonic Wars. The Navy needed iron for various uses in its ships and a Gosport blacksmith named Henry Cort had taken on a business of supplying chains. Cort was not satisfied by the then current methods of making iron and through extensive experimentation arrived at his puddling process which produced strong wrought iron. In this venture he took on a foundry in Fareham where he produced iron for the Navy. Cort's methods were adopted widely and he is regarded as the father of the iron industry. I write of him in how Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World.

The second contribution came later when Lord Palmerston ordered the building of defences around Portsmouth and this time Fareham supplied great quantities of high quality bricks. There is evidence of the Romans making bricks from the mud of the estuary mixed with shell fragments. Later rich reserves of clay were discovered to make the London Blue which can be seen in much of the railway infrastructure. Fareham Reds can be seen in the Albert Hall and at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. As well as bricks, chimney pots and tiles were made and supplied to nearly all western counties.The clay was also used for making pipes when tobacco became more generally available. Cigars and cigarettes later put pay to clay pipes.

The third contribution is probably the oldest and is the production of leather. The tanneries of Fareham date back as far as bricks if not farther. Leather was used as a strong flexible material before the days of plastics, as well as for shoes, clothing, bags etc. Coaches and wagons were comprised largely of leather and of course there were many million saddles and bridles. The Army and Navy were major users and hides came to Fareham from all over the country.

There is no record of whether the fourth contribution was supplied to the Navy, it was however enjoyed by many in the towns and cities: strawberries grown over 2,500 acres.

During the Second World War, Fareham became the location for the construction of the Mulberry Harbours for the D Day landings.

Further reading:

Lesley Burton and Brian Musselwhite, An illustrated History of Fareham (Southampton: Ensign Publications, 1991)

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 I am on a virtual tour of Britain seeking to discover its manufacturing history and I am adding posts twice a week. You can find more on my BritishManufacturingHistory website.  https://britishmanufacturinghistory.uk/

Warwick and Leamington manufacturing history

 Nicholas Paris first made his mark in Warwick in 1670 as a blacksmith and clockmaker. In clockmaking he had been preceded by John Wyse who had learnt his craft as an apprentice in London, but it is the Paris family which would be better known. As well as clocks they made guns with wonderful ornamental designs.

Interestingly in his book on Warwick, Charles Lines notes the Napoleonic wars as kick starting manufacturing in the town, but with the weaving of worsted cloth rather than anything to do with metal. William Parkes factory employed 500 people and a 24 hp steam engine.

Of more enduring impact was William Glover a wheelwright whose Eagle Works went on to manufacture what we used to know as dustbin lorries. Eagle merged with Dennis and still manufacture in Leamington.

Another thriving Leamington business is Rangemaster which manufactures cookers. The iron for its AGA cookers was cast in Coalbrookdale. As with so many British companies, factory sites keep the old alongside the new. (the image taken from the canal)

Thwaites dumper trucks have been made in Leamington since 1937. I recall that a former client Newage Transmissions of Coventry supplied Thwaites.

The University of Warwick was well known for its mechanical engineering focused on the West Midlands motor industry. This focus expanded in 1980 by the formation of the Warwick Manufacturing Group with a mission on developing new technologies, products and skills in collaboration with manufacturing industry.

Further reading

Charles Lines, The Book ofWarwick (Buckingham: Barracuda Books, 1985)