Stockton manufacturing history

 The town prospered with the opening of the Stockton to Darlington railway opening up the South Durham coal field to sea going vessels especially when the line was extended to Middlesbrough.

Stockton’s early industry was timber, both imported and exported. However, it was iron that would fire the prosperity of the town. We can trace the Bowesfield Steel Company to Dorman Long and the building of the great steel bridges not least that over Sydney harbour. Two engineering companies of significant technological importance were Head Wrightson and Whessoe. The latter was based in Darlington but the former had its origin in the Teasdale Ironworks at nearby Thornaby-on-Tees. The connectivity of manufacturing is perhaps evidenced by the fact that Arthur Head had been apprenticed to Ransome and Sims in Ipswich and Thomas Wrightson has been trained at Armstrong’s in Newcastle. Their company grew to supply the world with blast furnace and steel works plant, constructional iron and steel, pit head gears, picking belts, tipplers elevators, coal crushers, disintegrators and general colliery and mining plant. It went on to be part of the early nuclear industry as I wrote in Vehicles to Vaccines, as indeed did Whessoe.

Another strand of iron working came through William Ashmore who, at his Hope Iron Works, manufactured Gas Holders (the remains of some can still be seen by the Oval cricket ground and near the railway line from St Pancras), Boilers and Bridges. In time, Ashmore was joined by R.S. Benson and Edward Pease who invented the telescopic gas holder. The company became the Power Gas Corporation of which Ludwig Mond took control in 1901. Power Gas and Head Wrightson later became part of Davy International and then Trafalgar House.

The South Durham Iron and Steel company produced a large proportion of the plates used in Newcastle shipbuilding as well as in Stockton’s own industries. One of these was to produce enormous pipes, 30ft in length and 96 inches in diameter welded by a water-gas process.

There were many other iron works which did not decline until the old staples were hit in the mid interwar years. Iron works in Stockton cast rails for the Indian rail system. Examples of such rail stamped 'Stockton 1891' were re-used in the single track railway in what was Persia.

One possibly unsung hero was John Walker who invented the friction match. It was said that Michael Faraday visited Stockton to meet the inventor and to encourage production which Walker declined.

Further reading:

• Robert Woodhouse, Stockton Past (Chichester: Phillimore, 1994)
• Tom Sowler, A History of the Town and Borough of Stockton-on-Tees (Teeside Museums and Art Galleries, 1972)

You can read more in Vehicles to Vaccines and in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World 

Stockport manufacturing history

 Stockport was a cotton town which perhaps embraced progress more readily than some others. Traditional spinning and weaving would take place in people's home. With mechanisation, Mills would be built but then demolished when new processes came in which demanded more or different space. In 1851, the textile industry employed half the working population. In the second half of the century it was said that Stockport was building mills on a ‘monumental scale’ and many of these along the Ashton canal which provided fuel and raw materials and took away the finished product. Among many others two families come to be mentioned. The Gregs, whose father built Quarry Bank Mill in Styal, and the Houldsworths whose mill is a classic example of great industrial architecture; it was designed by architects AH Stott. It also offered a more efficient configuration and was in effect a double mill with a central section housing the steam power used by a factory on either side.

Stockport had become, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the great centre for power loom weaving. Manufacturers often carried on both spinning and weaving until weaving became concentrated on East Lancashire. Stockport shifted its efforts to spinning and embraced the spinning of cotton waste and doubling (spinning two or more yarns together to produce greater strength). Spinners also adopted the ring frame which worked much faster than the mule.

In the mid nineteenth century the weaving of silk was taken on in a number of mills to supply the manufacturers of Macclesfield until, with a downturn in demand, Macclesfield took over all their weaving. The weaving of wool had been done for many years as a cottage industry. This too was explored in the mill context with two mills in production until 1939. A further innovation falls to be mentioned. As mills got bigger they did of course cost more and a number of companies adopted a joint stock status following the lead of Oldham.

What was successful was hat making. The mid nineteenth century saw a fashion move from silk hats to those made from felt. Here, Stockport companies such as Christys and Battersbsy stepped in and in the last thirty years of the century employment grew ten fold. Stockport manufacturers embraced the latest American machinery and prospered until fashions changed once more.

Engineering followed textiles with manufacturers of the ring frame and power looms. They also made machinery for hat making. Cravens manufactured cranes, Simon-Carves made mining equipment and Lancashire boilers were built at the Wellington boiler works.

With the coming of the First World War, National Aircraft Factory No 2 was built in the town and run by Crossley. The associated airstrip was also used by Avro from their Woodford factory. Later Fairey manufactured aircraft in the Second World War in nearby Heaton Chapel. The company moved to wheeled armoured vehicles and now operates as KNDS UK.

Further reading:

Peter Arrowsmith, Stockport - A History (Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council, 1997)

You can read more in Vehicles to Vaccines and in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World 

Runcorn and Widnes manufacturing history

 These towns facing each other over the Mersey share an industrial history of chemicals manufacturing. They were joined by a transporter bridge in 1905 which was replaced by the arched Jubilee Bridge in 1961.

The opening of the Bridgewater canal in 1776 kick started industry in Runcorn. Two large soap and alkali works (Hazlehurst and the Runcorn Soap and Alkali Company) were destined to grow throughout the nineteenth century, particularly with advances in science in mid century. Proximity to the sea and canals encouraged shipbuilding and the presence of minerals underground enabled lead and copper mining.

The opening of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1895 further improved the connectivity of the town and the Castner-Kellner company (which later became part of ICI) began using the electrolytic process from which both caustic soda, bleaching powder, chlorine and hydrogen were extracted. The Hazlehurst soap business was bought by United Alkali, of which I say more below, who then sold to Lever Brothers (later Unilever) adding to their soap business. The town became home to British Dyestuffs also later part of ICI which located the headquarters of their Mond heavy chemicals division there.

ICI's Fluor produced fluorocarbons, used as refrigerants in air-conditioning systems in cars and homes, at sites in Runcorn, Japan and Louisiana. The company's Chlor's Runcorn site dated back to 1800s and the first industrial production of chlorine. Since then, regulations had tightened and the market had wilted, leaving a plant full of ageing and poorly maintained equipment. One comparison is quite eye opening. Its enormous cell room took as much electricity as the whole city of Liverpool. Both companies together with Crosfield of Warrington were bought by Ineos.

A river, a ford and a sunny south slope were the attractions of the place that became Widnes. What was a pretty village came to be a major chemical town through the initiative of John Hutchinson when the cost became prohibitive of taking raw materials (salt) from Northwich in Cheshire to St Helens where there was coal to produce soda and the potassium chlorate and bleaching powder. Widnes had local supplies of coal, easier access to the Cheshire salt fields abundant land and good communications by canal and railway. Hutchinson was joined by Gossage, making washing soda by the Leblanc process, and it was not long before huge amounts of sulphur infested chemical waste was being dumped on the Widnes wet lands. It was a German immigrant Ludwig Mond, a friend of John Brunner who worked with Hutchinson, who discovered a process capable of removing half of the waste sulphur. Soon this was widely adopted. Henry Deacon who had been working with Hutchinson formed a partnership with Gaskell to make sulphuric acid and ammonia soda used in the less polluting Solvay process with a bi-product of calcium chloride.

The pollution from the chemical works combined with inadequate sanitation led to Wides being called 'the dirtiest ugliest town in England'. The growth in population was boosted by immigration from Ireland of people fleeing the famine. The poor living conditions led to men seeking solace in alcohol and the town gained bad reputation which disappeared into memory as the town was improved.

United Alkali was formed by the merger of forty-eight alkali producers including fourteen from Widnes with the remainder based in St Helens, Tyneside, Scotland and Ireland. Old polluting plants were closed. United Alkali became part of ICI. Brunner and Mond joined together in 1873 but at Winnington near Northwich in Cheshire producing soda-ash for the cotton industry also using the ammonia soda process.

In Wides, John William Towers joined Hutchinson's laboratory in 1872. He then joined the Atlas Chemical Works set up by James Hargreaves and Thomas Robinson to exploit the salt-cake process and Towers went on to produce scientific apparatus for the chemical industry. Further chemical companies set up plants: Alumina Ltd, Peter Spence & Sons and Barium Chemicals. I write more about the consolidation of the chemical industry in Vehicles to Vaccines.

Andrew Poulson came from Wigan in 1869 to the Widnes foundry and took charge of the moulding department producing cast iron pillars which were used in pier construction amongst others, and segments for lining the London underground. The town, like others around, had copper foundries including Thomas Bolton's Mersey Copper Works producing copper rods and plates for locomotives and also rollers for calico printing; later it would supply the electrical industry. British Insulated and Helsby Cables was nearby and became part of BICC. High Speed Alloys was established in the town to produce special grades of steel, it was part of a merger of some eighteen similar businesses. Bell's Poilite and Everite Company manufactured asbestos cement of corrugated roofing.

The First World War made great demands on the chemical manufacturers and iron and steel works, the latter including for masts for Marconi Radio. The twenties saw consolidation of the chemical industry with the formation of ICI. Albright & Wilson set up on the site of the former Musgrave Works and Fisons took control of Vickers Fertiliser.

In the Second World War the Central Laboratory in Widnes carried out research into Uranium in support of the nuclear bomb project. The production of artificial rubber for insulation was undertaken and the metal works made Bailey Bridges.

In the post war world, Widnes industries focused on chemicals, asbestos and gelatine for sweets,

Runcorn was designated a New Town in 1964 and attracted General Motors which then closed in 1991, Sigmatex (carbon fibre textiles) Héroux-Devtek (aircraft landing gear), Whitford (speciality coatings), Teva (pharmaceuticals), and Fresenius Kabi (medical products). Diageo also maintains a packaging plant in Runcorn. Runcorn and Widnes became part of Halton Borough Council in 1974.

Further reading:

• https://www.millbank.com/blog/chemicals-north-west-past-present-future
• Charles Nickson, History of Runcorn (London: Mackie and Co, 1887)
• George E. Diggle, A History of Widnes (Corporation of Wides, 1961)

You can read more in Vehicles to Vaccines and in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World 

Camborne and Redruth manufacturing history - Cornish Mining

 Mining in this central part of Cornwall had been going on long before the Christian era with miners from what would become northwest France. There is evidence of the use of Cornish tin on bronze found in the Mediterranean exported from St Michael's Mount. The image is of early mining in northwest Cornwall.

The eighteenth century saw an acceleration in mining with the coming of the industrial revolution.

'The spot we are at is the most disagreeable in the whole county. The face of the earth is broken up in ten thousand heaps of rubbish, and there is scarce a tree to be seen.'

So wrote Mrs Watt to Mrs Boulton in 1777 when her husband was supervising the installation of one of his steam engines to pump water from a mine that was becoming inoperable. Samuel Smiles wrote of this in his contemporary account of Boulton & Watt noting that the engineer faced technical challenges, but also stubborn resistance from the Cornish. I explored in my post on St Austell the issue of mines flooded with water.

Another challenge for the mines was that of transporting ore from the rock face to places where it could be smelted. Here Janet Thomas, in her book The Wheels Went Round - the Story of Camborne Town, brings in the name Trevithick. By 1803 he had designed a tram engine which was being used in Wales and was introduced to transport ore between Portreath and Poldice. Trevithick also provided machinery for lifting the ore to to the mouth of the mine.

The area between Redruth and Camborne had from early times concentrated on the mining of copper, and production increased as, in the eighteenth century, the industrial revolution got underway. The metal workers of Birmingham were demanding more and more copper and the mine owners were all too happy to oblige. As elsewhere in the revolution, the workers missed out on good fortune and suffered dreadful working conditions and poverty for their families. Mechanisation into the nineteenth century went a small way to improve their lot with better ventilation and dust suppression of which I write more below. The first part of the nineteenth century saw a boom in production and by mid century Cornwall was supplying three quarters of the copper used in the world and half of the tin. This was big business.

In Redruth, William Murdock worked at supervising the installation of Boulton & Watt steam engines. In the evenings he experimented with the use of gas emitted from coal. He discovered that it could produce a bright light and from that he devised a scheme whereby his house could be lit by this gas. This demonstration convinced his employers of the viability of the process and he was commissioned to install gas lighting in their Soho works in Birmingham.

In Camborne, it was the Holman brothers which established a business in 1839 with a foundry capable of repairing massive beam engines. There followed a dust suppressing drill delivering a water spray to the drill bit; this became known as the Cornish Rock Drill. In the late nineteenth century they were manufacturing beam engines and by the twentieth century added compressors, pumping and winding engines; electricity took over from steam power. In its heyday, they were employing 3,000 men and women in Camborne and taking on 100 apprentices each year. The Camborne School of Mines was founded in 1888.

Notwithstanding technical developments, the world was not moving in Cornwall's favour, with better mining prospects, not so much gold in California, but copper in South Australia and Lead in Illinois. This triggered emigration of miners and their families and ensured that Cornish accents were heard wherever mines were being sunk.

For Holmans, the spread of mining to other parts of the world very simply meant first exports and then the establishment of Holman plants overseas. In 1961 the company had 2,500 employees and seven years later, under the encouragement of the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation, merged with Broom & Wade of High Wycombe to become International Compressed Air, later CompAir with headquarters in Slough.

South Crofty mine is being redeveloped by Cornish Metals.

Further reading:

• Janet Thomas, The Wheels Went Round - the Story of Camborne Town (Redruth: Dyllansow Truran,1987)
• Samuel Smiles, Lives of Boulton & Watt (Stoud: Nonsuch Publishing, 2007 originally published 1865)
• https://cornishstory.com/2021/02/10/holman-echoes-of-an-age/

You can read more in Vehicles to Vaccines and in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World 

St Austell manufacturing history

 St Austell on the south coast of Cornwall nestled among the mountains of the moon, or so it looked from the back of my mum's cottage. This belay a far more muscular past; St Austell with other parts of Cornwall provided the raw material for much of Britain's industrial revolution. The mountains were of course spoil heaps from china clay extraction; much earlier the mounds would be the waste from tin and copper mining. There is evidence of tin and copper working in Cornwall from the Bronze Age; not unreasonable given that bronze is an alloy of the two metals.

Early tin mining in Cornwall was near the surface and never below a level at which a build up of water in the mine could not drain into the sea. In time attempts were made to pump water using water wheels and so enabling deeper digging. The mines would sometimes run out under the sea and miners told stories of hearing the sound of waves above them.

Queen Elizabeth I introduced German miners to work new copper mines and George I encouraged more Germans given their experience of working in deep mines with hard rock.

Thomas Newcomen made the vital breakthrough of the invention of the atmospheric steam powered pump which meant that mines could go even deeper. The first was introduced into the Polgooth mine near St Austell which at one time employed 2,000 people. Mine owner, Charles Rashleigh, built the harbour at Charlestown enabling the shipping of copper ore to be smelted in South Wales. Tin was smelted locally.

The steam engines of Boulton and Watt were introduced to reduce costs as the price of tin and copper fell. I write more about these in my blog on Camborne. There were boom times - 1856-1864 for tin, but by the end of the century other countries were undercutting Cornish produce and miners emigrated in large numbers to mineral rich places including India.

For St Austell, the existing trade of mining kaolin was to restore prosperity and prolong it for a good number of decades. The Chinese had for a thousand years or more manufactured porcelain of a whiteness and hardness far superior to any English pottery. The secret to their process was closely guarded until Marco Polo brought details back to Europe. In Cornwall it was a Kingsbridge chemist by the name of Cookworthy who in 1746 found clay and and stone deposits near St Austell and an industry was born. Josiah Wedgwood experimented with a Watt steam engine to extract the kaolin by means of pumping water and then sieving and drying. Wedgwood was joined by Minton and Spode in acquiring interests in china clay and stone setts. In time a large number of small concerns were busily occupied in supplying a market hungry for porcelain.

As was the way with industrialisation, small concerns joined others to become bigger, culminating in 1919 with the formation of English China Clays. By this time science had made its presence felt and more advanced technology was introduced: electricity in place of steam, centrifugal pumps and power hoses. The port of Par had been built and enabled the export of a million tonnes a year. The production of kaolin leaves a residue of fine sand which can either be dumped or used. ECC bought two companies which became Selleck Nichols and Williams which manufactured prefabricated industrial buildings from precast concrete using the waste sand. Kaolin wasn't only being used for making porcelain, it was part of paper making and an illicit use was to whiten flour.

In 1999 English China Clays was bought by the French Imerys which now has interests in other extractive industries across the UK:

• Kaolin is still produced in Cornwall with a reserach laboratory at Par
• Ball clay is extracted in Devon around Newton Abbot and Wareham in Dorset
• Calcium carbonate is extracted at Stoke on Trent, Lostock in Cheshire and Beverley in Yorkshire
• Calcium aluminate is extracted at Thurrock in Kent

Further reading:

Cyril Bunn, The Book of St Austell (Buckingham: Barracuda Books, 1978)

You can read more in Vehicles to Vaccines and in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World 

Plymouth manufacturing history

 Set on the western approaches, Plymouth was in many ways Britain's door to the wider world. It was from Plymouth that so many of our adventurers sailed: Sir Francis Drake to the Pacific, the Pilgrim Fathers to America, James Cook to Australia and Charles Darwin to the Galapagos. I have written separately about our adventurers and explore in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World their role in the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution.

In the later seventeenth century the city became home to a Royal Dock known now as Devonport. The docks built many hundreds of ships and maintained the fleet. In the nineteenth century it was subject to a major extension to allow for larger ships, also the Royal William Victualling Yard was built. The Great Western Railway was linked to the docks. A regular domestic service to Brittany began. The Royal Dockyard in 1912 employed 12,000 civilians. The biggest vessel ever constructed in Devonport was the 30,600 ton Warspite launched in 1913.

Other industries arrived. Isaac Reckitt took over a Plymouth factory in 1905 and made Robin starch and washing powders. Bryant and May experimented making lucifer matches. Their factory burnt down and they moved to London to make Swan Vestas. Lever Brothers developed a presence in the city by buying soap companies.

War time bombing left Plymouth with gaping wounds and the great task of reconstruction began as early as 1942. Reckitts had been bombed and decided to concentrate their activity in Hull. Companies were encouraged to set up: C&J Clark, Slumberland mattresses and Browne & Sharpe machine tools arrived in the fifties. Tecalemit were in production by 1948 as were Berketex dress makers.

Plymouth attracted electronics companies. It is home to Plessey Semiconductors. Bush Television built a factory in Plymouth to expand on its west London premises. BAE Systems have a Systems and Equipment establishment in the city.

A good number of American owned companies have bases in Plymouth and work in life sciences, composites and other technologies. Mars Wrigley make gum in the original Wrigley factory. You can read more detail in this link to research carried out by students in Plymouth.

Burts Crisps was founded in 1999 by Richard and Linda Burt with premises in Kingsbridge. They moved to a bigger factory in Plymouth in 2006.

Kawasaki Precision Machinery has been making hydraulic equipment in Plymouth for 25 years.

The work of the former Royal Dockyard has now been passed to Babcock International at Devonport and Rosyth. Princess Yachts were founded in 1965 and manufacture high class yachts sailed the world over

Further reading:

Crispin Gill, Plymouth - A New History (Devon Books, 1993)

I wanted to explore British manufacturing history geographically, having looked at it chronologically and by sector in my books How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World and Vehicles to Vaccines. 

Follow this link to a list of the places I have explored to date.

Taunton manufacturing history

In a sense this is a story about the most simple manufacturing process, the turning of apples into cider. Yet it draws in strands of the commercial world which are common to a great many manufacturing businesses.

Apples grow well in a number of areas of the country and from early times local people have found the benefit of extracting their juice and allowing it to ferment. Being a simple industry, anyone can do it - to a degree. It is also a local industry with lovers of cider fiercely loyal to the taste of the apples they know. The same is true of breweries, except that cider can be made on a very small scale.

R.W. Holder traces the story of Taunton cider back to the Rectors of Heathfield in the early nineteenth century. Rural areas were suffering in what became known as the hungry forties, but land owners generally escaped and it was the poor who suffered. A Rector was in sense a land owner since he lived off the rents of the Glebe and the proceeds of the Tithe. The Rector of Heathfield lived in cider country and was in the financial position to exploit his product and he did so by supplying the rich and famous.

As was the case in many places it was the railway that unleashed the business of Taunton which was not served by decent roads nor by easily navigable rivers. Railways, the GWR, proved ideal to transport hogsheads of cider to London and all parts of the country. The railways also expanded the market for local food producers and Holder tells the story of Mrs Langdon who built a business supplying eggs, chicken and rabbit to the London market.

The Taunton cider business grew by building relationships with brewers and their tied houses. Slowly the number of brewers increased each having a shareholding in Taunton Cider. Mrs Langdon's business, now run by her sons, recognised the role of logistics in their business and realised that they were at heart hauliers and could compete well with the stuck-in-the-mud railways. Langdons grew and Taunton grew and eventually the former was transporting the cider of the latter in large quantities.

The cider market was tough. H.P. Bulmer of Hereford was in the lead, with also Whiteways of Whimple in Devon and Gaymers of Attleborough in Norfolk close behind. The drinks market was also changing. Britvic of Chelmsford and Showerings of Shepton Mallet were transforming the image of the drink. With this background Taunton Cider was sold first to management, then floated on the London Stock Exchange until it became part of Matthew Clark plc and in turn C&C (Cantrell and Cochrane) founded in Belfast but then based in Dublin. C&C already owned Gaymers and Matthew Clark the Irish firm of Magners. The original Taunton Cider moved production elsewhere, but Heritage Cider has taken its place in the town.

Further readings:

R.W. Holder, Taunton Cider and Langdons - a West Country Story of Industrial Development (Midsummer Norton: Bookcraft, 2000)

I wanted to explore British manufacturing history geographically, having looked at it chronologically and by sector in my books How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World and Vehicles to Vaccines. 

Follow this link to a list of the places I have explored to date.