Belfast manufacturing history

 Ireland moved later than much of Britain away from a subsistence economy. The island as a whole was not rich in raw materials yet the climate was good for growing, spinning and weaving flax. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Belfast ranked alongside towns such as Lisburn, Lurgan, Portadown, and Dungannon. In size, the city was similar to Derry and Newry. Linen was a cottage industry with a great number of spinners and weavers in Ulster but also in Leinster and Munster (which would become part of the Republic).

Linen was also made in England, but it was over-shadowed by that imported from continental European countries. The focus of English textiles was very much on wool and cotton. Ireland's linen industry was cottage based with exports flowing via dyers through Dublin. At the end of the seventeenth century the needs of British government finance for war led to increased duties on imports and, since linen was one of the biggest imports, it was a prime target. The knock on from this was the need to increase home production and Ireland was drawn in and given preferential access to the English market, then the biggest and fastest growing in Europe. In Belfast flax spinning and weaving gathered round the rivers Forth, Farset and Blackstaff and the mills they powered taking the place of what previously had been a cottage industry in the province.

The late eighteenth century also saw in Belfast the birth of the mechanised cotton industry. Cotton was the stuff of Lancashire, but the Irish climate was similar and the island had both labour and skills. The industry developed in East Ulster and also in the south in Waterford and in Dublin. Belfast was known for its fine fabrics, whereas the south produced the courser calicos. In the later nineteenth century Belfast took advantage of growing mechanisation to produce cheap muslins. Cotton reached its peak in the 1820s and a number of Belfast men notably Thomas Mulholland and John Hind decided to venture into mechanised flax spinning. Others followed. Linen came into it own once more when the shipping of cotton was blockaded in the American Civil War. With a market starved of cotton, what better than linen. In Belfast, spinning mills were busy and more were built. Handloom weavers moved closer to the spinners and still held the market for fine linen with coarser fabric being produced on power looms. In time these looms were improved and power looms were adopted widely with yet more mills built.

With the end of the war, cotton shipments resumed and Lancashire, adopting further mechanisation, once more undercut linen. To make matters worse international customers began to produce their own linen. The result of all this was the closure of mills and the removal of the remainder closer together in Belfast. Linen and cotton began to be processed alongside each other. Linen Union became popular as the addition of cotton made the fabric softer. The First World War increased demand for linen and the industry revived only to fall into terminal decline after a brief respite following the war.

Along with Dublin and Cork, Belfast was one of Ireland's sea ports and as the linen and cotton trades expanded so too did Belfast. Belfast was becoming increasing prosperous with developments in the textile industry. William Durgan, known in Ireland as the King of the Railways, saw the potential for growth, not only in railways, but also shipping and he undertook the digging out of the harbour. This made the docks perfect for shipbuilding, something seen clearly by Edward Harland and Gustav Wolff. This transformed Belfast in to Ireland's primary port. With shipping came shipbuilding which was also transformed mid century by the coming together of Harland and Wolff. It is worth mentioning, because it is a name that keeps appearing, that contracts with the Bibby Line were the lifeblood of the new company.

Harland & Wolff is surely the iconic image of Belfast. Anthony Slaven in his British Shipbuilding 1500-2010, praises the shipyard for its ability in the late nineteenth century to 'produce any type of vessel', having previously noted the specialisms of the other British shipbuilding areas. He does concede that the Northern Ireland yard was particularly known for its cargo liners and passenger liners. Later it was of course known as the birthplace of the Titanic but also her sister ships Olympic and Britannic. Alongside Harlands was Workman and Clark's yard founded in 1879.

Scottish born John Boyd Dunlop who, whilst living in Belfast, developed the pneumatic tyre which both greatly improved the comfort of riding a bicycle but also its speed.

Belfast played its part in the war effort in both world wars with ships and munitions and in the Second World War. Shorts of Rochester joined with Harland & Wolff in 1936 in a company known as Short & Harland and produced the Sunderland flyboat, and, from this design, the massive Stirling bomber. Production at Rochester became too vulnerable to air attack and so move to Belfast, with Austin also producing a good number. Some 2,375 were produced in all. After the war, some yards took advantage of opportunities to re-equip. Harland & Wolff took over welding shops provided by the government. Part of Shorts was bought by the American Spirit Aerosystems which in turn became part of Boeing. Another part of Shorts, then owned by Bombardier, entered into a venture with Thompson-CSF to develop the Shorts Missile System. Thompson-CSF changed its name to Thales and bought out Bombardier. Thales now manufacture ammunition in the city.

The Festival of Britain in 1951 shed light on Belfast and Northern Ireland highlighting its agriculture and linen industries. At that time manufacturing was concentrated on Belfast with some 58% of those employed in manufacturing working in the capital. It was by far the largest centre of population, some eight times that of Derry which came second with 50,000. It was primarily a manufacturing city with half the working population so employed in engineering and shipbuilding, textiles and clothing, food and drink. The Belfast Ropework Company had the largest rope making factory in the world.

Soft drinks producer Cantrell and Cochrane was founded in a shop in Belfast in 1852.

Government sponsored industrial development is important with industries established in the decade after the Second World War including aircraft (Short Brothers), precision engineering, rayon weaving, toy making and food processing.

The city welcomed investment from overseas, particularly the USA with Dow Chemicals. The DeLorean motor company set up production in 1978 but lasted only four years.

Belfast and Northern Ireland suffered from the 'troubles' - sectarian violence - which lasted until the Good Friday agreement was signed in 1998. Since then the province has prospered.

Further reading

• Anthony Slaven, British Shipbuilding 1500-2010 (Lancaster: Crucible, 2013)
• Emily Boyle and Robin Sweetnam in Belfast the Making of the City 1800-1914 (Belfast: Appletree Press, 1983)

Derry manufacturing history

 Derry had been a place of linen production from the early eighteenth century, and in the early nineteenth century it grew as Belfast moved more and more to cotton. Nothing lasts for ever and, with the subsequent decline of Irish linen production, the town rose to the challenge and redirected the skills of its people to shirt making. In the 1850s, the factory system of production had been introduced with the then new sewing machine which would dramatically increase productivity.

There had been five shirt factories in Derry in 1850 and this had grown to thirty-eight in 1902, plus a whole host of outworking. Companies of note included William Scott & Sons, Hogg & Co, Welch Margetson and Tillie & Henderson. It was the Glaswegian, Tillie, who saw the benefit in bringing all shirt making activity together under one roof, and it was he who introduced the first sewing machines, but also a steam powered cutting machine in their five storey factory with one thousand five hundred employees. The factory was significant enough for Karl Marx to reference it in Das Kapital. Shirts were supplied to the British market but also overseas.

Today, Global leaders like Du Pont and Bemis operate alongside fast-growing local firms such as HiVolt Capacitors, E&I Engineering, Fleming Agri-Products, and Seating Matters. 

Antrim coast and glens manufacturing history

 This part of Northern Ireland, with the Giants Causeway, is rich in minerals and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries supported coal, iron ore and bauxite mining as well as quarrying for building materials. In the 1750s Hugh Boyd was shipping 8,000 tons of coal a year from his mines in Ballycastle. Iron ore production peaked in 1870 part being smelted locally and part shipped to England for smelting. As iron ore mining decreased, bauxite increased especially in the Second World War when aluminium was needed for aircraft production.

The main industry of Antrim was linen. Flax was widely grown and two initial processes took place close to where it was harvested; since only 10% of the flax plant ends up in linen, the remainder being waste. The first process is to soften the plant by wetting in small ponds. The plant begins to rot giving a foul smell. This process is called Retting. The retted flax is then taken to a water mill where it undergoes Scrutching essentially separating the usable flax from waste. This usable flax is then spun, woven and bleached, these processes taking place mainly in Belfast.

In the sixties, Antrim attracted British Enkalon to build a factory to produce nylon 6, which was a strong nylon thread for use in textiles. The promise of British Enkalon is said to have encouraged the designation as a new town. At its height the factory employed more than 3,000 and the towns population exceeded 20,000. Nylon for textiles was of its time and the factory closed in the mid seventies. The owners did not simply walk away but set up the Enkalon Foundation and business park which supports employment in the town.

Further reading:

Fred Hammond, Antrim Coast and Glens Industrial Heritage (HMSO, 1991)

Dublin manufacturing history

Dublin had been the main route for the export of the island’s textiles. At nearby Prosperous in 1780 Sir Robert Brooke attempted to set up a cotton manufacturing industry. At one time he employed 4,000 people but the business collapsed after four years. Cotton and linen manufacture continued elsewhere but never on the same scale.

At the time of partition in the 1920s, the Free State had many fewer manufacturing jobs that the much smaller Five Counties; it was reckoned that the north had one and a half times the jobs in the south. As to the south, something like half were in Dublin and two thirds were in food, drink, tobacco, textiles, clothing and footwear. Guinness was the largest employer and indeed at one time the largest brewery in the world. Chemicals featured to some degree, but this was mainly the fertiliser producer Gouldings in Cork given the overwhelmingly agricultural nature of the economy.

In the period following partition, the Free State imposed tariffs on imports and this persuaded a number of British companies to establish factories in the south. Lever Brothers were already there, as was the Ford Motor Company. New arrivals included Rowntree and Macintosh confectionary and Players and Wills cigarettes.

Metal related industries made up 15% of Ireland's manufacturing employment. Looking back to the eighteenth century, Richard Turner had been one of the true iron masters. He created the iron structure for the glass houses at the Botanical Gardens in Belfast and the Palm House at Kew in London. In 1902 Scotsman, David Frame, revived the Hammond Lane Foundry and this went on to become part of the Irish Steel Company.

The Scottish link was repeated in shipbuilding. William McMillan worked his way up from being an apprentice at Lobnitz in Renfrew and then a plater at Feling & Ferguson in Paisley before moving to Dublin in 1901 as manager at the Dublin Docks Company which had been set up by two Scots, John Smellie and Walter Scott. During his time, he worked on many ships including the Muirchu launched as Helga II in 1908 as a fisheries protection vessel. The ships built were generally coasters, tugs land barges. William left the Dublin Docks Company in 1913; its yard would later being taken on by Vickers Ireland whose principal business was the manufacture of iron barges for inland waterways to transport barrels of Guinness amongst other goods.

William set up the Ringsend Dockyard Company in 1913 in three graving docks and there repaired ships. In 1916 they built their first ship, the 62ft steam tug Zoe for the British India Steam Navigation Company for service in the East African port of Mombasa. Other tugs followed. In 1918 William expanded to become Dublin Shipbuilders. This company built coasters, but struggled financially. One of its ships served in Duneden in New Zealand, another was completed by Henry Robb of Edinburgh. The comany survived during difficult times until 1928 when it became part of Ringsend Dockyard (Dublin) Ltd. Interestingly one of the shareholders was the Leith shipbuilder Henry Robb. Another was George N Jacob whose company would achieve fame for its Cream Crackers. The company's main business was the manufacture of iron motorised barges which became known as McMillans, considered better than the Vickers competitors. By 1938, Ringsend Dockyard (Dublin) was the last remaining steel shipbuilder in Dublin, Vickers having closed. One of its first roles during the Emergency (as the Second World War was known in the Free State) was to refit the Muirchu to become the flag ship of the Irish Navy. William died in 1938 having become one of Dublin's signifcant businessmen.

Scottish born John Boyd Dunlop, whilst living in Belfast, developed the pneumatic tyre which both greatly improved the comfort of riding a bicycle but also its speed. With Harvey du Cross, he set up, in 1888, what would become the Pneumatic Tyre Company. It began producing tyres in Dublin but then moved to Coventry.

Jacobs set up in Dublin in 1852 and became the city's biggest employer after Guinness. They built a factory in Liverpool in 1914 which eventually became part of Associated Busicuits. The Dublin business became part of Irish Biscuits.

Dublin's story after partition is not strictly part of this study although it is appropriate to note the prosperity of the capital as a member of the European Union.

Further reading:

• Pat Sweeney, Liffey Ships and Shipbuilding (Cork: Mercer Press, 2010)
• I am grateful to William McMillan's grandson, Russell Arthurton, for his research

 

Merthyr Tydfil manufacturing history

 In 1759, in Dowlais near Merthyr Tydfil, an iron works was founded by a group of iron masters. Eight years later, John Guest joined the company as works manager. Guest would later join with Keen and Nettlefold in what became one of Britain’s largest industrial companies, GKN.

The Dowlais Iron Works, under Sir John Guest, was said to be the greatest ironworks in the world in the mid nineteenth century, employing some 7,000 people. I wrote of its story in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World. It wasn't alone in the Merthyr area, the Cyfarthfa Iron Works was a close rival until Dowlais powered ahead in the 1860s and 1870s. There were in all eight major iron works on the northern boundary of the South Wales coal field including Tredegar, Hirwaun, Penydarren and Ebbw Vale.

Transport was an issue for Merthyr, as iron had to be taken by horse to the port at Cardiff. In 1804, Richard Trevithic made the first steam locomotive for use on a tramway at Penydarren iron works. In time a canal was built and this was followed by a railway, vastly improving journey times. Dowlais supplied rails for the Great Western Railway, iron for Brunel's SS Great Britain built at Bristol and cannon balls for the Board of Ordnance.

Steel came to Dowlais earlier than many other iron works with the adoption of the Bessemer process making Merthyr at one time the leading steel making district in the world. The district also produced many of the great steel engineers who would take their skills elsewhere.

Merthyr suffered as other areas had access to better quality ore demanded by new processes.The Dowlais works closed in 1936 with production moving to Llanwern, combined with that of Baldwins and I write of these combinations in Vehicles to Vaccines.

Hoover manufactured cleaners in Merthyr.

Further reading:

• J.C. Carr and W. Taplin, History of the British Steel Industry, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962)

Swansea manufacturing history

 Swansea at the mouth of the Tawe was recognised as a natural harbour by Norse pirates and came into its own with the discovery of bituminous coal which, from the sixteenth century, it was exporting by sea to other parts of Britain and further afield. In 1913 at its peak South Wales produced 56 million tons of coal.

Local deposits made Swansea and its surrounding area the principal place for smelting copper, which from the eighteenth century was much in demand from Birmingham's brass industry. Matthew Boulton and others formed the Rose Copper Company with a smelter on the banks of the Tawe. In time copper ore was brought by sea from Cornwall and Anglesea as well as from overseas to be smelted using the Welsh process and Welsh coal. In 1845, Swansea was producing 55% of the world's copper. Copper was joined by lead and zinc.

Tinplate was, though, what made Swansea's name. Locally produced iron would be dipped in locally mined tin. Tin was also brought in from Cornwall. In 1831, William Llewellyn had founded the Aberdulais Tinplate Company where iron ingots were rolled into flat plates and a thin protective layer of tin attached. It was one of hundreds of tin mills which grew up around the country. Tin was readily available, easy to work and very effective in coating iron and steel to prevent rust.

With the advent of steel, the iron ore local to Swansea had too high a phosphorous content (a problem also found elsewhere) and so ore was sourced from further east. William Siemens was determined to see his method of steel making, as opposed to that of Bessemer, embraced. The tin platers were reluctant and so Siemens set up his own state of the art plant at Landore. It proved successful for tin plate and gradually more plants took on the Siemens system. Swansea went from strength to strength in tin plate production.

Continuous strip mills were introduced alongside electroplating allowing a very thin coating of expensive tin. Demand grew as more and more food stuffs were packaged in tin cans.The producers of South Wales at one time provided three quarters of Britain's production with much going to the USA.

The coming of central heating created a demand for anthracite coal which was in plentiful supply around Swansea and which had proved less suitable for smelting. This provided a much needed boost to the economy.

Swansea had become a town long before Cardiff and residential development ran west along the shore with industry along the banks of Tawe running north. There were hundreds of small copper smelters most of which closed when the industry was consolidated. Balchin's introduction to his book has a vivid description of what remained: 'one of the most concentrated areas of industrial dereliction, desolation and decay in Britain.' Alongside this, the city has long been a cultural and intellectual centre.

I write about the consolidation of the steel industry in Vehicles to Vaccines and this brought about the Steel Company of Wales. This new company embraced amongst others the major tin plate producer Richard Thomas with plants at Velindre and Trostre and built a massive continuous process steel plant at nearby Port Talbot. This complex produced most of Britain's sheet steel and all its tin plate.

Copper production had suffered as other countries came on stream. The same became true of tin plating. Nonetheless Swansea attracted a wide spread of metal and other industries.

Alcoa Manufacturing and British Aluminium produced cast and sheet aluminium as well as wire. Borg-Warner from the USA produced car transmissions. Also from the USA, Jefferson Chemicals produced morpholine for making rubber and Piperazine for pig and poultry feed additives. B.P. refined oil and manufactured chemicals and 3M made tape products. Imperial Metal Industries produced Titanium and Zirconium alloy. International Nickel produced nickel and Imperial Smelting (about which I write more in the context of Bristol) produced zinc and lead. Smiths Industries made watches and Ford UK, rear axles. Mettoy built a factory at Fforestfach to manufacture Corgi toys. In the seventies Morgan Crucible relocated its electric motor brush manufacturing from Battersea.

A programme of development attracted other SMEs, but more and more the economy of Swansea became dominated by service industries. It boast a university with its own wafer fab for semiconductors.

Further reading:

• Swansea and its Region, W.G.V. Balchin ed. (Swansea: University College of Swansea, 1971)
• J.C. Carr and W. Taplin, History of the British Steel Industry (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962)

Ilford manufacturing history

 The manufacturer of photographic film that shares the name of the town was founded in 1879 and moved to a larger factory in Basildon in 1976

Plessey had started out in Marylebone in London after the First World War as mechanical engineers exploiting the talents of a German born engineer, William Oscar Heyne. The first products were jigs and tools. In 1919 the company moved to Holloway with investment from American, Bryan Clark.

Marconi, through their Marconiphone company, produced valve receivers, but not many. They subcontracted manufacture to Plessey and the relationship continued successfully until Marconi established their own manufacturing in 1926, and Plessey reverted to component manufacture. In 1923 Plessey had moved to Ilford where they also manufactured telephone equipment and equipment for the RAF and motor manufacturers. In 1929 Plessey made the first television invented by John Logie Baird. They also made the first portable radio. Bryan Clark's son, Allan, introduced mass production of standard components.

Plessey took on licences to produce American aircraft equipment. In the Second World War, Plessey produced many different types of components and equipment for the war effort, including shell cases, aircraft parts, and radio equipment such as the R1155 (receiver) and T1154 (transmitter). Following bombing of their Ilford factory they moved production to unused sections of the Central Underground Line. They also opened a factory in Swindon and took on the management of shadow factories. They set up a research establishment at Caswell House near Towcester. At the end of the war they employed 11,000 people, a workforce which reduced with the coming of peace.

Allan Clark's sons, John and Michael joined the company and senior managers, John Cunningham and Raymond Brown, left Plessey to form Racal. The company made many thousands of television sets for EMI. With the growth of the hydraulics business, the company formed two separate divisions, Fuel Systems which was moved to Titchfield, Hampshire and Industrial Hydraulics which went to Swindon, Wiltshire.

The next break came with telephones. The existing system, Strowger, was ‘hopelessly out of date’ and the development of electronic exchanges still some way off. The answer was the Crossbar system which AT & E had developed. Plessey bought both Automatic Telephone & Electric (with their Liverpool and Bridgnorth factories) and Ericcson, taking over the Beeston factory, and won twenty-six out of the thirty-two orders placed. I write of this in Vehicles to Vaccines.

In 1961 the company had 17,500 employees. Six years later the payroll had grown to 68,000 employees with 6,500 in research and development with R&D labs at Caswell in South Wales, Roke Manor near Romsey, Taplow in Berkshire and Havant and Poole in Hampshire and Dorset.

Plessey were important suppliers to the Ministry of Defence and I write of this in my piece on Kingston upon Thames and Isle of Wight. Plessey made a failed bid for English Electric in 1968. In the eighties they went head to head with GEC over the next generation of telephones. In the event it was Ericcson which won with their System Y as opposed to System X which was developed by Plessey and GEC. Through the machinations of corporate bids, the Plessey telecoms business ended up with Ericcson and its defence related business eventually became part of BAE Systems via its merger with Marconi (the new name of GEC). I also wrote of this in Vehicles to Vaccines.

One part of Plessey did survive intact in Plymouth as Plessey Semiconductors which also took in Marconi Semiconductors.

I am grateful to Graces Guide which supplemented the earlier research I did for my books How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World and Vehicles to Vaccines.