East London manufacturing history

 Writing of London in the Nineteenth Century, Jerry White remarks on the large proportion of the population – some 30% - who made things, countering a common belief that London was a place of commerce with local manufacturing restricted to small and niche workshops. This was largely the result of what had gone before. London as a port was fundamental.

Docklands

The Naval dockyard at Woolwich became the principal focus in the reign of Henry VIII and the building of Henri Grace a Dieu. Looking at the records of the Board of Ordnance, which supplied cannon, powder and cannon balls, there grew up substantial stores at Chatham, Tilbury and Sheerness and to a lesser extent Woolwich itself. I write below of the major role that Woolwich would take in the supply of the army. Significant naval stores were also held at Portsmouth and Plymouth. With the later expansion of empire, stores were located overseas at for example Gibraltar.

Alongside naval shipbuilding, commercial shipbuilding yards stretched east from Bermondsey. They provided the essential transport for adventurers and traders. East Indiamen made the long and challenging journey to the far east to bring back exotic cargoes. Nearer to home coal was brought by coastal ships from Newcastle. The yards were busy places and I wrote of them in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World.

At the end of the eighteenth century the pressure on the small area of 'legal' docks for commercial shipping was clearly grossly inadequate and expansion became urgent. I wrote of this in my page on Inner London for that was where the docks were.

As London grew, the banks of the Thames filled with manufacturing businesses attracted by the ease of receiving raw materials and dispatching finished goods. The docks would welcome ships arriving with cargoes from just about all over the world; ships too would leave with finished goods destined for lucrative overseas markets. The label ‘Made in London’ carried a cache the world over.

It had been and still was a busy and diversified place with saw-mills, lead-smelting, paint and varnish works, iron and brass foundries, chemicals works and ships stores, boiler makers works, chain and anchor works and sack, bag and canvas factories.

Woolwich

The Weald provided charcoal and iron ore for the production of all things metal, so guns in the environs of the Tower of London and at the Woolwich Arsenal, and cutlery before Sheffield bagged the lead in that trade. As to the manufacture of weapons, the casting of brass cannon had been carried out at Moorfields and before that on the Weald itself. In the first half of the eighteenth century there were built on the Woolwich site a foundry for casting guns, a Laboratory for making gunpowder and a workshop for gun carriages as well as extensive storage. Further development would follow in the end of the Napoleonic wars.

Shoreditch and Bethnal Green

Furniture making was to be found in Mayfair for the well-to-do and in the East End, using semi-skilled labour, for the rest of the market. Furniture skills were gathered together by companies like Gillow and Seddon. Once again, processes would be subdivided into different skill sets; in time mechanisation would make redundant much of the handicraft. The area around Shoreditch and the western end of Bethnal Green became in White’s words ‘something approaching one giant factory’.

A book titled Furnishing the World - The East London Furniture Trade 1830-1980 looks at this in more detail. The starting point was the growing population and house building, all of which drove demand for furniture. This was matched by an east end population which included Jewish immigrants skilled in carpentry and the availability of wood coming in through the growing docklands but also later along the Regents Canal which opened in 1820. The overwhelming majority of the furniture makers were small workshops selling mainly to wholesalers.

Further reading:

• Richard Tames, Barking Past (London: Historical Publications, 2002)
• Sue Curtis, Dagenham and Rainham Past (Chichester: Phillimore, 2000)
• Pat Kirkham, Rodney Mace and Julia Porter, Furnishing the World - The East London Furniture Trade 1830-1980 (London: Journeyman Press, 1987)

Inner London manufacturing history

 London does of course reach back into Roman times if not earlier. By 1700 it had a population estimated at 575,00 which grew to 900,000 a century later. It was by far the largest urban area in Britain having attracted migrants from neighbouring rural areas in search of work. In these early days inner London overlapped to the East and to the South.

Trade

London was wealthy largely as a result of international trade which flowed through the Port of London. I write in this link of the role of merchant adventurers. The types of imports and exports reveal an astonishing variety. Fine cotton garments and indigo dye from India, tea from China, ivory from Africa, gold and silver from south America, sugar from the Caribbean. Exports were needed to exchange for these goods, so London’s craftsmen made metal items of beauty and utility. The major export though was wool.

The Thames, from early times, was home to shipbuilders and I wrote of the companies and the ships they built in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World. Ships were built both for trading and for warfare, and yards on the Thames built both.

In spite of a massive growth in the volume of trade, the 'legal docks' had remained largely as they had been in the time of Elizabeth I - a stretch of quays between London Bridge and the Tower of London, although a further area of river frontage on the south bank had been added and ships were often unloaded by lightermen whilst at anchor in the centre of the river. The congestion would not be relieved until 1790 and I write about this when looking at East London.

The huge variety of goods traded attracted manufacturing activity.

Spitalfields

In the sixteenth century and probably long before, wool had been the backbone of the English economy. It is estimated that mid century nearly one fifth of the working population was employed in the manufacture of woollen cloth. London was by far the largest centre of population and so attracted a good share of the industry. I write below of later division of labour, but cloth production had seen this from early days not least with the distinction between spinning and weaving, but also dyeing and fulling and other processes. Rural areas surrounding London played their part especially with spinning.

In the late sixteenth century Margaret of Anjou encouraged silk workers to come to Spitalfields from her native Lyon and so began the English silk trade of which I wrote in my blog on Braintree.

The introduction of the knitting frame transformed the manufacture of hosiery and this mattered in eighteenth century London which had a growing middle class which was both fashion conscious and keen to display conspicuous wealth. With hosiery, the colour had to be exactly right. Much framework knitting took place in the Midlands where wage costs were lower and I write about this in my blogs on Leicester and Nottingham, but London held on to the fashionable end.

Fashion attracted retail outlets from regional manufacturers. Josiah Wedgewood set a shop in in Grosvenor Square and another in Greek Street in Soho. Matthew Boulton chose Pall Mall to display his 'buttons, buckles, saucepans, candlesticks and snuff boxes'.

Jerry White in London in the 19^th Century highlights the degree of division of labour in London manufacturing. I have positively eulogised about Birmingham’s workshop system. White suggests that London took this a stage further with the skilled making of an item broken down into a great many simple steps in which an unskilled person could be trained. These people would often work in their own home for many hours to scrape a living from truly mindless work. I wonder whether it was this that John Ruskin was critiquing when he wrote of his concerns of industrialisation in his writings on political economy, such as Unto the Last. Textiles would seem to have been a prime but far from solitary example with silk spinning and weaving carried out in Spitalfields but also garment making with the process subdivided many times over. White suggests that there were 250,000 textile workers in inner London in 1901. I wrote in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World of the plight of textile workers in Spitalfields in the early nineteenth century. Stephen Inwood uses the term 'sweated system' to describe the division of a skill into a number of unskilled processes thereby exploiting the large number of unskilled people flocking to London in the nineteenth century. He quotes some people as suggesting that this system achieved greater productivity then the clothing industry in - say - Leeds which took advantage of machinery.

Clerkenwell and Finsbury

Richard Tames in Clerkenwell and Finsbury Past writes of the sheer diversity of manufacturers. There were book binders and makers of book binding machines, manufacturers of addressing machines and ever pointed pencils, printers who specialised in railway tickets, a gilder who specialised in book edges.

Clerkenwell had some 7,000 people working in watch making in 1790; the process becoming increasingly subdivided. Of particular interest to me, the skills of watch making developed into mathematical, optical and surgical instruments in the Strand and Fleet Street; my great grandfather made surgical instruments at No 62 The Strand for Weiss & Co. At the end of the nineteenth century, there were 1,000 employees making cartridges at the Eley factory in Clerkenwell. Eley later joined 29 other companies in Nobel Industries Limited.

Furniture making for the aristocracy and growing middle class received a boost with the arrival of Huguenot and Dutch crafts men in the 1680s. Exotic woods were being imported from America and the West Indies: Walnut, rosewood, deal, satinwood, and mahogany and London became Europe's top manufacturer of fine furniture. Clerkenwell was home to Hepplewhite's furniture workshop; Chippendale had been in St Martin's Lane. Less well known but still highly skilled makers produced furniture in Mayfair for the well to do.

The growing population needed feeding and here mechanisation found a foothold in milling and brewing. Feeding the brain mattered too; William Caxton established the first printing press in Westminster in 1476. Printing and book binding prospered in the environs of Fleet Street.

Further reading

• Stephen Inwood, A History of London (London: Macmillan, 1998)
• Richard Tames, Clerkenwell and Finsbury Past (London: Historical Publications, 1999)
• The Finsbury Story (London: Pyramid Press, 1960)
• John Richardson, A History of Camden (London: Historical Publications, 2000)

Yeovil manufacturing history

 Yeovil’s traditional industry was glove making from locally sourced hides. It was a substantial industry with the final glove factory closing only in 1989.

Continuing the agricultural theme, the St Ivel brand of cheese was produced by Western Counties Creameries.

Mechanisation did not pass the town by and at the end of the nineteenth century, James Petter set up as an iron monger and produced the acclaimed ‘Nautilus’ fire grate. From there he went on to install a one horse-power oil engine in a horseless carriage and produced well regarded stationary oil engines.

From this base his company went on to manufacture aircraft in the First World War. Short Type 166, Sopwith 1½ Strutters, de Havilland 4 and 9 two-seat bombers. de-Havilland planned to use the American Liberty engine in the DH-9 to produce the DH-9A and Westland were given the job.

Westland also built 25 Vickers Vimys making a total of 1,100 aircraft. The Yeovil site was transformed with hangers and workshop space.

During the interwar years, Westland survived but continued its drive for innovation.

One result of this quest was production of the Lysander transport aircraft ready to serve in the Second World War. It became known for its role in dropping agents into occupied France. Of more significance in terms of volume was Westland's role in building Spitfires following the bombing of the Southampton Supermarine factory.

Westland, which had built a large number of aircraft for other companies, in 1947 focused on rotor craft and built the Wyvern, the first Westland aircraft to enter service with Fleet Air Arm.

During the Second World War it had been agreed that the USA would take on the development of helicopters; Cierva, the UK pioneer of rotary aircraft was sold to flying boat manufacturer Saunders-Roe in 1951 and produced the Saro Skeeter. In 1959, Westland bought Saunders-Roe and developed the design into the Wasp for the Royal Navy. The decision to focus development work during the war in the USA gave Sikorsky a lead which it would retain for many years. Westland had produced the Sikorsky S-51 under licence and developed this into their own S51 Widgeon, followed by the Whirlwind, Wessex and Sea King.

The Times of 12 January 1960 reported that Westland had bought, in addition to Saunders-Roe, the Bristol Helicopter Division and the UK interests of Fairey Aviation. The enlarged company was now the biggest manufacturer of helicopters outside the USA, and it went on to produce further Sikorsky based craft under license from the Italian Agusta Company. The Sea King (shown in the image) was developed from the Agusta design and the other iconic name, the Lynx, from the 1968 Anglo-French Helicopter Agreement.

Notwithstanding the success of these craft, the company ran into financial difficulties in 1986 and eventually came under the control of GKN in 1994. The GKN Westland EH 101 Merlin was the child of this latter marriage and was regarded as the most advanced helicopter of its time going on to sell worldwide and in the early 2000s replacing Sikorsky as the craft used by US ‘Marine One’ Corps for the US President.

Westland later merged with Agusta a subsidiary of the Italian Finmeccania. In 2004, Finmeccania became the sole owner of AgustaWestland and in 2016 absorbed the business following which it changed its name to Leonardo in 2018.

Further reading:

• https://www.westland100.org.uk/content/history-of-westland/history-westland-1915-1998
• Leslie Brooke, Yeovil A Pictorial History (Chichester: Phillimore, 1994)

Ardeer manufacturing history

Perhaps Alfred Nobel's greatest invention was dynamite, a combination of nitroglycerine and a soft, white, porous substance called kieselguhr. The demand for the new explosive was ‘overwhelming’ and Nobel built factories in some twelve countries. In England, the Nitroglycerine Act forbade ‘the manufacture, import, sale and transport of nitroglycerine and any substance containing it’. Nobel was not put off, but did clash with Frederick Abel who was trying to do at Woolwich Arsenal, with nitrocellulose, what Nobel was attempting with nitroglycerine. The net result was that Nobel failed to raise the money he needed for a factory in England.

Fortunately for him, Scotland, with its separate legal system, welcomed him and a factory, his first joint venture The British Dynamite Co. Ltd, was built at Ardeer on a desolate area of the Ayrshire coast in 1871.7 Nobel’s fellow investor in the British Dynamite Company was Sir Charles Tennant, the British champion, through his company Tennants of Glasgow, of the Leblanc process for producing soda ash.

Nobel is quoted as saying, ‘the real era of nitroglycerine opened with the year 1864 when a charge of pure nitroglycerine was first set off by means of a minute charge of gunpowder’. This was the first High Explosive, whereas rapid burning gun powder produces pressures of up to 6,000 atmospheres in a matter of milliseconds, the decomposition of nitroglycerine needs only microseconds and can give rise to pressures of up to 275,000 atmospheres. This was a ground breaking discovery that had the potential to make the life of the miner and civil engineer a great deal easier, but also to unleash weapons of previously unimagined ferocity.

It was not long before the next major development, the invention of cordite, again with Nobel and Abel vying for position. By the end of the nineteenth century, cordite was being manufactured by Kynoch & Co and by the National Explosives Company as well by Nobel’s factory at Ardeer.

The First World War witnessed the production of explosives on an unimaginable scale.

In the wake of the First World War, Harry McGowan headed up Explosive Trades Limited which brought together Britain's fifty-four explosives companies with ninety-three factories. In 1920 it changed its name to Nobel Industries Limited and proceeded to close and repurpose factories leaving it with explosive production at Ardeer, fuses in Cornwall and ammunition in Birmingham. It had substantial reserves which it sought to invest in promising industries. In 1926 it was a founder company of ICI.

W.J. Reader, Imperial Chemical Industries - Vol 1 the Forerunners 1870-1926 (London: Oxford University Press, 1970)

 

Billingham and Wilton manufacturing history

 In 1917, the village of Billingham in County Durham suffered the agonies of the First World War as the rest of the country where young men joined up never to return - from Bellingham some 137 died; the population was 4,599. For Billingham, the war would result in massive physical change - A Brave New World.

The world war in which the country was engaged placed huge demands on industry. In particular the young chemical industry would undergo a revolution in order to manufacture the vast quantities of explosive which the shell filling factories were demanding. Brunner Mond of Northwich in Cheshire were asked to increase their production and in 1916 a new purpose built factory at Stratton in Swindon was dedicated to the production of nitrates.

It was a year later that the Ministry of Munitions commissioned the building of a yet larger plant at Billingham transforming the landscape. The plant was not in production by the end of the war, but in 1920 Brunner Mond formed Synthetic Ammonia and Nitrates Ltd to make ammonia for use in explosives but also ammonium sulphate fertiliser. The plant has access to a substantial bed of anhydrite a form of calcium sulphate which made it a suitable place for the production of ammonium sulphate. More significantly for the Ministry of Munitions, the plant had access to electricity from a soon to be commissioned station by the Newcastle Electricity Supply Co. With the coming of peace, there were severe doubts as to the market for nitrogen based chemicals and there was lengthy debate and negotiation with potential partners. But Brunner Mond did go ahead and set in stone the location of the heart of the soon to be born ICI .

The plant attracted chemists from around Britain including a young Aldous Huxley to whom Billingham represented an 'ordered universe in the midst of a wider world of planless incoherence'. It was ground breaking technology which, by the time Huxley arrived, was focused on the production of fertiliser to feed a hungry world. The world, though, had changed and other countries were equally able to produce the fertiliser they needed. Billingham had to look further afield.

In 1926 Brunner Mond became part of ICI and spurred Billingham to further growth. By 1932 it employed 5,000 out of the then population of 18,000. The Second World War renewed the demand for explosives. Billingham produced a high octane fuel from creosote which had added 25 mph to the top speed of a Spitfire in pursuit of German flying bombs.

A key invention was that of Perspex which proved ideal for the windscreens of Spitfires. Later other plants produced Perspex including Darwen in Blackburn, Lancashire.

In 1945, the company bought the site on which it would build its other major plant in the north east at Wilton. This was not only bigger, but would be home to Britain’s major chemicals manufacture for decades. It had its own power plant, with 33MW Metropolitan Vickers/AEI turbine-generator sets powered by Babcock and Wilcox boilers. It was vast then, but in 2013 boasted sixty miles of road, four hundred miles of electric cable and one hundred and fifty miles of pipework on the two thousand acre site. In the late forties and fifties, its production included nylon, terylene and perspex.

The postwar world saw the explosion of petrochemicals whereby a 'cracker' splits crude oil into its constituent chemicals. ICI’s cracker at Wilton was itself linked to Billingham by a ten-mile pipeline, making it the largest chemical plant then in the world. ICI Acrylics division would go on to produce the feedstocks for plastic manufacture and much more.

Further reading:

W.J. Reader, Imperial Chemical Industries - A History Vol II The First Quarter Century 1926-1952 (London: Oxford University Press, 1975)

Northwich manufacturing history

 The wich-es in Cheshire, Northwich, Middlewich and Nantwich have provided salt for centuries along paths known as salt ways, like the one by which I live in Leicestershire.

For two young chemists in the late nineteenth century they held rather more: the promise of soda ash for which the cotton manufacturers were screaming.

John Brunner and Ludwig Mond had met whilst working for Hutchinson’s alkali works in Widnes. They gained backing from wealthy engineer Charles Holland and bought Winnington Hall in the grounds of which in 1874 they built a plant producing soda ash by the then new ammonia soda process, The Solvay Process. Three further plants followed. The Solvay process gained acceptance over the former Leblanc process because it reduced the pollution of the latter and was altogether more efficient.

In 1926 Brunner Mond joined United Alkali, Nobel Industries and British Dyestuffs to become ICI and the enlarged company committed itself to research. They founded a laboratory on the site and it was there in 1933 that polythene was first produced. The Winnington works continued with polythene until production was transferred to ICI Hertfordshire.

Winnington was a significant part of the ICI Mond division and is now part of Tata Chemicals Europe and continues with soda ash manufacture. In 2022 Tata set up the first industrial scale carbon capture site in Europe.

Winnington Hall was previously a girls boarding school to which Victorian writer John Ruskin visited to lecture on one of his books on political economy.

Accrington manufacturing history

 The town’s brickworks were known for making the densest and hardest bricks in the world used for the 'construction of the Empire State Building and the foundations of the Blackpool Tower'.

Coal mining was carried on around the outskirts of the town which attracted foundries from which textile machinery manufacturing emerged. There was tinplating and calico printing machinery, dye and chemical works.

A cotton town with forty seven mills at one time and calico printing. It was home to machinery manufacturers for the textile and cotton industries. The largest machinery manufacturer, Howard & Bulloughs, were the largest employer in the town.

Courtaulds set up a plant for machine making after the Second World War but closed it in the fifties preferring to buy from third party manufacturers.

Entwisle & Kenyon founded in 1864 began with manual washing machine but later made the much loved Ewbank carpet sweeper.

In the Second World War a shadow factory produced Bristol aero engines; the factory was later sold to English Electric, later GEC, which manufactured steel fabrication and aircraft structures.

Lucas (Rists) manufactured their wiring systems.

Further reading:

• Michael Rothwell, A Guide to the Industrial Archeology of Accrington 1979
• Jack Nadia, Coal mines around Accrington and Blackburn