Consett manufacturing history

 There is evidence of metalurgical activity in the Derwent valley in County Durham from early times. There was a rich deposit of coal under a thick layer of limestone from which lead could be extracted. Iron ore was abundant and led to the manufacture of swords at Shotley Bridge.

In his book, Thread of Iron, Douglas Vernon traces the history of the industry and notes the date of 1839 as the point when entrepreneur, Jonathan Richardson took the plunge and formed The Derwent Iron company to take advantage of local coal, the rights to which he bought, local iron ore which he discovered and importantly the Consett to South Shields Railway which could bring the resulting iron to a national and international market hungry for it. Once finance was raised, the beginning was a period of success with quality iron winning prizes at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Already both the amount and quality of local ore was being called into question and a cheaper source was found in the nearby Cleveland Hills. Transport presented a challenge with a gorge to be crossed. Initially this was address by an ingenious system of pulleys; later a magnificent viaduct was built. Ore was also brought in by train from the northwest.

Consett was big, having fourteen furnaces compared to four at Bolckow and Vaughan at Witton, Middlesbrough. Interestingly it joined with Krupp of Germany and the Dowlais Iron Company in exploiting iron ore reserves discovered in northern Spain.

The works survived financial crises, one of which resulted in the formation of a new company, the Consett Iron Company, and a period of highly profitable growth. This company entered the late nineteenth century ready to embrace the move to steel. I wrote about Bessemer and Siemens and steel making in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World but also in my blog pieces on Middlesbrough and Sheffield. In Consett, investment was made in Siemens open hearth furnaces and the plant expanded and prospered with some six thousand employees working in coal mines, mills, foundries, melting shops, a brick works and an engine and wagon shops. Consett survived the First World War despite problems with raw materials and shortages of labour, but it was a weakened company which entered the economic storms of the twenties. It was then part of the reconstruction of the national steel industry of which I wrote in Vehicles to Vaccines.

Years after the Second World War saw the strongest growth ever in the British steel indsutry from 13 million tons in 1939 to 24 million in 1960. Nationalisation meant that Consett lost both its coal mines, power stations and its rail and rolling stock. For a previously integrated business, this loss was devastating. Nevertheless improvements were commissioned including a new ore handling system. Nationalisation of the steel industry followed only to be reversed by the next Conservative government. I write about the subsequent passage of the steel industry in Vehicles to Vaccines.

Consett Iron Co closed in 1980 and here is a link to a comprehensive blog of its history.

Further reading:

• Douglas Vernon, Thread of Iron (Knebworth: Able Publishing, 2003)
• J.C. Carr and W. Taplin, History of the British Steel Industry (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962)
• How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World and Vehicles to Vaccines.

Sunderland manufacturing history

As a port on the Wear, Sunderland grew from handling exports of coal from the Northumberland coal field. Coal went to London and the southwest as well as over the North Sea.

Along with coal, two related industries can be traced back to before the industrial revolution: glass making and pottery. These industries were present elsewhere in the northeast and indeed elsewhere in the UK. Glass was for bottles, for windows and tableware and, as the urban areas grew and prosperity spread from the fruits of industry, so the demand for all three types of glass grew. Sunderland's Wear Glassworks became a producer of national importance. Pottery tended to be earthenware for general use and was some glass tableware. However, Wear Flint Glass could boast the Marquess of Londonderry among its customers.

Like many coastal towns, Sunderland had a long history in shipbuilding and, alongside this, rope making was significant in the town. Ropes were also needed for railways where trucks were pulled along by static steam engines. Webster's rope works at Depford boasted the first machine-made rope in the country.

For shipbuilding, we can look to Austin and Pickersgill, Doxfords, J.L. Thompson and Sir James Laing & Son. In early days it was wood and sail, in particular keels to bring coal from the mines to the waiting colliers. The use of iron and steel and the advent of the steam engine enabled Sunderland's shipbuilding to boom in the mid nineteenth century making it one of the prime shipbuilding ports on the world. Decline followed boom and, with the exception of busy wars and short periods of catch up after the wars, the days of large scale shipbuilding on the Wear were numbered. I write in Vehicles to Vaccines of the last gasp with the combination into North East Shipbuilders Limited.

Sunderland was very far from lost, for Nissan chose to build its British motor car factory near to the town and this continues to prosper.

Further reading:

• Glen Lyndon Dodds, A History of Sunderland (Sunderland: Albion Press, 1995)
• Anthony Slaven, British Shipbuilding 1500-2010 (Lancaster: Crucible, 2013)
• How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World
• Vehicles to Vaccines

Newcastle and Gateshead manfacturing history

 Coal was at the heart of the economy of Tyneside which, with its long navigable estuary, was able to ship many of the millions of tons produced by the Northumberland coalfield. The presence of so many mines attracted talented engineers who rose to the challenge of tackling flooding and poor ventilation that made mining so dangerous. They also addressed the economic imperative of cost effective transport. The answer was steam as I wrote in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World (HBSTMW) and men like George and Robert Stephenson. It is well known that the eminent scientist Humphrey Davy invented the safety lamp, but George Stephenson produced a lamp equally safe only a few weeks later and this was widely used. Stephenson with his son Robert did go on to produce the Rocket and many more railway locomotives. Again, I cover this at some length in HBSTMW.

Shipbuilding was at the heart of the Tyne with the river in the mid nineteenth century 'positively bristling with ship yards'. Of these the most famous were T&W Smith, Wood Skinner, Wigham Richardson, William Cleland & Co, John Couts, Andrew Leslie & Co and one of the most successful, Charles Mitchell, with his yard at Walker. Mitchell added to his success by marrying Anne Swan through whom he acquired two brothers in law Charles and Henry Swan. Charles Swan merged with the Sunderland George Hunter, to form Swan Hunter; Henry later took over the Mitchell yard.

William Armstrong trained as a solicitor but was irresistibly drawn by the power of water which he had witnessed in his walks across Northumberland. He went into business first in hydraulics and then became a master of the technology of big guns which he manufactured at Elswick working closely with Mitchell on naval vessels. The two companies eventually merged in 1882. He was rightly included as one of the 'Deadly Triumvirate'. He later merged with Joseph Whitworth of Manchester and together they joined with Vickers of Sheffield. I write about all three at some length in HBSTMW. The Newcastle works built tanks, made presses for the newspaper and motor industry, and rolling mill equipment for the steel industry.

Like a number of other cities, Newcastle boasted its Lit and Phil Society, founded in 1793. One lecturer was Joseph Swan who demonstrated the electric light bulb at the same time as Edison was revealing his work on the other side of the Atlantic. Pragmatism prevailed and the two came together in the company known as Ediswan.

The shipbuilding and engineering industries were fertile ground for CA Parsons who invented the revolutionary steam turbine, equally useful in propelling ships and powering electricity generators. German born John Merz married into the Wigham Richardson family and with his brother championed the production of cheap electricity to power the growing city and its industries.

Over the river in Gateshead iron foundries prospered and the production of Alkali using the Leblanc process was championed by local entrepreneur William Losh. This was followed by soap works and a chemical plant run by Christian Allhusen which covered a massive 137 acres of the south shore. By the time of the electrical revolution the highly polluting Leblanc process was replaced by that invented by Solvay but this gravitated towards the Cheshire salt fields. Tyneside would get their own back when cheap electricity attracted Castner Kellner from Cheshire. Gateshead was also home to the workshops of the North Eastern Railway Company which at one time employed 3,300 men before it moved to Darlington. R&W Hawthorn manufactured steam locomotives. Clarke Chapman built steam engines and later nuclear generation plant, and, together with Hebburn engineers A Reyrolle & Co, CA Parsons and others, joined to become Northern Engineering Industries which was bought first by Rolls-Royce and then by the German Siemens. I write about these energy companies in Vehicles to Vaccines.

In the early twentieth century the Wigham Richardson yard specialised in cable laying ships, Armstrong Whitworth focused on the Russian market and, at their naval yard, produced warships not only for the Royal Navy but also for Norway and Japan. Swan Hunter and Wigham Richardson built the renowned RMS Muretania at their Wallsend yard. I write of their contribution to the First World War effort in Ordnance.

The interwar years saw the demand for coal plummet which drew the response of reduced wages and lay offs which in turn partly provoked the National Strike of 1926. Tragically the strike handed export markets to competing coal producing countries, Germany and Poland, and so the decline of coal began. Along with coal, ship building suffered. Jarrow was home to Palmers shipyard which closed in 1936 creating mass unemployment and triggering the Jarrow march. Some help was provided through the Special Areas (Development and Improvement) Act of 1934, but the days of being the workshop of the world would never return. I write of the post-war story of British shipbuilding in Vehicles to Vaccines.

At nearby Fawdon, Rowntree manufactured Fruit Gum, Pastilles and Jelly. Imperial Tobacco built a factory at Heaton in the forties to make Wills cigarettes. There were, and are, many independent smaller manufacturing businesses, not least Jackson the Taylor which merged with Burtons. 

In South Shields, Plessey built a factory to manufacture electronic telephone exchanges. In the nineties, the German Siemens set up a plant to manufacture semi-conductors but, with falling demand, it closed after two years.

Further reading

Alistair Moffat and George Rosie, Tyneside - A History of Newcastle and Gateshead from Earliest Times (Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 2005) 

How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World

Vehicles to Vaccines

Ordnance

Henrietta Heald , William Armstrong, Magician of the North

Anthony Slaven, British Shipbuilding 1500-2010 (Lancaster: Crucible, 2013)