I write blogs as my research progresses and so the earlier ones relate to my previous project Dunkirk to D Day, although they are linked. The men of whom I wrote had feet in both camps, they stepped up as soldiers in two world wars, but then pursued careers in British manufacturing. I wrote an article on Civilian Expertise in War published in the Historian, the magazine of The Historical Association.
East London manufacturing in the 19th and 20th centuries
Docklands The first decade of the nineteenth century saw an expansion in docks which would guarantee London’s position as the world’s trading city. The first was a West India Docks which had in addition to the docks themselves, warehouses all surrounded by a secure wall. The work was privately funded and financed by a 21…
South London manufacturing history
The south bank of the Thames and the rivers flowing into it, the Wandle and Neckinger, attracted industries needing ready transport for raw materials, water power and water itself. Southwark, Lambeth and Bermondsey Ceramics were made in Lambeth and also in Chelsea and Bow. Doulton & Co made rainwater goods and later fine pottery as…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Oldham manufacturing history
Oldham was one of the Lancashire cotton towns but the story of Oldham is perhaps a little different to that of Preston with the advantage the town took of the Joint Stock company following the passing of the Limited Liability Acts. These were intended to encourage third party investment in businesses, but in Oldham they…
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British Manufacturing History 