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.
London as a manufacturing place
Was London a manufacturing anomaly ? There were no raw materials, no coal and the weather didn’t favour weaving. Yet, it was the centre of power. The rich wanted beautiful things and Londoners made them. Skills emerged and developed, which attracted more skills. Above all it was the major port. The Thames offered a wonderful…
The Thames shipbuilders
When I think of shipbuilding, I see in my minds eye the North-East or the Clyde. Yet, Thames shipyards, including four Naval Dockyards, built many thousands of ships over four centuries. We can think of East Indiamen setting sail for the spices of the east, or whalers, but more-so mail steamers, wherries and tea clippers.…
Oliver Lucas and Peter Bennett – Lucas
Joseph Lucas was born in 1834, lived in Hockley, Birmingham and worked in tin, manufacturing lamps for ships and the new world of photography. In 1855, his wife gave birth to a son, Harry, who at the age of sixteen joined his father in the business. It was the invention and growing ownership of bicycles…
New Book – How Manufacturing Shaped Britain
This book sets out to discover how manufacturing shaped this island. Why manufacturing spread across the country, how it grew, why it declined and what was left. It is looking at manufacturing through the lens of geography. Manufacturing transformed the places where it took place. Villages became towns because millennia earlier great forests had been…
Allen, John and Michael Clark – Plessey
Allen Clark, son of Byron Clark, was born in Massachusetts in 1898 and came to England in 1905. He attended Felsted School. In the First World War he served in the London Scottish and was wounded at Cambrai in 1917. He then joined the Royal Flying Corps. in 1920, Byron Clark bought Plessey Limited which…
Keys to British manufacturing success at SPARK Lincoln
I was thrilled to have been invited to speak at the SPARK engineering festival in Lincoln Cathedral. Here is an audio and then a transcript of what I said,. Had you been among the five million visitors to the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London’s Hyde Park you would have been impressed by the vast…
Guglielmo Marconi and some notable successors
Guglielmo Marconi, from Bolognia in Italy, at the age of 22, in 1898, set up Marconi Telegraph Company in a former mill in Chelmsford: the first wireless factory in the world. His fascination was with radio waves, and he built on earlier work, by Hertz and others, for his first patent registered in England in…
The Ferranti Spirit
Sebastian de Ferranti was born in Liverpool in 1864, the son of a photographer whose family had come from Bologna. Cesar had married Juliana the daughter of artist William Scott. Juliana, born in 1825, was a musician and had been teaching music. Their ambition for their son was in the arts, but Sebastian was fascinated…
The Quaker manufacturers
English towns had grown up with trades run by guilds jealous of their position and associated with the Church of England and political establishment. Quakers and other non-conformist churches thrived in smaller growing towns and we see notable businesses emerging from that background. There was the congregationalists Titus Salt in Bradford and William Lever in…
1,000 views this week
My blog has attracted record interest in the past week. Particularly in Long Eaton where members of the Facebook page have shared their memories of F, Perks & Son which was my mother’s family building business. Also a page entitled 100 places where manufacturing shaped Britain is gaining attention.
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British Manufacturing History 