Philip Hamlyn Williams – Historian

How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World – reviews

August 6, 2022 — 1 Comment

The State we were in?

March 22, 2026 — 0 Comments

Points of interest

From gypsum to granite

October 31, 2025 — 0 Comments

A sixteenth century mechanised mint in Segovia

Points of interest

A sixteenth century mechanised mint in Segovia

October 14, 2025 — 0 Comments

Letters to the editor - unpublished!

Where has all the money gone?

October 4, 2025 — 0 Comments

Points of interest

The genius of Roman hydraulic engineering

October 2, 2025 — 0 Comments

Letters to the editor - unpublished!

Levelling Up – a layperson’s guide

September 28, 2025 — 0 Comments

Letters to the editor - unpublished!

A vicious circle

June 30, 2025 — 0 Comments

Letters to the editor - unpublished!

Concentrated wealth is bad for the economy, but how did it happen?

January 29, 2025 — 2 Comments

Letters to the editor - unpublished!

Living in cloud cuckoo land

November 27, 2024 — 1 Comment

Letters to the editor - unpublished!

The power of railways

October 23, 2024 — 0 Comments

James Watt and Matthew Boulton

James Watt was a Scot, born in Greenock in January 1736. His father was a skilled carpenter employing quite a number of people working mainly on ships. He was successful and respected; he owned shares in some of the ships he worked on. He married an equally respectable woman. The family story was tragic with […]

Thomas Telford and John Smeaton – fathers of civil engineering, and John and George Rennie – civil and mechanical engineers

The Rennies were a Scots family that epitomises the connectivity of civil and mechanical engineering. I begin, though, with the father of civil engineering, John Smeaton, who is best known for rebuilding the Eddystone Lighthouse during which he discovered that the property of hardening whilst submerged in water was linked to the clay content of […]

Abraham Darby – iron master

Iron ore was smelted by burning charcoal in the Weald and as forests were denuded, smelting spread to other forested areas. Eventually it became clear that an alternative to charcoal was needed. The Earl of Dudley’s son ‘Dud’ claimed to have smelted iron ore with coal but there is no evidence of this. Dud was […]

George and Robert Stephenson – the railway men

George Stephenson was born in 1781 into a mining community just inland of Newcastle near Wylam on the Tyne where his father worked as a fireman at the colliery. They lived with George’s mother, Mabel the daughter of a dyer, and two younger brothers and sisters in Street House only yards from the wagon way […]

West Country engine builders – Newcomen and Trevithick

The West Country, Cornwall in particular, was where deep mines were first sunk, in search of metals rather than coal. The problem with depth was the water table which meant that mines would flood. To begin with, pumps were powered by animals or water and windmills. Something more powerful was needed and in stepped first […]

300,000 blog views

I can hardly believe that my military history blog has attracted so much attention. The story began in April 2014 when I brought down from the loft boxes filled with scrap books up to 5 inches thick filled with press cuttings, photographs, booklets, dinner menus and a pressed flower. I had known about the albums […]

The process of invention – the sewing machine and bicycle

“No useful sewing machine was ever invented by one man; and all first attempts to do work by machinery, previously done by hand, had been failures. It was only after several able inventors had failed in their attempts, that someone with the mental powers to combine the efforts of others, with his own, at last […]

West London manufacturing history

The twenties and in some cases earlier saw the establishment of the new motor and electrical industries on the periphery of London and near to the river. Investment by foreign companies became more visible. The thirties in particular witnessed strong growth in manufacturing in London and its surroundings and I explore these and related population […]

North London manufacturing history

As Inner London turned its attention more and more to finance and service industries, manufacturing moved north, much of it into the Lea Valley which, hitherto, had market gardens working hard to feed a growing population. There was also brick making to house that population. Enfield Manufacturing came to Enfield in 1809 in the form […]

Inner London manufacturing in the 19th and 20th centuries

Inner London, having been for manufacturing a place where the many made things for the few, changed as technology advanced and became home to many young industries before they moved to more spacious pastures. Stephen Inwood in his masterly A History of London makes the point that in the interwar years it was not just […]