News – Philip Hamlyn Williams

Category: News

4 Posts

Soldiers and Industrialists

It is chilling to think that many of those men born in the 1890s would serve through two world wars (if they survived) and could also be part of the step change in British manufacturing witnessed in the twentieth century. Ronald Weeks was one such man. He was the first Director-General of Army Equipment in […]

The British Chemical Industry comes of age

In the aftermath of WW2, the British Chemical Industry would have been unrecognisable to a time traveller from the 21st century. Plastics were Bakelite, Perspex was for the windscreens of Spitfires and polythene for the insulation of cables for radar. The chemicals required were derived from the fermentation of molasses from sugar beet, most of […]

Steam

Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World in many and connected ways. The steam engine was probably the most significant invention of the industrial revolution. Like the inventions that mechanised textiles, it came about through a creative evolution. I might place Newcomen first with his atmospheric engine to drain coalmines, but then William Brown, James Watt, Richard […]

Obstacles to progress

Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World largely by addressing obstacles to progress. Manchester mills were transporting tons of cotton goods to the port of Liverpool by canal, built by the Duke of Bridgewater, but which took some thirty-six hours and which was expensive. What was needed was a steam railway. George Stephenson planned the rail route […]

Early advances in textile production

British Manufacturing progressed little by little, step by step, each invention building on the one that went before. Famously it was said of the sewing machine that no one person could have created something of such subtlety. Looking at textiles, where it all began, Bury man, John Kay invented the flying shuttle to be followed […]

Engineering links with the Great Exhibition of 1851

I am exploring the companies I came across whilst writing War on Wheels and Ordnance. I have already looked further at many of the people, and this resulted in Dunkirk to D Day. What of the companies? I have found myself exploring some of the earliest machines, but also the economics that drove people to […]

Changes in UK jobs over two centuries help to show what happened to British Industry

The table below was taken from data provided by the Office for National Statistics and shows the number of jobs split between Manufacturing (including Construction) [Orange line] and Services [Blue line] between 1978 and 2019 taking each quarterly return. Service sector jobs increased by 11 million and manufacturing reduced by 4.5 million. Looking at services […]

Bob Hiam, COD Old Dalby, AOD Caen and Antwerp 1944

Whilst the Dunkirk evacuation was taking place, Bob Hiam was busy setting up what was intended to be an overflow Motor Transport Depot for COD Chilwell. Soon it became clear that a further massive depot for armaments was needed to support COD Donnington, and COD Old Dalby began to take shape. Bob Hiam had worked in tyre sales and […]

Reddy Readman COO Chilwell 1944

A feature of the world wars was the crucial role played by people from civilian jobs. Edgar Readman worked in the steel industry in Sheffield before serving as a lieutenant in the South Staffordshire Regiment. He was posted to the Tank Battalion, being promoted to captain on 30 November 1917. After the war he returned […]

How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World

The peoples of the British Isles gave to the world the foundations on which modern manufacturing economies are built. This is quite an assertion, but history shows that, in the late eighteenth century, a remarkable combination of factors and circumstances combined to give birth to Britain as the first manufacturing nation. Further factors allowed it […]