Philip Hamlyn Williams

Can Britain recreate a microchip industry worth its salt?

August 13, 2023 — 0 Comments

News

The elephants in the manufacturing room

May 25, 2023 — 2 Comments

Book

A view from the last Coronation that resonates today

May 4, 2023 — 0 Comments

News

Century old textile factory powered by hydroelectricity – in Spain

April 23, 2023 — 0 Comments

Book

A very affirming review from acclaimed author Andrew Lownie

March 30, 2023 — 0 Comments

Book

MacRoberts Reply is still selling

December 24, 2022 — 0 Comments

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 […]

Derry and Northern Ireland linen manufacturing history

Derry had been a place of linen production from the early eighteenth century, and in the early nineteenth century it grew as Belfast moved more and more to cotton. Nothing lasts for ever and, with the subsequent decline of Irish linen production, the town rose to the challenge and redirected the skills of its people […]

Belfast manufacturing history

Ireland moved later than much of Britain away from a subsistence economy. The island as a whole was not rich in raw materials yet the climate was good for growing, spinning and weaving flax. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Belfast ranked alongside towns such as Lisburn, Lurgan, Portadown, and Dungannon. In size, the […]

Antrim and its coast and glens manufacturing history

This part of Northern Ireland, with the Giants Causeway, is rich in minerals and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries supported coal, iron ore and bauxite mining as well as quarrying for building materials. In the 1750s Hugh Boyd was shipping 8,000 tons of coal a year from his mines in Ballycastle. Iron ore production […]

Dublin manufacturing history

Dublin had been the main route for the export of the island’s textiles. At nearby Prosperous in 1780 Sir Robert Brooke attempted to set up a cotton manufacturing industry. At one time he employed 4,000 people but the business collapsed after four years. Cotton and linen manufacture continued elsewhere but never on the same scale. […]