Since, therefore, to quote from Young, 'the farmers of this county were alive to improvements and ready to adopt any new instruments which promised utility,'[1] in no other market in the world, at the dawn of the new era of steam, was the manufacturing engineer more absolutely assured of a future. Events have fully justified that confidence. The great firms of Messrs. Richard Hornsby & Sons Limited, of Grantham, Messrs. Marshall, Sons & Co. Limited, of Gainsborough, Messrs. Clayton & Shuttleworth Limited, and Messrs. Robey & Co. Limited, of Lincoln, have long passed from the limits of a purely local to that of a world-wide reputation. It is by the courtesy of the above-mentioned firms in every instance that the information relating to their history has been gathered.
The business of the firm of Messrs. Richard Hornsby & Sons Limited[2] was established in 1815 by Mr. Richard Hornsby, the father of two of the present directors, Mr. James and Mr. William Hornsby, his workshop occupying a site close to that of the present smithy. From the small beginning of nearly a century ago, the expansion of the works has been on such a rapidly progressive scale that the area covered is now no less than fifty acres (at Grantham and Stockport), besides trial farm land of 150 acres outside Grantham. Employment is given to over 2,000 men. The gradual increase of the firm's output has resulted in the multiplication of foundries and painting and packing shops, now embracing a total area of over 100,000 square feet. From this area have emanated such well-known products as the 'Hornsby Oil Engine,' the 'Hornsby-Stockport Gas Engine and Suction Gas Plants,' the 'Hornsby Water-tube Boiler,' and the 'Hornsby Binder.' Of the latter indispensable adjunct of the harvest field, it need only be said in passing that it still maintains the excellent reputation claimed for it by Stephens[3] as being 'exceedingly simple, perfectly automatic in action, and perfectly reliable in operation.' The various departments of the huge industry comprise boltmaking, the production of agricultural requisites (chiefly mowers and binder parts and frames), of string-boxes (for binders and oil cans); whilst in the binder canvas shop employment is found for numbers of boys whose work consists in the riveting of the wooden slats to the canvas.
In 1848 Mr. William Marshall, the founder of that which was afterwards to grow into the Britannia Ironworks at Gainsborough, bought a small engineering and millwrights' business in the town, used until then as oil and flour mills. Only in 1885 a writer in Engineering alludes to the 1,800 to 1,900 mechanics then employed by the firm. Now the number is 3,600, and the area on which they work is over twenty-eight acres of ground. The products of the workshops of this firm comprise horizontal, vertical and undertype engines, thrashing, grinding, and sawmachinery, tea-preparing machinery, gold-dredging plants, of which over 95,000 have been made and supplied to the most distant parts of the world. The new boiler-house at the works is 400 ft. long by 180 wide, and may take rank as one of the largest extant.
The foundation of the firm of Messrs. Clayton & Shuttleworth was owing in 1849 to Nathaniel Clayton and Joseph Shuttleworth, who were engaged in the early days of their career as smiths in a workshop which occupied a portion of the site upon which the Stamp End manufactory at Lincoln now stands. Their first engineering enterprises included bridge-building and pipe-founding, manufacture of fire-grates, and other work of an elementary character. Examples of their early efforts are to be found on the Great Northern Railway at Saxilby, where an iron bridge, the work of the two partners, still exists, and a portion of the underground pipe work of the town of Boston. Clayton & Shuttleworth were quick to perceive the great future which lay before the producer of portable engines and steam-power thrashing machines, and over sixty years ago the firm commenced the manufacture of these and other agricultural appliances. The manufacture of traction engines followed, and then began the trials instituted by the Royal Agricultural Society, at which the firm carried all before them until 1872, when the last of these competitions was held. Since the formation of the firm into a limited liability company the operations of its workshops have been greatly extended. The number of men employed is 2,500, not including the workmen engaged at the Vienna establishment, and at other branches on the Continent. In these works, since their beginnings in 1849, something like 98,000 thrashing machines and portable engines have been produced, besides chaff-cutters, maize-shellers, elevators, stackers, corn-mills, and all the vast equipment of agricultural appliances whose demand is proportionate to the expansion of agricultural operations in an extended area.
The firm of Messrs. Robey & Co. Limited started work at Lincoln in 1852. The area covered by the workshops is over ten acres, and the men employed number over 1,600. Originally designed for the production of steam engines and thrashing machines for agricultural purposes, this branch of production, whilst still maintaining its high level of excellence, and also having been largely developed, has been supplemented by the manufacture of high-class engines for various mining and industrial purposes. The main feature of this department is the production of engines with drop valves, of which many thousands are in use in all parts of the world. In addition to these the firm makes a speciality of high-speed engines for electric purposes, portable
