The Victoria History of the County of Lincoln/Agricultural Implement Manufacturers
AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENT MANUFACTURERS
Arthur Young, making his agricultural survey of Lincolnshire in 1799, was struck by the number of fen farmers who were also inventors. Such for instance were Mr. Cartwright of Brothertoft, whose plough with bean-drill attached, twitch-drag, and sward-dresser, were supplemented by a cartoon, or water-cart, of his own designing; Mr. William Naylor of Langworth near Sudbrook, who had invented and patented a chaff-cutter; Mr, Michael Pilley, who had also invented a water-cart; and Mr. Amos Brothertoft, the inventor of an expanding horse-hoe. On the east fen Young further noted an ingenious local ice-sledge, which consisted of a small frame sliding on four horse-bones, the driver pushing himself forward by the aid of a pitchfork.[1] A man called Clegg of Haxey invented a machine for crushising and dressing hemp; whilst it is worthy of note in passing that the first movable combined thrashing and dressing machine by steam-power was made at the Boston and Skirbeck Ironworks, and the first portable engine at Howden's Foundry at Boston. 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,'[2] 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[3] 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[4] 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 engines, traction engines and road locomotives, steam tractors and steam wagons, besides a vast amount of machinery for the equipment of mines. Over 25,000 engines have been manufactured by this company, and are at work in all parts of the world.
Coincident with the progress of Grimsby as a fishing centre, there have grown up in the town various complementary industries. Such, for instance, has been the establishment of the firm of marine engineers and ship repairers, trading under the style of the Grimsby Engineering Company Limited. Founded at the outset to meet the demands of the fishing trade, the works in the Fish Dock Road have kept pace with the extension of those demands. In the reclassification of steam trawlers the firm has met with exceptional success, and on several occasions they have reconstructed ships' engines and boilers; in 1903 their work along these lines included such reconstruction of three trawlers for one firm alone. These vessels, twelve years old, were so completely modernized in their passage through the company's workshops that they may be said to have been transformed into new boats. During the winter months, when outside work becomes more or less slack, the firm is engaged in the manufacture of auxiliary machinery for steam trawlers, such as powerful double-barrelled steam winches, stearing gears, donkey engines and pumps, line haulers and windlasses. In the four different departments into which the works are divided constant employment is found for about 100 hands.[5]