Cottam and Hallen

of 2 Winsley Street, Oxford Street, London.

Louis le Chevalier Cottam.

Agricultural Implement makers, specialising in stable fittings.

c.1818 George Cottam and George Hallen established an iron foundry in Southwark.

1842 Drawing here of a proposed 16ft. span cattle bridge at Wimpole Hall, Cambridgeshire. See Wimpole Hall Park Bridges.

1844 ' Cast-Iron Lighthouse.— The attention of the curious for some time past has been directed to an immense iron building which, for the last two or three months, had been progressing under the auspices of its builders, Messrs. Cottam and Hallen, iron founders of the Cornwall-road, Lambeth. It is to be a lighthouse made entirely of cast iron, one of the first, if not the first that has ever been constructed. It composed of 130 iron plates, averaging eight feet by six, and an inch and a quarter thick. These plates, ten of which make a circumference, are connected together with wrought-iron bolts, screws, and sheet-iron, the interstices being filled up with cement. Its diameter at the base is twenty-four feet, gradually decreasing to width of fourteen at the top, where it is surmounted by a gallery twenty feet wide, which is encircled by iron railings four feet high. In the centre of this gallery is the lantern, surmounted by a cone eight feet high, and which is also made of cast iron. Its total altitude is 137 feet. The top of the building is gained by a staircase of iron fixed to the sides. The structure is divided into nine chambers, the floors and ceilings which are made of sheet-iron fastened to the sides and to a cast-iron pillar which goes to the top the building. It is lighted by windows eighteen inches square, and glazed with strong plate glass. Its total weight is about 300 tons. It is to be fixed on one of the Bermuda islands, on a rock 250 feet high, consequently its total height from the sea to the top of the lantern will be 387 feet. Such a building as this has been for a long time a great desideratum in these islands, for during the winter, which begins in November and ends in April, these islands are subject to severe north-west gales, which frequently dismast ships crossing these latitudes; indeed there is scarcely a winter passes without eighteen or twenty vessels being driven in by stress of weather, or forced on the rocks which run out many miles to the north and northwest.'

1852 George Cottam retired. The business was continued by his sons George Hallen Cottam and Edward Cottam

1855 Exhibited iron work at the 1855 Paris Exhibition

Continued as Cottam and Williams

See Also

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Sources of Information

• A Biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers in Great Britain and Ireland by A W Skempton