Hurlet and Campsie Alum Co
1786 Charles Macintosh set up in business as a chemical manufacturer making sal ammoniac and subsequently sugar of lead
1789 Started making acetate of lime.
1797 Began to make alum from shale at Hurlet near Paisley in response to the growing demand for mordants in partnership with James Knox, John Finlay, Charles Stirling, and John Wilson (Charles Tennant's father-in-law), under the title of Macintosh, Knox and Co. The works soon became the largest in the country.
1805 Macintosh and his partners set up new alum works at Campsie, north of Glasgow, to make a wider range of products. The works were Campsie Alum & Copperas Co.
The 2 firms were amalgamated, possibly after the death of Charles Macintosh in 1843, to form the Hurlet and Campsie Alum Co. under the King family.
Between 1856 and 1860 the company was the subject of legal actions brought by John Lennox, the local landowner at Campsie, over the firm's right to water and pyrites on the leased land without payment to the owner. In the wake of the settlement of these actions, John King took his three sons into partnership.
1861 Acquired the Falkirk Chemical Works at Camelon.
1871 Acquired the Bank Road works at Clayton Bridge, Manchester
1875 Acquired the Underwood Chemical Works in Falkirk. These acquisitions reflect an expansion of the company in the prussiate/cyanide industry as the alum began to run out.
1875 John King died; his sons became the sole partners.
c.1880 The alum finally ran out; the Hurlet works were abandoned, and the firm was simply a cyanide manufacturer.
1892 Sir James King obtained the rights to a sodium cyanide process patented by James D. Gilmour, via the Underwood Chemical Works, but it was not a financial success given the competition from other processes.
1910 The company was liquidated after the death of Robert King. The works continued to operate for a period.
See Also
Sources of Information
- Archives of the British chemical industry, 1750-1914: a handlist. By Peter J. T. Morris and Colin A. Russell. Edited by John Graham Smith. 1988.