Butterley Co

1847.

1853

1874 Pumping engine at Clay Cross Colliery. 84" cylinder, wrought iron plate beam. Designed by William Howe

1884. Tannett, Walker and Co rolling mill engine for Butterley

1867 Structural ironwork at London St. Pancras Railway Station

London St Pancras Station

1867 rolled beam at London St Pancras Station

1899.

February 1901.

January 1902.

1902.

September 1936.

September 1947. Butterley Green Crop Loader.

May 1949.

July 1949.

December 1950.

March 1957.

1960.

1961.

The Butterley Company, coal owners and ironmasters, of Ripley, and of Butterley Iron Works, near Alfreton, Derbyshire. (1853); Civil Engineering Dept, Butterley Park, Nr. Ripley, Derbyshire. (1949).

1790 William Jessop, with the assistance of Benjamin Outram, began construction of the Cromford Canal to connect Pinxton and Cromford with the Erewash Canal. In the process of digging the Butterley Tunnel for the Cromford Canal, quantities of coal and iron were discovered. Fortuitously, Butterley Hall fell vacant and, in 1790, Outram, with the financial assistance of Francis Beresford, bought it and its estate.

1792 they were joined by Jessop, and John Wright, the grandson of Ichabod Wright, a wealthy Nottingham banker who was betrothed to Beresford's daughter and who owned the Butterley Park estate. Together they founded Benjamin Outram and Co.

1793 the French Revolutionary Wars broke out

By 1796, the blast furnace was producing nearly a thousand tons of pig iron a year.

1805 Benjamin Outram died; one of Jessop's sons, also William, took over. The company finally paid a dividend, having paid off its debts.

1807 After the deaths of Beresford and Outram, the company was carried on by John Wright, Margaret Outram and William Jessop and was renamed Butterley Co.

1808 William Brunton, who had worked with Boulton and Watt since 1796, became the engineer.

Supplied iron work including rails and wheels for the building of the Caledonian Canal.

By the second decade of the century the company had expanded with another works at Codnor Park, both works then having two blast furnaces, and output had risen to around 4,500 tons per year.

They also owned Hilt's Quarry at Crich which supplied limestone for the ironworks, with lime kilns at Bullbridge for supplying farmers and for the increasing amount of building work. The steep wagonway to the Cromford Canal at Bullbridge was called the Butterley Gang Road. In 1812, William Brunton, an engineer for the company, produced his remarkable Steam Horse locomotive.

1813 William Brunton patented a walking locomotive.

1814 the company produced the iron work for the Vauxhall Bridge over the River Thames.

1817 in the depression following the Napoleonic Wars, the works at Butterley was the scene of the Pentrich Revolution. Following this, however, the country entered a long period of prosperity, the Butterley Company with it.

1830 it was considered to be the largest coal owner and the second largest iron producer, in the East Midlands. By this time the company owned a considerable number of quarries for limestone and mines for coal and iron, and installed a third blast furnace at Codnor Park.

1830 Built a large steam pumping engine for the Hundred Foot Station, Little Downham, Cambridgeshire. Rated at 80 HP, the flywheel was 26 ft 3" diameter and weighed 30 tons. The 26 ft long beam weighed 15 tons. Cylinder 43.5" dia., stroke 8 ft. Scrapped in 1914 . A contemporary (1830) account said that a 'Steam engine of 80 horses power, erected in Littleport and Downham District, was put in motion to the gratification of some hundreds who attended to witness this grand monument of art, upon which posterity will gaze and admire the memory of its projectors erected by the Butterley Company under the direction of a Joseph Glynn driving scoop wheel'

1838 They produced two locomotives for the Midland Counties Railway.

In the early days of the steam ship they worked with Boulton and Watt to supply most of the naval contracts. They produced a vast array of goods, from rails for wagonways to heaters for tea urns. Thomas Telford's Caledonian Canal used lock gates and machinery with castings produced at Butterley, as well as two steam dredgers designed by Jessop. The company also produced steam locomotives, mostly for its own use, but it provided two for the Midland Counties Railway.

They produced all the necessary castings for the new railways and two complete lines, the Croydon, Merstham and Godstone Iron Railway and the Cromford and High Peak Railway. A winding engine for the latter still exists in working order at Middleton Top Engine House near Wirksworth.

1851 Supplied a winding engine to Cinderhill Colliery.

1851 Award at the 1851 Great Exhibition. See details at 1851 Great Exhibition: Reports of the Juries: Class V.

c.1853 John G. N. Alleyne was manager and engineer

1862 Beam engine for Lake Street Pumping Station, Oxford Waterworks.

By 1863 the company was rolling the largest masses of iron of any ironworks in the country. Among its most famous buildings are the Barlow Train Shed at St Pancras station in London. There was also an extensive brickworks not only for the railways, but for thousands of factories and domestic dwellings.

1870 'English Enterprise in Holland.— The lowest tender for a great iron bridge about to be constructed over the old Meuse, near Dordrecht, for the Dutch State Railways, was delivered by the Butterley Iron Company, who offer to execute the work for £46,036.'

By 1874 its workers were starting to fight for better conditions. It sacked eleven miners "without a charge" on May 5 1874.

During 1874, in response to an Admiralty questionnaire, they reported they had installed a Siemens Gas Furnace to make steel to replace the wrought iron used in boilers.

1888 Took limited liability with capital of £600,000. This scheme would allow the shares to be distributed amongst the proprietors; there was no intention to offer shares to the public

1907 From 1860 to 1907 they produced 27 locomotives originally for their own use.

1908 Private company.

1913 Sank a new pit at Kirkby Colliery, South Yorks

1914 Company made public.

1914 Colliery proprietors, constructional and general engineers, iron manufacturers. Specialities: heavy and light castings and pipes, colliery plant including winding engines, pumping, haulage and screening machinery, bridges, roofs and constructional work of all kinds, coal.

1927 Despite the depressed state of trade generally, the company had paid a bonus to shareholders. A new colliery was sunk at Ollerton

1934 Butterley Company owned 10 collieries, Butterley Ironworks at Butterley, and Codnor Park ironworks in Derbyshire, and 3 brickworks, and the Butterley Housing Co which owned 1036 houses

1936 'The Butterley Company had purchased recently patent rights for a new process of iron paving, and had taken over works near to London.'. See advert for 'Tri-Pedal' cast iron floor tiles. Customers include the Silverdale Co-operative Society's new bakery, where over 8,500 were laid.. These were still being produced in 1962

WWII Involved in a variety of war work including making gun carriages and tank parts, keels for frigates, panels for Bailey Bridges, incinerators for use in the Far East and pontoons for the Mulberry Harbour

1947 The collieries were nationalised. The company acquired an interest in Kelvin Construction Co. Acquired Hughes and Lancaster, Apex Sand and Gravel, Blaby Brick and Tile Co, and A. H. Couser, a small civil engineering contractor; acquired from Bradley and Craven the manufacturing rights to their whole range of sheet metal machinery

1948 Started developing a farming business

1951 New buildings were constructed; an agreement had been reached with Air Products of the USA to licence oxygen making technology. A new brickwork kiln was commissioned at Blaby; extra farm land was acquired in East Notts to maintain the herd of pedigree cows. Negotiations were still going on about the compensation for the nationalised coal mines

1952 The company bought back the pillars of coal under the Butterley and Codnor Park ironworks to protect them against disturbance (much to the chagrin of the chairman as these pillars had been given zero value on nationalisation)

1953 The Oxygen Division was being promoted by the chairman of the company

1954 Acquired T. Darnell and Sons. Armstrong Siddeley Development Co acquired Kelvin Construction Co of Glasgow from Butterley

1954 Order from Stewarts and Lloyds for a large tonnage oxygen plant for the Corby steel works; the plant would be built using Air Products of the USA technology for which Butterley held the licence.

1954 The compensation for the coal mines was partly distributed to shareholders and the rest invested in developing the heavy engineering, civil engineering and general contracting, brick making and farming businesses

At its peak in the 1950s the company employed around 10,000 people.

1957 The Butterley Company had a wide range of engineering activities - oxygenators, cranes, power presses, unit bridges, rail wagons and containers, industrial paving, mine cars, mining machinery, sewage ejectors, pumps and air compressors, wool washing machinery, bricks, building aggregate

1957 The company was concentrating on 3 main areas of activity:

• Engineering
• Industrial Gases, jointly with Air Products Inc
• Brick works and building supplies

Problems in the civil engineering department, which had developed housing for sale, were being resolved. Subsidiary Butterley and Blaby Brick Co had invested in plant to make Aglite at Salterwood and pre-stressed concrete beams at Mugginton; T. Darnell and Hughes and Lancaster had invested in new machine tools. A new brick factory was operating at Kirton.

1957 The Oxygen Division of the company had acquired sole rights in Britain and the Commonwealth to an on-site oxygen making technology, particularly for steel making. The company also made railway bridges, constructional steelwork, iron paving, wrought iron bars, overhead cranes, railway wagons and mine cars, meehanite castings, mining and sheet metal machinery, sewage ejectors and pumps, wool washing machinery, lightweight aggregate, high quality bricks

1959 Considerable losses on 2 contracts for oxygen plants because of unexpected work needed which contributed in a major way to the overall losses of the company; an associated company had assumed the known losses. New brickworks at Kirton

1960 Air Products (Great Britain) Ltd had several orders for large oxygen plant

1961 Sold its interests in Air Products (Great Britain) Ltd to the parent Air Products of the USA

1961 Iron masters and ironfounders, constructional engineers of steelwork and manufacturers of wagons, mine cars and agricultural machinery.

1965 The Codnor Park works closed.

1967 Subsidiaries were Butterley Brick and Butterley Engineering

1968 Wiles Group bought the brick-making and engineering business, Butterley of Derby. Robert Wilberforce, chairman, and Norman Wright, a director who was member of the family that originally founded the company in 1790, retired

See Also

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Sources of Information

• [1] Wikipedia
• A Short History of Naval and Marine Engineering by E. C. Smith. Published 1937
• The Steam Engine in Industry by George Watkins in two volumes. Moorland Publishing. 1978/9. ISBN 0-903485-65-6
• Biography of James Edward Hanson, ODNB [2]