Leather, Matthews and Co
of Broughton Road Iron Works, Salford
c.1871 Thomas William Matthews became a partner in Leather, Matthews and Co presumably with Thomas Picton Leather
1874 Article in 'The Engineer' illustrating and describing Leather, Matthews & Co’s winding engines: 'With reference to the workmanship in this engine, it chances that we are able to bear personal testimony to its honest excellence, for having visited the works during their construction, we had an opportunity of seeing the care with which the different forgings were being made, and the unhesitating manner in which any casting in the slightest degree blown or defective was at once rejected...' [1]
1875 Partnership of Thomas Picton Leather, Thomas William Matthews and John Newbold Bathe, 131 Broughton Road, dissolved by mutual consent [2]
1876 Listed in Slater's Directory of Manchester & Salford, 1876 (Part 2) as Leather, Matthews & Co., Engineers & machinists, millwrights, cotton machinery manufacturers, makers of hydraulic presses, pumps, valves: Broughton Road Iron Works, Broughton Road, Salford. The 'Streets' Section gives the location as 121 Broughton Road. Their advertisement lists a remarkable variety of products said to be made by the company (see illustration)
1877 Bankruptcy petition (under The Bankruptcy Act, 1869) against Thomas Picton Leather, 7 Grecian St., Lower Broughton, now or lately carrying on business in copartnership with Thomas William Matthews and William Greenfield under the style or firm of Leather, Matthews & Greenfield [3]
1877 Slater's Directory of Manchester & Salford, 1877-8 (Part 2) lists Leather, Matthews & Greenfield as millwrights, engineers & machinists, Broughton Road Iron Works. T W Matthews' home address: 5 Irwell Place
1877 An advertisement for the sale of equipment, all nearly new, at Broughton Road Ironworks, on the instructions of James Halliday, the trustee, included a planing machine to plane 15ft 6in by 5ft by 4ft 3in, ny J. and J. Kershaw, a smaller planing machine by Walker, a radial drilling machine, 6ft radius, by Gregson, Brown and Son, and a 3 cwt dead-blow steam hammer (Sturgeon's patent).[4]
- Location: Slater’s 1876 Directory positions the company’s premises, and those of Thomas Gibbons, 'asphalter &c', as being on the south side of Broughton Road, No. 121, between St Matthias’s Church and William Street. Reference to the 1848 O.S. map shows a disused area of land between the church and Willow Street. This had an area of about 200 ft by 200 ft. The 1922 map shows this area occupied by a school, and Willow Street renamed Cannon Street. Broughton Road had become Blackfriars Road.