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Kynoch's I C I 1800s - 1920s

Gingerjon has asked me to put on these maps showing the rail connections to the Kinoch Works to see if it brings forth any comments. The first c 1886 only has the Witton Wharf rail sidings south of the works, but by the time of the c1950 map it shows a whole rail network round the place.


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map_c1950_showing_Kynoch_works.jpg
 
The map confirms that there was in fact an extensive railway system on the Kynoch site at Witton. I did not recall a previous mention of this and people I have spoken to with experience of the site from the 1960s onwards do not remember it. There is no mention of the system in the two Company histories.

But a family member puts me right; some of his comments are conjectural:

Not a great deal has been published about the internal railway system at Kynoch and still less in a form that is accessible online; the January 2014 issue of Railway Bylines published by Irwell Press (P.78 "ICI Witton” by Paul Anderson) whilst sadly quite lightweight on detail, nevertheless gives some information. Certainly, when the photos it contains were taken there were at least four steam locomotives present and, given the numbering, maybe there had been at least two others.

Notes online about the preserved one show it was loaned to the plant in 1914 and purchased five years later; it would have become taken over by ICI in 1927 of course, continued in operation until 1953 when it was declared redundant and donated to the British Transport Commission since when it has been preserved. See: https://www.ribblesteam.org.uk/exhibits/steam/40-lnwr-ramsbottom-1439-1865

There are references in the article to the possible acquisition of replacement diesel shunters towards the end of the 1950s and other ICI owned systems seemed to have completed that process by 1960. Ownership would have changed again in 1962 and, not long afterwards, the steady rationalisation of the city’s freight services would have been underway, aided of course initially by a certain former ICI employee. Perhaps the better steam locos were concentrated elsewhere in the UK for a little while but most seem to have gone for scrap quite early.

More photos of the site are on the Britain from the Air site of course. One is attached. Equally, the fact that sidings served the works and were then still much used can be detected in the slides taken by Harry Myers in 1961 and online here: https://www.staffshomeguard.co.uk/KOtherInformationKynochV2Eimages.htm (image 5) It would be reasonable to assume that these were connected to both the ICI internal railway and the main line network via Witton Goods Yard (I don’t think Perry Barr had any goods facilities).

Another photo I have seen online shows a blue-liveried Class 47 diesel drawing a rake of empty fuel tank wagons out of the yard as late as 1972 and it’s perhaps the case that things lasted a little later still, railway-wise.

The main line alongside was an early fixture as the Grand Junction opened in 1837; it seems that Perry Bar (sic) station opened with the line but Witton was opened quite a lot later: https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/lms/witton.htm The dates in that link show that (public) Goods facilities opened in the 1880s but perhaps the Kynoch works (and others nearby, e.g. Crawfords is mentioned here) had private siding connections earlier. The canals might also have played a part in moving materials inwards and out of the site. The GEC works next door also had rail connections and my brother and I saw those sidings in use in the mid 1960s with AC Electric locomotives in for attention well before such overhead wires reached the city.

For the real anoraks, I noticed references to a book on the ICI-owned industrial locomotive fleet and perhaps that offers a little more detail if a copy can be tracked down via a library.​


Acknowledgements to JRCM, Britain from the Air and Ribble Steam Railway
 

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WWGoing back to other years there are no large scale maps available of the works (except for one marked 1938 where, as is so common around WW2 rail lines come to a dead end at a large open space), but smaller scale maps show (assuming they are accurate and remembering that dates are publication dates and probably then refer to about 2-3 years previously) that the system was very similar in c1921, c1938 and c1966.


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These are fascinating! It looks like in 1921 Kynoch's was on the edge of the city, surrounded by fields? I'm trying to get a clearer picture of the Witton area in the first decades of the century as My GGrandfather worked at Kynoch's from around 1900 until retiring in 1929 aged 72, we still have the retirement watch he was presented with (see photo). Sadly he had little time to enjoy his retirement as he passed away later the same year.
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I think that the reason that the factory was located there was that it was in the countryside but near enough for employees to get there. Also next to the River Tame there would have been a good supply of water should there have been a fire/explosion.
My Grandmother told me that as a girl she used to watch wagon (horse driven of course) drivers tickle trout from the river where the road crossed the river at Witton, there was a ford there before the present bridge.
 
In the 1850s there were several manufacturers of explosive devices and material in the city centre. A series of explosions caused significant injury and damage. One in 1859, at Pearsall and Phillips in Whittall Street, manufacturers of percussion caps where George Kynoch was an employee, was especially catastrophic, killing 17 employees including children and devastating the surrounding area. It was obvious that such dangerous activities had no place in a built-up area and so the Company, now controlled by Kynoch, moved to a 4 acre site in rural Witton in 1862. The factory grew rapidly, eventually after many decades being surrounded by the advancing city; but by then was so large that any subsequent incident (of which there were a few over the years, despite a generally good safety record) did not impinge on the surrounding area.

Chris
 
Thanks, Pimpernel, there was in fact a thread on this subject last year - here: https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=43330 - but it's good to be reminded of this wonderful footage.

Whilst it is no doubt the presence of the camera which prompts much of the joy and laughing, we do get the impression that working there was not the miserable, unremitting, Victorian hard labour which we might have imagined.

What it would be if someone could identify at least one face in this vast crowd!

Chris
 
Hi, carrying on thread about Munition workers, I have a query....My Great, Grandmother worked as one of these workers, but she died in 1910, before first world war, so where or what war would she have done this for, I am a little confused..x
 
A point to note about Kynoch ammunition production is that it was not confined to major wars. The whole history of Kynoch involved ammunition manufacture, from the very beginning in the 1860s until the post-WW2 years. Obviously production peaked in both the Great War and WW2 but it was a continuous activity at all times, in fulfilling UK Government contracts and no doubt those of other nations.

Chris
 
This is one of Kynoch's loco s. It was loaned (1914) to Kynoch's but they eventually bought it (1919). As it's numbered 4, I presume there were at least 3 others. But was Kynoch's a private railway ? I read somewhere that there was an extensive internal railway at Kynoch's but can't find anything out about it except that they loaned, then bought this loco. Viv.

image.jpeg

Information from the National Railway Museum, York
 
The Kynoch private railway connected with the LNWR/LMS/BR at Witton. 12 steam locomotives and 2 diesels handled the internal traffic there. The first locomotives (3) were supplied by Aveling & Porter.
 
IMG_1533.jpg

This is a clip from August 1915..."The Tradition at Kynochs."

I just wonder how much time the Rev Warwick Adams, Vicar of Wall, actually spent working at Kynochs, and what he actually did. It is quite a way to travel from Wall.
 
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