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Fire, Forges, Foundries and Furnaces

Peter Walker

gone but not forgotten
While we have an enthusiastic interest in anything to do with mills, we don't seem to pay much attention to the natural element of fire, which our city once led the world in using to make things.
Early maps usually showed forges and foundries as they did mills. And of course they also showed the smithies and the inns, as both were important to the traveller, if on horseback, as was quite usual. They must have been just as important as the mills, but they don't get much attention.
Let's have more about the F-words, I say.
Peter
 
I agree with you Peter, perhaps somebody will look into the history of the forge and furnass trade, going through different research of the mills there has been alot of mention about the forges and furnasses. I would imagine it is a very good subject to research, also going through Pickards pink pages there is alot of mention of forges etc. I look forward to seeing more about that trade on here. I know Cromwell has covered some of it in some of his postings!
:flower: :cat:
 
Most of my ancestors were gun forgers or smith strikers it would be nice to see more info about their trade.
 
Forges

I thought I would start this topic of, being as I have come across a couple whilst researching the mills. Even though this one is outside Birmingham it still came under the Warwickshire area of times past.
"In 1790 -92 Mr Robert Peel purchased Drayton Manor, at the same time he rented Tamworth Castle to use as a forge. The Castle Mills he used to print calicoes. In 1792 the original stone floor of the Great Hall in Tamworth Castle was destroyed by Robert Peel's forge. The floor was replaced by red bricks, they are still under the present wooden floor". :)
 
I have to admit to not knowing a great deal about this subject, but I did read somewhere (not this forum) that in the very early days, Digbeth had forges all along the road on both sides. Someone wrote about seeing the fires of the forges stretching out in the dark. Not at all sure of the period.
 
A subject dear to my heart!

Actually, although there were probably hundreds of foundries in Birmingham back in the 19th/early 20th centuries, they were mostly small in size. They produced relatively small but high-volume castings and mostly in non-ferrous metals such as brass, gunmetal, zinc and, later, aluminium. The big iron and steel foundries were mostly in the Black Country, where there was better access to the necessary huge volumes of fuel and water required.

The Birmingham casting trade was also very much involved in the jewellery industry, and the 'toy trade' as it was known. In fact, at one time any cheaply-made machined or cast small artifact was known as 'Brum-ware'.
Forging was a different way of shaping metal, and widely used for the manufacture of, for example, driveshafts and crankshafts. The best-known forge in these parts was the Patent Shaft Company, Wednesbury, which as the name suggests came up with an improved method of producing precision shafts.

These days there isn't much in the way of the foundry industry left in Birmingham. There are plenty of 'castings companies' producing items for the jewellery-trade, but (to my mind, at least) this isn't the same. There's something about molten metal that gets to you - I left the industry 20 years ago and miss it to this day.

Big Gee
 
Don't forget the hot forged brass domestic water fittings. Most of this seems to come from China here now, also cast brass valves. I suppose coining is a form of cold forging too. The extruded, cut up material and presses themselves was/were made and designed in Brum. It could not last of course and I think that when my generation left school in the fifties, we were seeing the last fling of Made In Birmingham.
 
A.F.PARKES & Co of Dartmouth Street, Edge Tool makers (one of a number in the area ) had a Steam Forge Hammer workings in the early 1900's. making garden tools.
 
BJS Castings

:redface: My husband used to work in a foundry for about eight years. One day some water got into the molton metal causing it to send out red hot balls. One hit my husband on the leg sticking to his trousers. He had a two shilling piece in his pocket which became so hot it went through and stuck to his skin. I bet he's the only person to have the queens head on his leg. My dad worked at Hallidays drop forge most of his working life when he was fit. You could hear the sound of the stamping in Holte road. His job title was a miller. :redface: TTFN.. Jean.
 
Hello Jean.

I remember Halliday's quite well. Can't remember when it closed but not that many years ago.

Water + molten metal = disaster! When I was selling chemicals to the foundry trade I stood one day in a very large iron foundry in Oldbury watching as they tapped the cupola (a form of furnace). They'd run the molten slag off first into a pit under the furnace. So happened that the pit had water in it, either from a leak somewhere or a heavy rainfall during the night. The result was like a ten-ton bomb going off! Molten slag shot all over the place like hot bullets. Nobody killed or even seriously injured. My suit was peppered full of holes and my union (good old ASTMS) got me recompense via the foundry's insurance. I had one nasty burn on my ankle and still have the scar. And I didn't even work in the ****** place!

Big Gee.
 
Don't forget the hot forged brass domestic water fittings. Most of this seems to come from China here now, also cast brass valves. I suppose coining is a form of cold forging too. The extruded, cut up material and presses themselves was/were made and designed in Brum. It could not last of course and I think that when my generation left school in the fifties, we were seeing the last fling of Made In Birmingham.

Rupert,

I went to the Birmingham Mint the day it closed to pay my respects. Great place to visit on business if you didn't mind the occasional search as you left the premises. My dad installed some annealing furnaces in the Mint in the early 1950's and they were still being used when the place closed (about 2005, I think). Latterly, they struck only foreign coinage, medals, stuff like that - all UK coinage had long gone to the Llantrisant Mint in South Wales.

Big Gee
 
Halladays

:) Big Gee. This is a photo of my dad when he worked at Halladays. The one on the right. I have posted this befor on another thread. Bye for now. Jean. :)
 
Hi Jean.

Nice pic - thanks. Looks like he was a foreman, perhaps?

Big Gee
 
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If you go down the hill from Sow Hill Station (where it was anyway) you are treading famous ground in the history of the world. You will pass over the canal, past where Taylor and Challen used to be, past the terminous of the old cable tramway and past the old Boulton manufactory and it's mint in Soho (where they were anyway) The Manufactory had an old water mill which gave way to steam power; originally hybrid I believe to produce rotary motion. The alliance with Watt. In a short stretch of road, easily walkable, you have, for a major part, the home of the industrial revolution.
It brought it's problems it is true but it's not likely that we would be here now without it and as a Monty Python sketch once pointed out...the king would be the one with the least s..t on him.
 
Hi Rupert.

Matthew Boulton's father's little manufacturing business was on Snow Hill, but I'm afraid I don't know exactly where. When Matthew inherited it, he was interested in bigger stuff and found a site at Soho Heath (in and around modern Factory Road) where he built what was to become The Soho Manufactory. If it was metal, he made it. There was also the steam-engine works which Boulton began with Watt to produce the new high-pressure rotary engines for powering machinery. Prior to that, steam-engines were used largely for pumping, and were slow and inefficient. Their sons then opened the Soho Foundry to manufacture engines, and which today is the premises of Avery & Co Ltd who manufacture weighing equipment. The original entrance portico still exists (but I haven't been there for years and years).

A few years ago Time Team carried out some excavations on the site of the Soho Works, happily digging up peoples' gardens, and found some of the original foundations together with a quantity of worked metal.

You're right, Rupert, the Industrial Revolution did begin there (although some would say it started in Mrs Watt's kitchen when her son James blocked the spout of a boiling kettle and watched the lid lift off....he probably got a clip across the ear-hole for his pains)

Regards,

Big Gee
 
I think that the name might be a bit of a give away - been a blacksmith for a little while. Back when I started most factories had a forge if they were of any size. All the railway sheds had one, the one at Tyseley, now Tyseley Railway Museum (or what's left of it) still has one, tucked away in a corner. I think that I am right in saying that Tyburn Road bus depot had a forge left from tram days.
There were still quite a few shoeing smiths left in the city in the fifties, proper name farriers, as there were still a lot of horse drawn delivery vehicles.
The blacksmiths shop was often the backbone of the factory doing all kinds of repairs and tool making. When I started the fitters never had to buy a punch or a chisel, box spanners were made from odd lengths of pipe and a hand axe was forged from an old hammer head.
 
Re: Halladays

Hello Jean, I worked with your dad! I started in 1956 and I believe he died in 1971? I was there for 47 years right to the very end and even stayed on to help them dispose of the machines and tooling. I remember ryour dad used to repair clocks and watches in his garden shed!
Oh by the way, I can tell you the name of the other person in the photo. His name was George Hartley, the shop labourer and the photo it'self was taken in the die shop before it's moderniseation.
Hope this helps and if you would like any further info please send me an email and I will try my best to help you!!
John Perks
 
John I am at the caravan at the moment and will get in touch when we get back on Tuesday. George used to bring his big black dog with him when he came to our house. I used to meet dad from work at lunchtime with my twins in their pushchair. Do you remember Ken Partridge only I am still in touch with him?. Off to the Harbour shortly for a bevi. Jean.
 
While we have an enthusiastic interest in anything to do with mills, we don't seem to pay much attention to the natural element of fire, which our city once led the world in using to make things.
Early maps usually showed forges and foundries as they did mills. And of course they also showed the smithies and the inns, as both were important to the traveller, if on horseback, as was quite usual. They must have been just as important as the mills, but they don't get much attention.
Let's have more about the F-words, I say.
Peter
In my early working life 1950's I was attached to a works laboratory and be charged with collecting samples of cyanide from hardening pots for analysis, operatives if it were break time would be frying bacon on a shovel above the cyanide pots. In later years I remember brass being annealed and the quench would be the Grand Union canal! I never worked in the heat treat environment but have been fascinated watching friction welding, zinc base alloy casting, the induction heat treatment process and the bulk heat treatment of forgings, the electrolytic plating with copper, nickel, chrome of zba castings to make car bonnet mascots and the like. Do companies like Hammond Heat Treat and Giltoy still exist? All seems so long ago
 
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