Scottish Industrial History Vol 6.2 1984
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SCOTTISH INDUSTRIAL HISTORY Volume 6.2 1984 - --- ' ! II SCOTTISH I N D U S T R I A L HISTORY Volume 6 . 2 1983 Scottish Industrial History is published twice annually by the Scottish Society for Industrial Archaeology, the Scottish Society for the Preservation of Historical Machinery and the Business Archives Council of Scotland. The editors are: Mrs S. Clark, Paisley; Dr. C.W. Munn, University of Glasgow; and Mr M.J. Livingstone, Business Archives Council of Scotland. The typescript was prepared by Mrs S. Walker. Articles should be submitted to the Editors, Scottish Industrial History, The Department of Economic History, Adam Smith Building, University of Glasgow, G12 BRT. The cover illustrations are: front, New Abbey Mill, New Abbey, Dumfriesshire; back, Harbour Light, Anstruther, Fife, by John R. Hume. S C 0 T T I S H I N D U S T R I A L H I S T 0 R Y Volume 6.2 1983 Contents A Survey of Early Paisley Engineers 2 Sylvia Clark The Iron Industry of the Monklands (continued): 31 The Individual Ironworks II George Thomson A Glossary of the Coal of Gladsmuir 50 V.S. Harvey The Avon Steel Works 56 James Sommerville Site News 65 Summary of Lists of Archive Surveys and Deposits 69 Book Reviews 77 1 A SURVEY OF EARLY PAISLEY ENGINEERS by SYLVIA CLARK Part I Around Sneddon Bridge (The map opposite will show the central area of Paisley here referred to.) The mechanical engineering industry of Paisley descended on one side from local ironfounders, making pots and pans , and on the other from the weavers' wrights and smiths, reed makers, shuttle makers and so on. In this it differs from the Johnstone industry which owed much more to millwrights employed in cotton mills. Early Paisley directories show the weavers and their direct ancillaries, such as warpers and pattern-drawers, concentrated on the south of Paisley, along Causeyside Street, and in the outlying western suburbs of Ferguslie and Maxwellton. The first mule-spinning factory was in Maxwell ton, and there was another, St Mirin's Mill, near Causeyside St. But the only big powered factories were around the north and east: Abbey Mills in 1782, powered by a horse-gin (1); Adelphi in New Sneddon, 1790, powered by a gang of men (2); Underwood, 1790, using horses at first and then a runnel which came down from Oakshaw, the ridge separating Underwood from the town, with a Watt engine to return water. ( 3) "Wrights" were numerous in the 1812 Directory, mostly inhabiting the weaving quarters, though three were to be found in the "Croft" area north of Smi thhills. Metal workers fell into two categories. Iron founders and brass-founders with fairly large buildings and furnaces clustered around Sneddon Bridge. The lighter crafts such as copper and tin-smiths were more generally distributed but evidently preferred to get shops in the High Street if they could. As one example we may take Alexander Fullerton, copper and tin-smith, 237 High Street, whose son, Alexander junior, became an engineer. Alexander senior, William and later John Fullerton carried on the High Street business successfully for many years, producing among other things an early gas cooker under their own patent. (4) The Daniel Craigs, father and son, of Broomlands (the westward continuation of the High Street) were shuttle-makers and turners equally at home in wood or metal. They produced as a sideline composite wood snuffboxes of the type associated with Ayrshire (the father was born in Dalry in 1749 but was brought to Paisley 2 THE CENTRE OF PAISLEY, 1839 (Ship Launching Sties are just off Map to the North) From Martin's Revision of Knox•s Map. Foundry; 3 - Reid & Hanna; ;/ I \' .~~·r""': H::I ~ "' .. ~UL~ ~ · 3 as a boy). The snuffbox presented to George IV in Edinburgh in 1821 was made by the son. The father retired to Johnstone, where there were other Craigs employed as millwrights and where his daughter and son-in-law were then living. The son-in-law, Will iam Porteous, was a pattern drawer and artist, but his son, Dundas S. Porteous, was afterwards alleged to have dropped his profession of pattern drawer (after serving his full time) and become an engineer because of the engineering contacts he made in Johnstone on visits to his father. All this gives off a strong smell of probability that Daniel Craig was related to the millwright Craigs of Johnstone, but so far no confirmation of this has turned up. ( 2) Timber played a very impor tant part in the establishment of early engineering firms. Not only was there a good deal of it in early textile machinery, but all branches of the wrights' and timber-merchants' community were strongly organised in the various local Wrights' Societies and are found intermarrying and forming partnerships. The wrights' organisation seems to have been almost as powerful in early 19th century Renfrewshire as t he masons' is alleged to have been in the Middle Ages. Among the local "timber dynasties" were the Allisons, the Hunter s, the Vallances and certain Smiths. (This excludes Greenock and Port Glasgow from consideration.) The biggest timber merchants were importers owning their own ships; joiners and house-wrights went into speculative housebuilding and became considerable property owners at a time when the population of Western Scotland was increasing rapidly. (5) Some wrights became architects and surveyors. As housebuilders they sometimes developed an interest in the iron trades; as makers of wooden apparatus they were familiar with lathes, sawing-machines and other ancestors of the machine tool. Because it has been so much superseded now by other materials, it is easy to overlook how strategic a material timber was even at a much later stage of history than Mumford's "Eotechnic". The circle around Sneddon Bridge began to develop industrially within a relatively short time of that bridge being opened in 1766 (in face of bitter opposition by the Town Council: it was probably not only the relatively trivial loss of tolls from the older bridge, which the new bridge builders were willing to lease at a valuation, but the threatened movement of trade out northwards into the Earl of Abercorn's territories, that alarmed them). (6) In 1784 Paisley Foundry opened next to the Town's Quay on the West bank of the Cart and within the burghal boundary. Porteous in 1868 patriotically described it as the first Scottish iron-foundry west of Carron, (2) but a glance at the site (approximately NS484683) will suggest that it was hardly in the same bracket with Carron. Paisley had its own sources of ironstone but did not smelt it; that from Blackhall was carried to Clyde Foundry in its early days. (7) Paisley 4 foundry was started by Baird (or Braid) and Maxwell, who by 1812 had become Braid and Thomson and by 1823 Thomson and Laird, and in 1851 were bought out by Joseph Bow, who at first described himself as a loom-maker. The last foundry buildings there were burnt while standing derelict about ten years ago and the site is currently a car-park beside Christie Lane. The next firm recalled by the admirable Porteous, engineer and antiquarian, was Hunter and Walkinshaw, opened at the foot of Stony Brae, in the Underwood area, in 1793 to take advantage of the re-equipping of Adelphi Mills after a fire in 1792. This was a machine-making branch of a timber merchants' firm. Hunter was the expert on timber (his family much later entered partnership with one of the Seedhill Clarks in the firm of Clark and Hunter whose cooperage branch has lasted until the present day). Walkinshaw was a capitalist who invested in a number of different businesses. (1) Neither can have had any appreciable experience of machine-making and they ran the works through a series of managers. James Hunter acted as manager briefly towards the end. They clearly did not scrimp the initial expenses. Not only did they employ thirty men, of whom Porteous was able to name twenty-four first-rate craftsmen and apprentices, but they introduced to Paisley the idea of powering a lathe by a steam-engine. Porteous's list illustrates the range of trades which con tri bu ted to an early machine-shop: fitter, wright, smith, boards mi th, clocks mi th, clock-maker, iron turner, brassfounder. Several of them in turn managed the concern, though there is no evidence of their being partners in it. The first manager, William McNaught, described as a fitter (which suggests apprenticeship in some existing machine-shop) left to set up for himself in New Sneddon. He is said to have made the steam engine for Carlile's thread works in New Sneddon, the first powered thread works, ( 8) in fact the biggest until the Coats and Clark emp:j.,res developed some years later. Later he went to Johnstone: It was his son who added the verb "to McNaught" to the vocabulary of manufacturing Britain, meaning to compound a beam engine by placing a cylinder at each side of the fulcrum. Andrew Crawford, fitter, and George Taylor, wright, then ran the shop jointly until the two set up their own millwright business in the Croft. Although described as a fitter, Crawford came from a clan of Paisley wrights. After James Hunter's spell of management Alexander Vallance, very much a timber man, took over; but the timber merchants Hunter and Walkinshaw pulled out in 1808 and Vallance then turned the place into a sawmill, building afresh on the vacant part of the site and experimenting with novel sawing machinery: vertical framesaws powered by the steam engine.