Butterley Company
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The Butterley Company was an engineering works in the Ripley area of Derbyshire. It had begun as Benjamin Outram and Company in 1790.
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[edit] Origins
This area of Derbyshire had been known for its outcrops of iron ore which had been exploited at least since the Middle Ages. Indeed, after the Norman Conquest, nearby Duffield Frith was the property of the de Ferrers family who were iron masters in Normandy.
In 1793, William Jessop, with the assistance of Benjamin Outram, constructed 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.
The following year they were joined by Jessop, and John, the grandson of Ichabod Wright, a wealthy Nottingham banker who was betrothed to Beresford's daughter and who owned the Butterley Park estate.
In 1793 the French Revolutionary Wars broke out and, by 1796, the blast furnace was producing nearly a thousand tons of pig iron a year. By the second decade of the next 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.
[edit] Early years
Outram died in 1805 and the name changed to the Butterley Company, with one of Jessop's sons, also William, taking over.
In 1814 the company produced the iron work for the Vauxhall Bridge over the River Thames.
They also owned Hilt's Quarry at Crich which supplied limestone for the ironworks, with limekilns at Bullbridge for supplying famers 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
In 1817, in the depression following the Napoleonic Wars, the works at Butterley was the scene of the Pentrich Revolution. Following this, however, the country enrtered a long period of prosperity, the Butterley Company with it. In 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.
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 near Wirksworth.
By 1863 the company was rolling the largest masses of iron of any foundry 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.
By 1874 it workers were starting to fight for better conditions. It sacked eleven miners "without a charge" on May 5 1874.
[edit] 20th century
At its peak in the 1950s the company employed around 10,000 people.
In 1957, a partnership with Air Products of the USA helped establish that company in the United Kingdom [1].
The Codnor Park works closed in 1965.
The company was acquired by Lord Hanson in the 1968 for £4.7 million [2]. The company was subsequently split up into Butterley Engineering, Butterley Brick and Butterley Aggregates. Butterley Hall, Outram's home and later the companies offices, was sold off to become the headquarters of Derbyshire Constabulary.
Butterley Engineering still occupy the Butterley site. In the mid 1980's the foundry closed down and when the surplus buildings were demolished, the original blast furnace of 1790 was exposed.
[edit] References
- Christian, R., (1990) "Butterley Brick" Henry Melland Publishing
- Cooper, B., (1983) Transformation of a Valley: The Derbyshire Derwent, Heinneman, republished 1991 Cromford: Scarthin Books
- Lowe, J.W., (1989) British Steam Locomotive Builders, Guild Publishing
- Riden, P., (1990) The Butterley Company 1790 - 1830 Derbyshire Record Society
- Schofield, R.B., (2000) Benjamin Outram, Cardiff: Merton Priory Press
