E&H Roberts – Ironworks

Richard Roberts III, a working blacksmith of Wicken during the late eighteenth century, established his own blacksmith shop alongside the Buckingham Arm of the Grand Junction Canal off High Street, Deanshanger in 1821. Founded on the site of two cottages and an existing smithy, ploughs and other agricultural and domestic items formed the basis. Richard was known locally as ‘Pistol Dick’.

In 1843 Richard’s son, John, took over and gradually built up the local business. Unfortunately John died in 1853 and his wife Caroline took over running the foundry with the assistance of her eldest son Edwin, who was then aged 16. It was not until 1859, at the age of 23, that Edwin became the sole proprietor. By this time the foundry building had been built and Deanshanger Iron Works employed 10 men.

Edwin embarked upon a period of expansion in 1861, first purchasing an acre of land off High Street that included the original Fox and Hounds public house. In 1866 he bought and demolished a row of 7 cottages in Maltings Row also off High Street, leaving two houses standing. He went on to purchase 5½ acres of land opposite this site in 1868; the foundry site now straddled both sides of High Street. This newly acquired area was designated for use as the woodyard and timber production area for carts, elevators, threshing machines etc.

“On the other side of the Brook on the left was the Smithy...... Two houses faced the Smithy my uncles Arch and Arthur lived in those, Arthur was the last blacksmith in the village. At the rear of the two houses, a single house stood in an area known as the Timber Yard. Mr Case lived there. This area is on the left as you proceed up the High Street from the factory corner and was where Roberts’ stored timber for use on the elevators and other farm implements.” – extract from ‘The Teenage Years’ by Les Roberts

Occasionally the Company used the name Britannia Iron Works from the 1860s until 1890. Edwin invited Henry, his younger brother, to become a partner in the business in 1875, and the company officially became Edwin & Henry Roberts Engineers and Agricultural Implement Makers. In 1876 the brothers purchased a redundant chapel in Well Street, Buckingham to use as a warehouse that opened in May 1880.

By 1881 the Company employed 60 men, rising to 75 men and boys by 1885. This increased to 100-150 in the years leading up to the First World War.

The business enjoyed good local transport links despite its rural location. Access to the railway network from the 1840s was only 5 miles away at Wolverton, and for a short period in the 1890s a direct tram link into the Iron Works operated to Stony Stratford and Wolverton. At the rear of the site a canal-side wharf and winding hole, on the Buckingham Arm of the Grand Union Canal were used for the delivery of coal and raw materials. The main road (A422) to Oxford passed through the village in front of the foundry and at a nearby junction met Watling Street (A5) for road distribution of finished products.

The business became a Limited Company in 1890 with listed assets of £37,000. In the Memorandum of Association it was described as 'agricultural general and hydraulic engineering, as well as iron and brass founding and mill-wrights'. The business was allowed to manufacture, alter and repair bicycles, tricycles and other locomotive machinery. Also at this time Edwin and Henry's brother Albert Roberts’ business, a Builders’ Merchant, Oil Broker and General Agent, operating in Deanshanger was incorporated into the family company. By 1894 there were 13 shareholders but the controlling interest remained with Edwin and Henry.

In 1900 two younger members of the family, Bertram Douglas Roberts and Rupert Percival Roberts joined the  4 company directors Edwin, Henry, Thomas John Edwin and Albert Roberts. Edwin died in 1907 and his son Thomas became Managing Director, although Edwin still held the purse strings.

The Company enhanced its reputation when exhibiting products at Agricultural Shows around the country, demonstrating and entering competitions that it often won. At the Altrincham Agricultural Society’s Show in 1910, E & H Roberts displayed 69 ploughs and sold over 150. The business also had a successful, extensive marketing campaign and produced illustrated catalogues that included line drawing engravings of its products. In 1910 the Implement and Machinery Review, a specialist magazine, reported the company was “doing a creditable amount of trade with foreign and colonial buyers” regularly supplying merchants in France and North Africa with ploughs and elevators” and Agents were selling products as far afield as Europe, Argentina, South Africa, India and Australia.

 

Fire Devastates Important Local Business!
Deanshanger Ironworks Foundry, 1912
At 9pm on Wednesday 11th September 1912, two villagers saw flames leaping from the foundry Carpenter’s Shop. A horse-rider raced to raise the Fire Brigade in Stony Stratford which arrived by 9.30pm. Meanwhile villagers and workmen used buckets of canal water to quell the blaze and soak the rafters, but were beaten back by heat and smoke. The glowing sky alerted the Wolverton Works Fire Brigade too, who turned out along with thousands of people who came to watch.

Both Brigades stopped the flames reaching fuel tanks but the foundry’s carpenter and wheelwright workshops were devastated, with damage estimated at £5,000.

The Foundry was rebuilt and modernised largely from the insurance money “a blessing in disguise.... with everything modernised, not only the buildings but also the machinery” B. Casey. E & H Roberts Ltd enjoyed a pre-war boom with the building armaments programme of the First World War and calls for an increase in agricultural production. The fire made no impression on the company’s balance sheet, nor on its profits, which reached their peak that year.

 

The First World War, 1914-1918

The Iron Works continued to flourish increasing output during the First World War. From 1917 to 1920 the company’s profits averaged more than twice the pre-war figure, but the family Board of Directors continued to only add £300 a year to the reserves, paying shareholders handsome dividends.

Local Military Tribunals were set up (consisting of local people such councillors, doctors and magistrates with a military advisor) to hear cases from employers and families as to why men should not be conscripted. Throughout the War, E & H Roberts Ltd made numerous appeals to the Potterspury Military Tribunal to defer the conscription of its employees.

Potterspury Military Tribunal newspaper reports show the constant struggle of management making regular appeals. They became so frustrated that in March 1917, the Chairman and Military adviser were strongly urged to visit the foundry, (a visit was undertaken later that year) as...

“...of one shop three-fourths of the machines were standing idle, and were rusting for want of use.... [and] they have outstanding orders for 200 ploughs”
Wolverton Express March 23rd 1917

To relieve the shortage of manpower the employment of women and girls began in 1916, working in both the production and office areas. Gladys Nicholls, nee Grant, was employed in the Moulding Shop whilst her fiancé, Walter, was serving with the Wiltshire Regiment at the Somme and Salonika (they married in October 1920). By 1918 all employees worked a twelve hour day, 5½ days a week.

“Before the war they employed 165, of whom 38 were over military age and boys under 17 leaving 110. Of these 77 were now serving. The staff now consisted of 106 including 11 women.”
Potterspury Military Tribunal, Wolverton Express 11th May 1917

Adverts for the Foundry’s immediate delivery of hay loaders began to appear in the local press from June 1917. By October 1917 the Company restricted its production to the manufacture of Ploughs and Elevators only. However they did become Agents for the American Emerson and British Mogul tractors from November 1917.

“A whistle blew at the start of work and at the end of the day’s work. Mr King was the time keeper, he collected discs from workers and hung the discs ion a board, the discs were used to check men in and out of work” extract from ‘The Teenage Years’ by Les Roberts

 

The Collapse of the Company

After the First World War the boom in business continued, but this was soon followed by a slump during the 1920s along with work force industrial disputes; first came a national iron moulders strike followed by the 1926 General Strike.

E & H Roberts soon fell into bankruptcy and despite a rescue attempt in 1926, selling assets and borrowing on a private mortgage; the Company went into liquidation in 1927. A number of factors resulted in the closure of the Iron Works:
• failure of the family to keep up with modern manufacturing techniques
• failure to invest for the future
• rise of automotive vehicles
• automation of agricultural machinery generally

The collapse of the company caused considerable unemployment in the village, some men found work locally in the LNWR Carriage works in Wolverton and others left the village to find work in the new car plants of Luton, Oxford and Dagenham.

The liquidator sold stock to pay creditors a percentage of what was owed, but in 1929 the 36,000 square foot site on 3 acres of land, the machinery, part completed products together with its trademarks, designs, etc, were all put up for sale. E & H Roberts’s reputation and its high quality products generated considerable national interest in the sale. Many of its designs and patterns were bought by other agricultural manufacturers. Locally Brown’s of Leighton Buzzard purchased many of the plough design, Lainchbury and Ogle bought the elevators and Godwins the wind pumps. Many of the unfinished products were brought by local farmers and businesses. The liquidation was completed in 1931 and the company officially dissolved in 1933.

 

PRODUCTS
Agricultural Machinery and Implements

E & H Roberts became known internationally for the development and improvements in the manufacture of agricultural machinery, most notably ploughs and horse rakes. A substantial design office must have formed part of the business as most items were designed and manufactured in-house, but unfortunately no drawings have survived for the several hundred types of machines they produced. Roberts also offered a service of building other companies’ patent products.

The early horse-drawn and hand ploughs were constructed with a wooden beam and metal fitments. Most of the ploughs were marketed under the ‘Mephisto’ trade name with the option of varying attachments for different soil types and the company made spares readily available as an after sales service. The best known plough was the award winning Mephisto Prize Medal Gang Plough, an image of which was used on the company letterhead with the claim of it having won 3,750 prizes. Examples of the plough were mounted on roofs of their buildings in Deanshanger, Buckingham and Stony Stratford where they also had an office.

The company also designed and manufactured hoes, scarifiers, rollers, clod crushers, harrows, cultivators and many other agricultural implements. Other internationally renowned products were the ‘Premier’ and the ’Litelift’ elevators that sold for between £45 and £50 and proved extremely popular with local farmers as they were sold complete with horse and intermediate gearing so were ready for use in the field. Hand-powered barn equipment like chaff cutters, oil-cake mills, grinding mills and turnip pulpers also formed part of their product range.

 

Carts and Wagons

The Work’s Wheelwrights Shop started to produce a small range of carts, wagons and delivery vans that first were advertised in the 1880s. These products were offered with bespoke options to suit client needs. Built by skilled craftsmen these too won several national prizes.

 

Engineering and Hydraulic Products

Its engineering and hydraulic products included the prize medal winning ‘Hercules’ Wind-pump and large hydraulic waterwheels.

Lord Penhryn of Wicken commissioned 3 Hercules wind-pumps, towers with 14 foot diameter vanes that provided drinking water in 1902 for 500 villagers which the Estate’s Land Agent reported “they have given very great satisfaction” and locally Potterspury Rural District Council ordered several for local villages.

The wind pumps were supplied to mansions, estates, farms, ranches etc to obtain water from springs, wells and bore holes. The Hercules Wind-pumps were offered with a range of varying sized pumps and were exported all over the world. Overshot and breast-fed waterwheels were manufactured which could handle between 20 to 20,000 gallons of water an hour and used industrially and domestically to pump drinking water for country estates, dairies and breweries.

Heating systems for greenhouses and large houses were designed, manufactured and installed for a number of large estates around the country.

 

The Smithy

The foundry’s smithy produced a variety of work and many special commissions including iron and steel girders for bridges and buildings, roadside furniture such as railings, gates, water stand-pipes, manhole and stopcock covers; many examples of which can still be found in situ locally. They also built kitchen ranges for the domestic market and oven doors for commercial bakeries.

 

Other Products

The company also manufactured a small vertical steam engine and boiler. The smallest was 7 inch stroke engine, no remaining examples have been found to date.

Also advertised in the Catalogue was woodworking machinery including a circular saw bench, rack saw bench and a band saw or felloe saw. A Roberts’ rack saw bench has been found locally in a workshop on the Stowe House, Buckingham estate.

In 1923 the company were agents and repair specialists for lawnmowers, this side of the business operated mainly out of the Buckingham site.

Examples of many E & H Roberts Ltd products are held in the collections of Milton Keynes Museum.

 

The Capell Fan

Working with the local Reverend George Marie Capell, a self-taught design engineer, the Iron Works’ Smithy staff, Eden Roberts and his sons James (Jim) and Arthur, produced an early prototype of the Capell Fan, which proved to be a testament to the skill of the village blacksmiths. The centrifugal fan designed to ventilate deep mines went on to be used in mines nationally and around the world. The only British surviving Capell Fan House is sited at the Woodhorn Colliery, near Ashington, Northumberland. Capell fans are known to have been used at many mines including the following:
Pleasely Colliery, Nottinghamshire
Teversal Colliery, Nottinghamshire
Silsworth Colliery, Sunderland

“The Capell fan was a small diameter, fast running fan, consisting of two concentric cylindrical chambers. Each chamber was fitted with blades that were curved with the convex face facing the direction of rotation. The casing between the two sets of blades contained openings which allowed air to pass from the inner to the outer chamber. This casing had a projecting rim which fitted closely into the brickwork mouth above the fan pit and the blades of the inner chamber were extended outwards to form scoops. The fans had double inlets with a central steel diaphragm separating the two sides “
Pleasely Colliery, www.pleasleypittrust.org.uk accessed 10/08/2019. Pleasley Pit is a National Monument and is open to the public

A history of the works created by the Deanshanger CLUTCH Club in the year 2000

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