Butterley Company - Early Years

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, and for the limekilns at Bullbridge providing lime for farmers 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. The intention of the rebels had been to kill the three senior managers and ransack it for weapons. However, when they arrived they were confronted by George Goodwin the factory agent, who, with a few constables, faced them down. There is little to be seen nowadays of the event, but the hexagonal office, where Goodwin stood his ground, still exists as a listed building in the yard of the Butterley Company's works.

Following this, however, the country entered 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.

One of the two drainage engines at Pode Hole and the engine still in the Pinchbeck Engine land drainage museum were built by Butterley, as were the Scoop wheel pumps.

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.

The company was quick to invest in the new Bessemer process for steel manufacture in 1856, being one of four businesses who took out a license from Sir Henry Bessemer within a month of him announcing his method. The licenses were deliberately spread around the country in order to protect the trading interests of the various licensees.

Notable patents were taken out by Butterley's manager, Sir John Alleyne. In December 1859 Alleyne patented a method of producing a load-bearing iron beam known as the Butterley Bulb used in many of the early iron steam ships including HMS Warrior . Alleyne patented a method in 1861 which allowed hot ingots to be moved around a roller after it had passed by just one person. During the production of steel sections the bar has to be repeatedly put through rollers. Allowing this to happen using just one person was a substantial increase in productivity. 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 which included 240 foot spans.

Alleynes next invention was the two high reversing steel mill patented in 1870, which used two steam engines to allow metal ingots to be repeatedly rolled in order to get the correct size and section. With this technique the steel did not have to be moved to re-enter the rolling process but merely had to be moved back into the rolling machine once it had passed through.

There was also an extensive brickworks not only for the railways, but for thousands of factories and domestic dwellings.

By 1874 company workers were starting to fight for better conditions. The company sacked eleven miners "without a charge" on May 5, 1874.