A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK 



mineral phosphates with sulphuric acid originated 

 in this country with Sir J. Bennet Lawes, who 

 took out a patent for the process in 1842. 1 In 

 1843 Professor J. S. Henslow, who took a deep 

 interest in the application of science to agricul- 

 ture, was staying with his family at Felixstowe, 

 when he was struck by the occurrence in large 

 quantities of phosphatic nodules between the red 

 crag and the London clay of that neighbour- 

 hood. He communicated his discover)' of these 

 deposits, which he called coprolites, to the Geo- 

 logical Society, 2 and in a few years they began 

 to be largely drawn upon for industrial purposes. 



The late Mr. Edward Packard, the founder of 

 the firm of Messrs. E. Packard & Co., who began 

 life as a chemist at Saxmundham, had, after a 

 number of experiments carried out on a modest 

 scale with a pestle and mortar, already started 

 making artificial manure from bones, and was led 

 by Professor Henslow's discoveries to turn his at- 

 tention to 'coprolites.' His first operations were 

 at Snape, where he secured the power of a pump- 

 ing engine from Mr. Newsom Garrett, but as he 

 was unable to obtain the site of a mill there, he 

 transferred his business to Ipswich about the 

 year 1849. Mr. Allen Ransome came to his 

 assistance and sold him a site at Ipswich Dock, 

 then occupied by a flour mill, which has 

 since borne the name of Coprolite Street. The 

 business rapidly expanded. The new super- 

 phosphates manufactured from ' coprolite ' had 

 been first used by several Suffolk agriculturists, 

 but they soon began to be sent to Scotland, 

 Ireland, and even to Russia. In 1854 Mr. 

 Packard purchased land from the Great Eastern 

 Railway at Bramford near Ipswich, where the 

 manufacture of fertilizers is now extensively 

 carried on by other firms as well as by the one 

 he founded. 3 



The Suffolk deposits, to the discovery of which 

 the early prosperity of the industry was so 

 largely due, and which continued for fifteen 



years to provide the principal material for a 

 rapidly increasing production, have now for a 

 long time ceased to be worked. A supply of 

 similar phosphatic nodules of somewhat superior 

 quality was subsequently discovered in the Upper 

 Greensand of Cambridgeshire from which as 

 much as 20,000 tons have been extracted in a 

 single year, but of late years nearly all the phos- 

 phates required by the industry have been 

 imported from abroad. France and Belgium 

 supply ores of inferior quality ; others come from 

 Algeria, from the islands of the Caribbean Sea, 

 from Florida and Tennessee. 



The ore thus obtained is thoroughly dried, 

 and after being broken in a stone-crusher is 

 ground as fine as flour in a mill. This phos- 

 phatic dust is purified by fanning, and then 

 dissolved in sulphuric acid. The product of 

 this reaction, when it has cooled, is a dry friable 

 honey-combed mass, and is dug out of the pits in 

 which it has been deposited with pick-axes. 

 This is once more reduced to powder in a disin- 

 tegrator, and at this stage nitrogenous material 

 such as ammonium sulphate may be added, or in 

 other cases salts of potash, in order to produce a 

 manure specially adapted to corn, grass, mangel, 

 potato or other crop. 4 Of recent years a great 

 deal of careful study has been devoted to the 

 needs of each variety of cereal and of other field 

 crops as well as of fruits and flowers. Foremost 

 among the specializers in this direction is the 

 firm of Messrs. Joseph Fison & Co. of Ipswich, 

 whose fertilizers are used to raise the flower 

 crops of the Scilly Isles and of Guernsey, and the 

 fruit and potato crops of Kent, and who claim 

 to have adapted the reactive properties of arti- 

 ficial manure so as to meet the peculiar needs of 

 hothouse grapes, cucumbers, hops, flax and 

 tomatoes. During the last twelve years Messrs. 

 Fison have also become large producers of in- 

 secticides, disinfectants and sheep dips which are 

 exported to all parts of the world. 6 



GUN-COTTON 



The manufacture of artificial manures seems 

 to have served as a starting point for the intro- 

 duction of further chemical industries into Suffolk. 



The discovery of the coprolite deposits led 

 many firms who had already established con- 

 nexions with agricultural Suffolk in the chief 

 market towns to set up as makers or dealers in 

 the new fertilizers. Among these was the firm 

 of Messrs. T. Prentice & Co., who had long 



1 Thorpe, Diet, of Applied Chemistry, ii, 507. 



' Eastern Counties Mag. and Suff. Note Bk. i, ' Re- 

 miniscences of a Scientific Suffolk Clergyman.' 



3 A memoir of the late Mr. Edward Packard, pre- 

 served amongst the Suffolk pamphlets in the Ipswich 

 Public Library. 



been settled in Stowmarket as merchants. Be- 

 fore 1855 they had further added to their 

 industrial activities by taking over the manage- 

 ment of the town gas supply, and about the 

 year 1861 they were instrumental in introduc- 

 ing the manufacture of gun-cotton into Stow- 

 market. A few years later the Patent Safety 

 Gun-cotton Company was formed, of which Mr. 

 Eustace Prentice became the managing director. 

 Gun-cotton is made by the saturation of waste 

 cotton in nitric and sulphuric acid. The par- 

 ticular process adopted at Stowmarket was one 

 for which a patent had been taken out by 



4 Thorpe, Diet, of Applied Chemistry, op. cit. ii, 510. 

 ' Ex inf. Messrs. Joseph Fison & Co. 



286 



