Clayton and Shuttleworlti s Works. 453 



wherever a foundation was to be made. A walk of 

 rather more than half a mile from the High-street and 

 down the Witham-side brings you to the door of the 

 works, the mess-room of which is approached from the 

 outside. It is furnished with rows of ovens at each 

 end, and about 300 of the outlying workmen take their 

 meals there every day a fact to which the heap of 

 milk-cans, each with its curious "hall-mark," bear 

 ample testimony. Just inside the gate grows a vine, 

 facing the south, the only bit of nature that we see in 

 that great workshop of art. Both water and rail are 

 most handy. A canal, running by the centre of the 

 main yard, opens up communication with the river 

 Witham, the Foss Dyke, the Trent, and Humber, for 

 the conveyance of pig-iron from Scotland, deals from 

 the Baltic, &c. ; and a branch line communicating 

 with the various railways is laid down throughout the 

 works, and is furnished with an hydraulic lift and cranes 

 for hoisting the engines and machines on to the 

 trucks.* 



It would take a jury of mechanics two good days to 



* This firm had its origin in 1842, when the brothers-in-law, who had 

 been in a different line of business on opposite sides of the present Stamp 

 End Dock, began to make thrashers and portable engines on a small 

 scale. The nucleus of the manufactory was a row of workshops on the 

 side of the Witham, with offices above them. The treacherous nature of 

 the soil is proved by the crumbling state of some small walls which 

 are not built on piles ; but all those difficulties were overcome, and 

 gradually six acres have been covered with buildings, while the other 

 six are devoted to yards and the stacking of timber. Much of the earlier 

 business was confined to the casting of water-pipes (including those for 

 the many miles of water-service from Miningsby brook to Boston), and 

 general railway work, as instanced by a bridge across the Trent for the 

 Nottingham and Grantham Railway ; but in 1849, when the firm com- 

 menced exhibiting their portable engines and thrashers, and were 

 awarded a prize by the Royal Agricultural Society at the Norwich meeting, 

 they determined to take up this branch of agricultural engineering as their 

 specialty, and devote their whole energies to its development. The 

 result was that the plain thrashing-machine gradually received the addi- 

 tion of shakers, riddles, blowers, elevators, and screens, and stood forth 

 as the complete finishing machine of 1854. Gradually the firm has 

 lengthened and strengthened its stakes until above 1200 workpeople are 



