A HISTORY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 



for main-line traffic. The firm was founded 

 about forty years ago, and has steadily developed, 

 mainly since the purchase of the works by Mr. 

 Thomas Peckett in 1880. In its early days 

 the firm worked chiefly for the Midlands and 

 South Wales, but it has now a considerable ex- 

 port trade. It built the engines for the first 

 light railway in England, between Selsey and 

 Chichester, and has supplied the government with 

 locomotives for use in South Africa and the 

 Soudan. Piecework, it is interesting to note, 

 is not considered safe or satisfactory on such 

 important works. 



The other chief locomotive factory, carried 

 on at Fishponds by the Avonside Engine Co., 

 turns out railway steam motors and locomotives 

 of the highest class. Founded in 1837 at St. 

 Philip's, the business has grown so rapidly that, 

 after being twice rebuilt on the original site, in 

 1905 a wholly new factory was erected with a 

 yearly capacity of seventy-five complete loco- 

 motives. The firm numbers among its cus- 

 tomers English, foreign, and South African 

 railway companies, the state railways of Egypt 

 and India, and the British War Office, but 

 its principal output goes to South America, 

 Australia, India, and Japan. 



Gloucestershire also contains many general 

 engineering firms, such as the High Orchard 

 Works of Messrs. Summers & Scott (established 

 in 1850) at Gloucester, who turn out heavy 

 machinery for cake and flour mills and, in especial, 

 for linoleum printing factories ; and the milling 

 machinery works of Messrs. Barron & Co. and 

 Gardner & Co. Gloucester, with its large flour- 

 milling business, has, in fact, closely followed 

 or sometimes led the way in the vast improve- 

 ments in milling machinery of the last forty 

 years. Cheltenham and Tewkesbury contain 

 small engineering works. Stroud has acquired a 

 new lease of life from its modern foundries and 

 engine-factories. Among other firms are the 

 Stroud Metal Co., whose umbrella-fitting industry 

 was called into existence by the local manufac- 



ture of umbrella-sticks ; the Bowbridge Excel- 

 sior Engineering Co., who make all kinds of 

 machinery and factory necessities, including 

 mill-hoists, roofs, and girders, which they have 

 supplied to many of the cloth-mills ; the Ebley 

 Iron Works, and the Dudbridge Iron Works, 

 where flock machinery and gas engines are made 

 respectively. Dursley is the seat of the only 

 electric works in the county, those of Messrs. 

 Lister & Co., who, besides electric motors and 

 dynamos, have a large manufacture of agricultural 

 and dairy machinery. Their Dursley-Pedersen 

 cycle factory is, perhaps, the best known of the 

 many Gloucestershire and Bristol cycle works, 

 most of which are of no special note. Agri- 

 cultural tools of the smaller sort are made at the 

 Coaley Mills, by a firm established in 1744, and 

 larger sorts by Messrs. Kell & Co. of Gloucester, 

 who manufacture ploughs and drills of every 

 description. 



In the Bristol district, Messrs. Torrance & 

 Sons of Bitton make paint and colour-grinding 

 machinery, and Messrs. Gardiner & Co. of 

 Bristol are large manufacturers of ornamental 

 ironwork, such as wrought-iron gates and case- 

 ments, besides lifts and safes. The largest gal- 

 vanized-iron factory in Great Britain is also 

 established at Bristol, under Messrs. Lysaght & 

 Co. It was established in 1857, and now em- 

 ploys thousands of hands. The black sheet is 

 produced at Newport, where is another branch of 

 the same firm, but it is galvanized, corrugated, 

 and packed at Bristol. Galvanized wire-netting is 

 made in enormous quantities at Messrs. Lysaght's 

 Netham spelter-works, as are also cisterns, tanks, 

 and other agricultural requisites ; while they 

 also perform large contracts in general construc- 

 tional engineering. 



In concluding the subject, allusion may be 

 made to an interesting institution, the Glouces- 

 ter Machine Exchange, where machinery is 

 bought, repaired, and kept ready for purchase or 

 exchange, to the extent of 3,000 tons at one 

 time. 



BELL-FOUNDING 1 



For more than 600 years bell-founding has 

 been a Gloucestershire industry. Originally an 

 art practised only in monasteries, it was proba- 

 bly atttacted to Gloucestershire by the many 

 religious houses settled there. 2 There are still 



1 See H. T. Ellacombe, Church Bells of G/ouc. ; 

 article by H. B. Walters on ' Bells," Brist. and 

 G/ouc. Arch. Soc. Trans, xviii ; Bells and Bell-founding, 

 by X.Y.Z. (Bristol, 1879). 



1 The religious light in which bells were regarded 

 in the middle ages is illustrated by the rules of the 

 Ringers' Gild at Bristol in the 1 4th or 1 5th cen- 

 tury. There were stringent regulations as to the 

 good character and reverence of the ringers, who were 



extant a few bells bearing the arms of a see or 

 abbey, such as those on bells in the cathedrals of 

 Bristol and Gloucester, and on a bell now at Stone- 

 leigh (Warw.), which bears the arms of Winch- 

 combe Abbey. But ancient bells are hard to 

 trace to their founders, owing to the pious reluct- 

 ance of the latter to put their names upon the pro- 

 ducts of their art. Our knowledge of mediaeval 

 bell-founders must therefore mainly be drawn 



instructed to aim that ' our rich neighbours, hearing 

 these loud cymbals with their ears, may by the sweet 

 harmony thereof be enlarged in their hearts to pull 

 one string to make it more sweet.' L. T. Smith, 

 Eng. Gilds, 288. 



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