INDUSTRIES 



been stopped, a petition was presented to the 

 crown by John Corsley of Bristol, saying that 

 although His Majesty had granted leave to the 

 city to make 400 or 500 barrels of powder 

 yearly, for their shipping, he could get no petre, 

 and prayed that 200 Ib. might be appointed him 

 weekly from petremen near Bristol and Somerset. 

 His petition was refused. 1 



How long the powder-trade survived the 

 monopoly, after the immediate necessities of the 

 war had been satisfied, I do not know. At 

 the present date the chief representatives of the 

 explosive trades are match factories at Bristol and 

 Gloucester respectively. The former city had a 

 saltpetre refiner and gunpowder and firework 

 factories forty years ago, but these, I believe, are 

 extinct. Early in the igth century there were 

 chemical works at Conham and Oldland Bottom, 

 both near Bitton. At the former factory Prussian 

 blue, hartshorn, and a compound called Gibbesium 

 were turned out ; the latter firm, that of Holbrow, 

 Haynes, & Co., manufactured sal ammoniac, 

 ivory black, &c., till 1840, when the works 

 were closed, and were taken over ten years later 

 by a chemical company at Netham.' Ink and 

 vitriol were also made at Bristol in 1863. 

 Chemicals for medicine, for dyes, and photo- 

 graphy, besides essences for preserves and aerated 

 waters arc made by Messrs. Collctt & Co, at 



Gloucester. Annatto, a vegetable extract used 

 for giving a light yellow colour to cheese and 

 butter, has been manufactured since 1812 by 

 Messrs. Baker & Co., St. Paul's, Bristol, but the 

 business is a declining one, as the fashion in 

 cheese colour has changed. The last survivor 

 of the old charcoal works in the Forest of Dean, 

 the Lydbrook Chemical Co., besides a large 

 charcoal manufacture carried on both in the 

 forest and in the factory, turns out the closely 

 allied products of naphtha, tar, acetate of lime, 

 blacking, &c. 



Glue, varnish, and painters' colours are also 

 manufactured at Bristol. The latter industry, 

 in particular, is firmly rooted there, where it 

 amounts perhaps to half a million pounds per 

 annum. Probably, as already suggested, the oil 

 and colour industry was originated by the lead 

 manufacturers of the city in the i8th century. 

 Artists' colours are not made, but only fire 

 colours and earth colours, such as umbers, siennas, 

 and red oxide. The latter are ground both dry 

 and in oil, of which vast quantities are imported 

 into Bristol turpentine, petroleum, and, in par- 

 ticular, linseed and cotton oil. There are a few 

 firms in Bristol which specialize in crushing 

 linseed and cotton seed, though most of the 

 oil and colour manufacturers do their crushing 

 themselves. 



MILLING, MALTING AND BREWING 



The oil and cake mills carried on by Messrs. 

 Foster Bros, at Gloucester Docks belong to the 

 firm which first introduced the industry into 

 Great Britain. Up to 1862 the works were 

 at Evesham, but were then moved to Gloucester, 

 where a new large plant was set up ; 800 

 tons of seeds, mainly cotton seed from 

 Egypt and linseed from India, Russia, and the 

 Argentine, are manufactured weekly into 

 various forms of cattle and sheep food, and 

 some 1 2O workmen are employed, working by 

 spells day and night. The mills, which have 

 lately become a branch of the Bristol Oil and 

 Cake Mills, Ltd., have a large export trade. 



At Stroud there is a similar business carried on 

 by Messrs. Townsend & Co. Another cattle 

 food called ' dredge ' is made at Gloucester by 

 Messrs. Turner, Nott & Co., who are large corn 

 merchants, both at Bristol and Gloucester ; they 

 once imported in one vessel 30,000 quarters of 

 South American wheat, the largest single cargo 

 i of grain ever unloaded at Gloucester Docks. 

 Large imports of corn are indeed needed in 

 Gloucester, which is a great flour-milling centre. 

 The Albert Flour Mills and the City Flour 

 Mills, the two chief works of the kind in Glou- 



1 S.P. Dom. Chas. I, cclxv, No. 91. 



' H. T. Ellacombe, Hiit. of Bitton, 131. 



cester, are large and well equipped, having both 

 adopted the ' roller ' system at an early date. 

 They have between them a weekly capacity of 

 5,500 sacks. Both are situated in the Docks, 

 and can thus deal with the grain direct on 

 importation. In Gloucestershire, as in other 

 counties, these large mills superseded to a con- 

 siderable extent the small wind and water-mills, 

 of which there used to be so many scattered over 

 the country-side. A few still survive, as in the 

 Painswick valley where an occasional old cloth 

 mill is utilized for this purpose. Tewkesbury 

 also has a considerable milling business. 



Malting was long a staple industry at Tewkes- 

 bury, and indeed all over the county, as is 

 testified by the old 'malt-houses.' In 1596 

 an order was issued by the Gloucester magis- 

 trates to limit the malt-houses, the excessive 

 number of which caused a dearth of grain.* Corn 

 and beer have of course been intimately connected 

 since the days of the assize of bread and beer, 

 which, as we have seen, 4 regulated their respec- 

 tive prices on a common scale. In 1 500, when 

 loaves at Gloucester were fixed at four a penny, 

 one gallon of the best ale was to be sold for a 

 penny, and thirteen gallons for twelve pence (an 



1 Actt of P.O. (new ser.), xxvi (i 596-7), 174. 

 4 See ante, ' Social and Economic Hiitory.' 



211 



