When I describe Spalding as an industrial town people are generally surprised. We have an image of an industrial town being depicted as the smoky tops of Salford in a Lowry painting, or the “satanic mills” of William Blake. This also is a key symptom of the disconnect that has developed between food and how it reaches us, thanks in part to the fantastically successful food growing/rearing systems coupled with importation and processing, culminating in packing, distribution and sale via supermarkets. This has been a twentieth century success. This has possibly been at social and environmental cost and possibly health – but if the growing populations of our towns and cities are to be fed it will continue.
People can look at nearby Peterborough and accept it as a modern industrial city with a history of brick works, engineering and food manufacture, processing and distribution. But, they cannot envisage calling Spalding and industrial town. Perhaps there is a sense of nostalgia and seeing the town as a market town is far easier.
The simple fact is that Spalding is now an industrial town and a significant centre for food manufacturing, processing, packing and distribution. Alongside this primary industry are various forms of engineering that grew out of the needs of agriculture and food industries such as irrigation, refrigeration, heating and machinery.
This developed over a very long period, but I would say its roots are in the eighteenth century. It was not just in the form of collective working under one roof as I have described earlier with Wherry’s of Bourne, it also involved smaller industries. If I was to define industry as any manufacturing or processing that requires some sort of machinery this did occur in a small way.
Some of the small manufacturing that occurred was associated with the port, such as rope making and sail making. Anne Hames of Spalding is found advertising for journeymen “hemp-dressers” in April 1792 for her rope-making business. She was one of six registered hemp dealers in Spalding that on 30th August 1792 signed up to a legal agreement not to buy any hemp within 30 miles of Spalding unless it was tied up and gathered in bands of equal quality and length to the rest of the consignment to prevent fraud.[i] This was done before the annual Hemp Fair in Spalding that was due on 25th September 1792 when the year’s supply for rope making would be purchased. The rope makers that agreed to this in Spalding at that time were: William Hames, Ann Hames (William’s mother), John Hames, Richard Pilgrim and William Lockett. Thus the quality of hemp and the rope produced from it was assured.
It has to be understood that rope manufacture was considered of such great strategic importance for shipping that George III introduced the Growth of Hemp and Flax Act in 1781. To encourage the growth of hemp and flax in England a bounty was to be paid throughout the nation not exceeding £15,000 with payments administered to growers via the local Justice of the Peace and two parish officers.
Sail making – in 1843 Mr. B. Lever was a sail maker and had an apprentice a young Mr. Jackson who was to eventually become Mayor of Grimsby in November 1851. The trade in sail making became slow and was lost to Spalding forcing the young Mr. Jackson to move to Boston and then to Grimsby as the trade deteriorated. Mr. B. Lever became a seller of music!
Pannells were the Spalding shipbuilder of wooden boats this was not a mechanised process in the industrial sense.
I have already mentioned Mr & Mrs William Blades and their ship’s biscuits that were manufactured by a horse drawn mill (see “Sailors and Fisherman”). All these “industries” associated with the port were relatively small in scale.
In 1792 local lawyer and agent Thomas Hawkes commented that, “raw materials of three of the most principle products of this kingdom for manufacture are produced here, viz. Wool, Hemp and Flax” , but it irked him that little processing or manufacture happened in the town. Hemp manufactured rope. Flax, the fibre from the stem of linseed, nowadays mostly burned in the UK, was used to manufacture linen and cord and because of its strength[ii] has been used in the manufacture of bank notes. Wool was starting to be altered at this time with attempts to establish weavers in Spalding.
In 1795 Mr Edward Presgrave sought to establish a weaving factory in Spalding but ran out of capital after persuading a partner, John Nicholson to inject £3000 into the business it failed and the partnership was dissolved in August 1803. Edward Presgrave continued to trade as a merchant successfully importing goods such as coal and iron ore.
It was merchants that were early adopters of powered technology to add value to the agricultural goods they traded. For example, Gardiner and Ayre of Spalding in 1795 were the first firm in the town to purchase a steam powered oil mill and seed crushing machine. This was used to extract oil from linseed and rape – they then sold off the by-product. Linseed cake was sold as cattle feed and linseed cake as manure. They traded seed oils, steel, coke, cinders and coal – materials of the industrial revolution. At this time increased use of machinery drove an increase in demand for all types of organic oils from both fish and plant seeds, until oil wells started to be drilled in Russia and America from the 1840’s.
The other product driven by modern agriculture of the era was the production of lime. Stone was sent from Stamford to Spalding as it was cheaper to use coal in Spalding. After carriage, it was significantly more expensive to use coal in Stamford. Lime had two significant uses:
As a form of soil conditioner in that it neutralised the effect of acids from using manure or nitrogen fertilizer, increased earthworm activity, increased the absorption of potassium, and made pasture more palatable for livestock.
In construction lime was used to form lime mortar that was the primary mortar used in brick buildings until the early twentieth century.
The value of lime on land was considered so significant that provision was established in the Agricultural Holdings Act for a departing tenant to be compensated for up to seven years after lime had been applied to the land.
Lime was produced in kilns by breaking limestone into lumps and stacking it in layers with coal within the kiln. It was then allowed to burn for days until the stone was reduced to cinder. One ton of limestone yielded about 11cwt. Of cinder.[iii] This product was then sold to farmers as “lime shells” although in the Fens of South Lincolnshire it was called “cinders”. The cinders would then be applied to the land, preferably just before rainfall and slaked, that is, the lime was dissolved by rainwater. Alternatively the lime would be heaped in smaller piles throughout the field, water applied from a bowser or by nature, and then it would be spread across the field.
In the early nineteenth century Spalding had four lime kilns. As railways came to Spalding the local burning of lime reduced greatly with one of the last kilns sold off in September 1859.
“Lot 4. A Cottage or Tenement, with good Garden and a well-built and well-accustomed Lime-Kiln with stone yard and excellent Hovels, and two parcels of very superior Pasture Land, containing altogether 5A. 1R. 0P (more or less), adjoining the Marsh rails road and the navigable River Welland , and within a mile of the Market Place.”[iv]
This last Kiln was demolished in 1893.
Farm based lime kilns can be found in areas of Lincolnshire where farms had their own quarries certainly up to the late 1930’s with one of the last references found being at Swayfield between Bourne and Grantham in 1938. I have been told that in the 1920’s you could see the shining of lime kilns at night in the hills to the West when looking from Morton Fen near Bourne.
These smaller industries were fine in that they processed some produce and provided material to agriculture, but you see local businessmen from the late eighteenth century through to the twentieth century repeatedly showing concern that Spalding, despite its excellent location, had no major manufacturing. As such its fortunes were prone to the ups and downs of farming and the agricultural depression of the nineteenth century focused this vulnerability.
It has to be said that the men of business that were commissioners and later councillors of the Spalding Urban District Council strove to remedy this. Spalding as an industrial centre for food in my opinion owes this legacy to four significant firms: The Sugar Beet factory; Smedleys canning factory; George Adams butcher and bakery; Geest. These various operations and businesses shaped the industrial activity of Spalding in the twentieth century.
[i] Any breach would be prosecuted by the principal dealer.
[ii] Flax cord is three to four times stronger than cotton
[iii] Amounts vary but this is the “yield” quoted in Stephens Book of Agriculture
[iv] Stamford Mercury 9th Sept. 1859
Comments