Bradley and Craven
Bradley and Craven of Westgate Common Foundry, Wakefield.
1843 Company founded. William Craven and Richard Bradley, two young engineers, produced revolutionary machinery for automating the production of bricks.
By 1853 the company’s stiff plastic brickmaking machines were being sold throughout the UK and to many overseas markets, including South Africa, Germany and Australia.
1855 A 16-hp A-frame engine installed at Tattershall - Dogdyke.[1]
1858 Richard Bradley and William Craven
1884 Two Rotative Beam Engines for Scarborough Waterworks (Irton Station)[2]
1887 Brief description and drawings of Seller's single-crank compound engine, made by Bradley & Craven [3]
1891 Manufactured and supplied machinery for a new brick works at West Hartlepool for Messrs Casebourne and Co, based on an improved process invented by Mr Edward Cammiss of West Hartlepool, an employee of that company (patent 6,133 of 1885).[4]
1894 June. Royal Agricultural Society's Show. Mixing, moulding and pressing machine for bricks and tiles. [5]
1894 Brick and Tile Press. Article and illustration. [6]
1895 Advert. [7]
1898 Became private company.
1900 June. Royal Agricultural Show at York. Showed a brick and tile moulding and pressing machine. [8]
1908 'Messrs. Bradley and Craven, Limited, Westgate Common Foundry, Wakefield, have secured order for a pair of Corliss winding-engines for the Wheldale Coal Company, Limited, Castleford. The cylinders will be 42 in. in diameter, with a stroke of 7 ft., and the winding-drum, of the conical type, will have a diameter of 16 ft. at the small side, increasing to 25 ft. on the large. This gear is for drawing from the Beeston seam, 570 yards below the surface, the wind to be accomplished in 47 seconds.'[9]
1914 Engineers. Specialities: everything connected with brick, pipe and tile machinery, colliery work, sheet-metal working machinery. Employees 300. [10]
1947/8 Sold the manufacturing rights to the whole range of sheet metal machinery to Butterley Co[11]
1961 Manufacturers of clayworking machinery. 350 employees. [12]
1972 Bradley and Craven pooled their resources with rival Leeds firm, Thomas C. Fawcett, as Craven Fawcett.
Notes
- A working example of an 1856 engine is exhibited at Dogdyke Pumping Station
- An 1882 single cylinder horizontal engine was preserved at Wakatane Museum in New Zealand.[13]
See Also
Sources of Information
- ↑ * Fenland Pumping Engines by K. S. G. Hinde, Landmark Publishing Co., 2006 ISBN 1 84306 188 0
- ↑ 'Stationary Steam Engines of Great Britain: Volume 1: Yorkshire'. Landmark Publishing Ltd., 2000
- ↑ Engineering 1887/11/25
- ↑ Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail - 2 Jul 1891 and Northern Echo - 4 Jul 1891
- ↑ The Engineer of 29th June 1894 p562
- ↑ The Engineer of 28th September 1894 p284
- ↑ Post Office London Directory, 1895
- ↑ The Engineer of 22nd June 1900 p650
- ↑ Engineering 1908/03/27
- ↑ 1914 Whitakers Red Book
- ↑ The Times, Jul 19, 1948
- ↑ 1961 Dun and Bradstreet KBE
- ↑ 'Old Glory' December 1997
- The Steam Engine in Industry by George Watkins in two volumes. Moorland Publishing. 1978. ISBN 0-903485-65-6
- AA. [1] Image courtesy of Aviation Ancestry
- Stationary Steam Engines of Great Britain by George Watkins. Vol 10