Robert Boby (Company)
Robert Boby of Bury St Edmunds.
Robert Boby of Bury St Edmunds was known as the leading manufacture screening and dressing machines for corn, seed and malt. These were supplied to millers, maltsters, brewers and grain and seed merchants.
The firm from time to time offered hay-makers, seed drills and other filed implements, but they steadily concentrated more on the equipment for mills and maltings.
1843 Robert Boby was in business in Bury St. Edmunds as an 'Ironmonger, Red and White Lead Dealer, Brazier and Turner'
1855 Invents an improved corn dressing and winnowing machine with a self-cleaning screen.
1856 Wins a Gold medal at the RASE Chelmsford
1871 Employing 123 men [1]
1877 By this date the St. Andrew's Works were established in the town
1900 The company employed more than 200 men. Robert Boby had died by this date.
1900 June. Royal Agricultural Show at York. Showed grain-dressing machines [2]
1906 Employing more than 300 men
By 1918 was "associated" with Messrs Vickers[3]
1920 Catalogue of pneumatic conveyors [4]
1927 Taken over by Vickers
Maker of plant for maltings, breweries, distilleries, and plant for seed cleaning and flax handling.
WWII Changed over almost completely to production of armaments, continued a small production of flax-hanlding machinery[5]
1970s Works closed
One of the buildings from Boby's factory has been dismantled and re-erected at the Museum of East Anglian Life
See Also
Sources of Information
- [1] MERL