Wilmshurst and Batho
of Kenyon Street (Keynon Street?), St. George's Road, Manchester
1842 Partnership dissolved between Thomas Wilmshurst the younger and Nathaniel Batho, as machine and tool makers at Manchester, under the firm of Wilmshurst and Batho, dissolved 26 February 1842 [1]
1842 Advertisement (note - spelling as in original advertisement, including 'Wilmhurst'): 'Important Sale of Valuable Modern Tools.
T. M. FISHER, on Friday, the 25th of February, 1842, at the machine shop, Kenyon-street, St. Georges-road, Manchester, in the occupation of Messrs. Wilmhurst and Batho, who are declining business; sale to commence at eleven o'clock in the forenoon:
ALL their highly Valuable TOOLS and STOCK, comprising power planing machine, bed 60 feet long. 4 feet wide, will take in 4 feet high, self acting in the angular, vertical, and horizontal cuts (on Collier's principle;) ditto ditto, bed 7 feet long, 2 feet wide, will take in 2 feet deep; very strong double-geared patent slide lathe, 18-inch headstocks, bed 20 feet long, with regulating screw, slide rest, change wheels, planed carriage, and driving apparatus; pair patent 18-inch headstocks, fitted for slide lathe; ditto ditto, 16-inch ditto; twelve-inch double-geared slide lathe, bed 12 feet long, with two face plates, chuck, regulating screw, slide rest, change wheels, and driving apparatus: ten-inch patent double geared lathe, bed 12 feet long, with two face plates, hollow chuck, universal face plate, slide rest, and driving apparatus; twelve-inch double-geared lathe, with two face plates, rest, and driving apparatus; six ten-inch double-geared lathes, on an improved principle, each with face plates, chucks, slide rests, and eccentric locks; cross slide for planing machine, 3 feet patent double screw bolt machine with taps, dies, and steel guages up to 2 inches diameter, & double gearing; ditto, do., do., ditto, single geering; single screw bolt machine, with ditto, ditto, to inch diameter; two cast iron vice benches, each with six drawers, locks, and keys, two large fixed vices, eccentric shaft, and pulleys; patent nut trimming and tap grooving machine, with cutters; ' three smiths' hearths and tools, boring bars, maundrills, bits, turning, boring, and planing tools, and most valuable stock of new patterns for all the above machines, and also for two sizes of patent drilling machines; cast, wrought, and scrap iron, files, tools, driving straps, and counting-house fixtures. Also, a patent-right for improvements in lathes, planing and drilling machines.
Catalogues will published on the 17th, and may be had the premises, when the whole will on view ; or from the Auctioneer, 17. Princess-street, Manchester; who will forward them to parties living at a distance, on application being made him by post.' [2]
Note, another 1842 advertisement includes a fuller address - Manchester Foundry, Kenyon-street, St. George's-road' [3]
Location
The 1849 O.S. map [4] shows the location of 'Manchester Foundry', being at the end of the short Keynon Street, which branches off Rochdale Road (formerly St Georges Road), close to the junction with Miller Street and Swan Street.
Goad's Insurance Plans show that in 1888 the premises were occupied by Baxendale and Co and known as their 'Keynon Street Iron Works'.
The premises were still shown on the 1915 O.S. map, marked as 'Iron Works (Disused)'.
Although the address was 'Manchester Foundry', it will be noted that the sale notice does not include any foundry equipment, and it may be that the firm occupied an old foundry building and bought the castings in, which would have been unusual in that era, although it would allow a smaller workforce to focus on machine tool production. Bancks's map of 1831 shows the site occupied by 'Norris & Hodges's Cotton Mill', and evidently parts of the later foundry buildings were already present at that time.