Boulton & Paul Ltd was a British general manufacturer from

Norwich, England Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of the county of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. It lies by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. The population of the Norwich ...

that became involved in aircraft manufacture. Jeld Wen Inc. bought Boulton & Paul (along with another joinery company John Carr) from the Rugby Group plc in 1999 to form its British subsidiary.

History

The company's origins date back to an ironmonger's shop founded in 1797 in

Norwich Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of the county of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. It lies by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. The population of the Norwich ...

by William Moore. William Staples Boulton joined the ironworks firm of Moore & Barnard in 1844. By 1870 Boulton had been elevated to a partner alongside of John Barnard and the firm was renamed to Barnard & Boulton. A later partner in the firm was Joseph Paul, and the firm was again renamed to Boulton & Paul Ltd, which started its construction engineering division in 1905. By the early 1900s, Boulton & Paul Ltd had become a successful general manufacturing firm. During the Second World War it was a major producer of

prefabricated building A prefabricated building, informally a prefab, is a building that is manufactured and constructed using prefabrication. It consists of factory-made components or units that are transported and assembled on-site to form the complete building. Vario ...

s, wire netting and wooden sub-assemblies of aircraft. In 1942 the Midland Woodworking Company of

Melton Mowbray Melton Mowbray () is a market town in the Borough of Melton, Melton district in Leicestershire, England, north-east of Leicester and south-east of Nottingham. It lies on the River Eye, Leicestershire, River Eye, known below Melton as the Rive ...

became a subsidiary. Richard Jewson of the

Jewson Jewson is one of the largest chains of British general builders' merchants, selling to small and medium building contractors. The chain comprises around 500 branches located all across Great Britain. Jewson is part of Denmark's Stark Group, STAR ...

timber merchants and former Lord Mayor of Norwich was a member of the board until retiring in 1947.

Corrugated iron buildings

In the 1880s Boulton & Paul were leading manufacturers of kits for corrugated iron buildings, which arrived in packing crates ready to be erected. Woodhall Spa Cottage Museum is a well-preserved example of a Boulton & Paul corrugated building as is the conservatory at Carrow House in Norwich, the former management building at the

Colman's Colman's is an English manufacturer of mustard and other sauces, formerly based and produced for 160 years at Carrow, in Norwich, Norfolk. Owned by Unilever since 1995, Colman's is one of the oldest existing food brands, famous for a limited ra ...

mustard works.

Monkton Combe School Monkton Combe School is a public school ( fee-charging boarding and day school), in the village of Monkton Combe near Bath in Somerset, England. History Monkton Combe School was founded in 1868 by the Revd. Francis Pocock, a former curate ...

's first cricket pavilion was erected by Boulton & Paul in 1884 and a cost of £50. It was demolished in 1970.

Other building types

Boulton & Paul was one of the first manufacturers of prefabricated "Residences, Bungalows and Cottages", which they sent to destinations all over the British Empire and South America. Its 1920 catalogue contained a choice of twenty-two designs with several varieties of bungalow illustrated, ranging from the 'Modern Residential', through the 'Week-End' and the 'Seaside' to the plain and ordinary (with

verandah A veranda (also spelled verandah in Australian and New Zealand English) is a roofed, open-air hallway or porch, attached to the outside of a building. A veranda is often partly enclosed by a railing and frequently extends across the front an ...

). Many of its buildings are still in use, and include Castle Bungalow at Peppercombe,

Devon Devon ( ; historically also known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel to the north, Somerset and Dorset to the east, the English Channel to the south, and Cornwall to the west ...

(a former boathouse which is now a holiday cottage owned by the

Landmark Trust The Landmark Trust is a British architectural conservation, building conservation charitable organization, charity, founded in 1965 by John Smith (Conservative politician), Sir John and Lady Smith, that rescues buildings of historic interest or ...

) and

's thatched sports pavilion on Longmead, often referred to as one of the most beautiful cricket pitches in England, which is visible from the A36 in Somerset.

Aircraft manufacture

In 1915, Boulton & Paul began to construct aircraft under contract including 550 of the Royal Aircraft Factory FE.2b. Fe.2 construction was passed over to another

East Anglia East Anglia is an area of the East of England, often defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, with parts of Essex sometimes also included. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, ...

n company so Boulton Paul could concentrate on production of more advanced designs. Their extensive use of jigs and the manufacture of the smaller fittings required meant that they could maintain fast production. A new production site was built and an assembly and proving ground developed on

Mousehold Heath Mousehold Heath is a freely accessible area of heathland and woodland which lies to the north-east of the Middle Ages, medieval city boundary of Norwich, in the English county of Norfolk. The name also refers to the much larger area of open ...

in Norwich rather than transport the aircraft to the Army at

Thetford Thetford is a market town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the Breckland District of Norfolk, England. It is on the A11 road (England), A11 road between Norwich and London, just east of Thetford Forest. The civil parish, coverin ...

. During the war the company built more

Sopwith Camel The Sopwith Camel is a British First World War single-seat biplane fighter aircraft that was introduced on the Western Front in 1917. It was developed by the Sopwith Aviation Company as a successor to the Sopwith Pup and became one of the b ...

s than any other manufacturer. Success as a builder of aircraft led to the company forming a design department but none of its resulting aircraft made a significant impact while the war lasted. The P.3 Bobolink fighter was overshadowed by the

Sopwith Snipe The Sopwith 7F.1 Snipe is a British single-seat biplane fighter of the Royal Air Force (RAF). It was designed and built by the Sopwith Aviation Company during the First World War, and came into squadron service a few weeks before the end of the ...

and the

Armistice An armistice is a formal agreement of warring parties to stop fighting. It is not necessarily the end of a war, as it may constitute only a cessation of hostilities while an attempt is made to negotiate a lasting peace. It is derived from t ...

came before the P.7 Bourges bomber into production. Boulton & Paul developed steel-framed aircraft under their designer

John Dudley North John Dudley North (1893–11 January 1968), CBE, HonFRAeS, MIMechE, was Chairman and Managing Director of Boulton Paul Aircraft. Born at 18 Kinver Road North, Peak Hill, Sydenham, London in 1893 and educated at Bedford School, North became Chie ...

. The first was the Boulton & Paul P.10 which used steel tubes rolled from sheet metal. It was exhibited – but not flown – at the

Paris Air Show The Paris Air Show (, ''Salon du Bourget'') is a trade fair and air show held in odd years at Paris–Le Bourget Airport in France. Organized by the French aerospace industry's primary representative body, the ''Groupement des industries frança ...

in 1919. Official interest in metal frame designs led to an order of a single Boulton & Paul Bolton, a twin-engine bomber design. In the same period Boulton & Paul produced another metal framed design, the Boulton & Paul Bodmin, with its engines in the fuselage. North believed that a metal frame could be 10% lighter than an equivalent wooden frame. After World War I, Boulton & Paul made its mark with the introduction of powered and enclosed defensive machine-gun turrets for

bomber A bomber is a military combat aircraft that utilizes air-to-ground weaponry to drop bombs, launch aerial torpedo, torpedoes, or deploy air-launched cruise missiles. There are two major classifications of bomber: strategic and tactical. Strateg ...

s. Its

Sidestrand Sidestrand is a village and a civil parish on the coast of the England, English county of Norfolk. The village is north of Norwich, south east of Cromer and north-east of London. The nearest railway station is at North Walsham railway stati ...

twin-engined

biplane A biplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with two main wings stacked one above the other. The first powered, controlled aeroplane to fly, the Wright Flyer, used a biplane wing arrangement, as did many aircraft in the early years of aviation. While ...

bomber, which could fly at 140 mph, had an exposed nose turret that was clearly inadequate. The subsequent Overstrand bomber featured the world's first enclosed, power-operated turret, mounting a single Lewis gun and propelled by compressed air. The company licensed a French design of an electro-hydraulic four-gun turret that became a major feature of its future production. In addition to fitting turrets to bombers, Boulton & Paul was to install them in fighters. Boulton & Paul provided most of the structure for the

R101 R101 was one of a pair of British rigid airships completed in 1929 as part of the Imperial Airship Scheme, a British government programme to develop civil airships capable of service on long-distance routes within the British Empire. It was d ...

airship; the completed sections being transported to RAF Cardington for assembly there. The R101 subsequently flew over Norwich in return. In a depressed market in 1934, the aircraft division being its weakest, Boulton & Paul Ltd sold its aircraft manufacturing component from the main construction business to create

Boulton Paul Aircraft Ltd Boulton Paul Aircraft Ltd was a British aircraft manufacturer that was incorporated in 1934, although its origins in aircraft manufacturing began earlier in 1914 and lasted until 1961. The company mainly built and modified aircraft under con ...

. This moved to

Wolverhampton Wolverhampton ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands (county), West Midlands of England. Located around 12 miles (20 km) north of Birmingham, it forms the northwestern part of the West Midlands conurbation, with the towns of ...

in 1936 as the area had a surplus of skilled labour and the council was able to provide an incentive in the form of a greenfield site and flying rights. In 1961 Boulton Paul Aircraft, by now a producer of aircraft equipment rather than complete aircraft, merged with the Dowty Group to form first Dowty Boulton Paul Ltd and then Dowty Aerospace.

Boulton Paul aircraft at Norwich

''First flight date shown'' * Boulton Paul P.3 Bobolink 1918 * Boulton Paul P.6 1918 * Boulton Paul P.7 Bourges 1918 * Boulton Paul Atlantic 1919 * Boulton Paul P.9 1919 * Boulton Paul P.10 1919 * Boulton Paul Bolton 1922 * Boulton Paul Bugle 1923 * Boulton Paul Bodmin 1924 * Boulton Paul P.29 Sidestrand 1926 – bomber * Boulton Paul P.31 Bittern 1927 * Boulton Paul Partridge 1928 * Boulton Paul Phoenix 1929 * Boulton Paul P.32 1931 * Boulton Paul P.75 Overstrand 1933 – bomber * Boulton Paul P.64 Mailplane 1933 * Boulton Paul P.71A 1934

References

Citations Bibliography *
Boulton & Paul aircraft history described in 1922 issue of ''Flight''
* *

External links

Boulton Paul
– British Aircraft Directory *
Building Britain's WW1 flying boat fleet
{{DEFAULTSORT:Boulton and Paul Ltd Defunct aircraft manufacturers of the United Kingdom Defunct manufacturing companies of the United Kingdom Companies based in Norwich Wolverhampton History of Norwich