Coventry Ordnance Works advertisement Brasseys 1915

Coventry Ordnance Works was a British manufacturer of heavy guns particularly

naval artillery Naval artillery is artillery mounted on a warship, originally used only for naval warfare and then subsequently used for naval gunfire support, shore bombardment and anti-aircraft roles. The term generally refers to tube-launched projectile-firi ...

jointly owned by Cammell Laird & Co of Sheffield and Birkenhead,

Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company The Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, Limited was a Scottish shipbuilding company in the Govan area on the Clyde in Glasgow. Fairfields, as it is often known, was a major warship builder, turning out many vessels for the Royal Navy ...

of Govan, Glasgow and

John Brown & Company John Brown and Company of Clydebank was a Scottish marine engineering and shipbuilding firm. It built many notable and world-famous ships including , , , , , and the ''Queen Elizabeth 2''. At its height, from 1900 to the 1950s, it was one of ...

of Clydebank and Sheffield. Its core operations were from a 60-acre site in Stoney Stanton Road in the English city of

Coventry Coventry ( or ) is a city in the West Midlands, England. It is on the River Sherbourne. Coventry has been a large settlement for centuries, although it was not founded and given its city status until the Middle Ages. The city is governed ...

, Warwickshire. At the end of 1918 it became a principal constituent of a brand new enterprise English Electric Company Limited. After World War II the works made electricity-generating machinery and heavy machine tools.

History

Consortium

The company, the Coventry Ordnance Works Limited, was formed in July 1905 by a consortium of British shipbuilding firms John Brown 50%,

Cammell Laird Cammell Laird is a British shipbuilding company. It was formed from the merger of Laird Brothers of Birkenhead and Johnson Cammell & Co of Sheffield at the turn of the twentieth century. The company also built railway rolling stock until 1929, ...

25% and Fairfield 25% with the encouragement of the British government, which wanted a third major arms consortium to compete with the

duopoly A duopoly (from Greek δύο, ''duo'' "two" and πωλεῖν, ''polein'' "to sell") is a type of oligopoly where two firms have dominant or exclusive control over a market. It is the most commonly studied form of oligopoly due to its simplicity ...

of Vickers Sons & Maxim and Sir W G Armstrong Whitworth & Co to drive down prices. The new company bought (as from 1 January 1905, 6 months earlier) from Cammell Laird the ordnance business established in the late 1890s by H H Mulliner and F Wigley which had been moved by them in 1902 from Birmingham to the 60-acre site in Coventry's Stoney Stanton Road.Messrs Mulliner’s works in Coventry
The ''Coventry Evening Telegraph'' of Tuesday 25 February 1902 reported that Mulliners had purchased the premises on Stoney Stanton Road built for Mr Hooley’s cycle-tube manufactory where they were erecting new workshops which when complete would cover the area from the canal bank almost to Red Lane. They forecast "Before many months are past 1,000 hands will be employed initially on making gun carriages for the War Office and Admiralty." The railway line was to be extended from the brick works across the highway to the northern end of Mulliner’s works. The ordnance business had been bought from Mulliner and Wigley by Charles Cammell, later Cammell Laird, in 1903.''Coventry Evening Telegraph'' Friday 20 February 1903
"Mulliner Wigley & Co, carriage manufacturers etc of Coventry and Birmingham is being acquired by Charles Cammell Limited, iron and steel manufacturers of Sheffield"

Further expansion

By 1909 Coventry Ordnance Works had establishments, as well as at Coventry, at

Scotstoun Scotstoun ( gd, Baile an Sgotaich) is an area of Glasgow, Scotland, west of Glasgow City Centre. It is bounded by Garscadden and Yoker to the west, Victoria Park, Jordanhill and Whiteinch to the east, Jordanhill to the north and the River Clyde ...

for manufacture of ordnance and gun equipment; for cordite shell loading and explosive magazines at Cliffe; and a gun-proving ground with a land range of 22,000 yards at

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the capital city, state capital and List of municipalities in Massachusetts, most populous city of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financ ...

and was handling an order for 12 inch mountings of one of the new battleships.The Director Of Naval Ordnance. ''The Times'', Wednesday, 24 November 1909; pg. 9; Issue 39125 While to that time the works had been manufacturing the smaller sizes of Naval Guns and Mountings as well as Guns, Gun carriages, Ammunition and other military accessories, they had already extended their works since 1906 and had begun the manufacture of Guns and Turrets up to the largest sizes for both Battleships and Cruisers for the Admiralty. At Scotstoun a new factory had been built with a wet dock, pits and machinery for the erection and transhipping of the heaviest guns and mountings and hydraulic barbettes of the firm's own design but it was unused until 1911. A complete factory for the manufacture of

Fuze In military munitions, a fuze (sometimes fuse) is the part of the device that initiates function. In some applications, such as torpedoes, a fuze may be identified by function as the exploder. The relative complexity of even the earliest fuze de ...

s had also been installed in Coventry.Coventry Ordnance Works, Ltd. ''The Times'', Tuesday, 8 February 1910; pg. 13; Issue 39190

Admiralty

To this point Herbert Hall Mulliner (1861-1924) had continued as managing director, but after a long series of altercations with the Admiralty he was asked to resign, compensated, and replaced 3 February 1910 by the 46-year-old rear-admiral R H S Bacon"At a salary of £7,000 a year for seven years." The Navy Estimates. House Of Commons. ''The Times'', Thursday, 17 Mar 1910; pg. 8; Issue 39222 "Few of Bacon's contemporaries denied his brilliance, but many felt that he was also blinkered, arrogant, slow to acknowledge his mistakes, and a poor leader of men." Historian

Mike Dash Mike Dash is a Welsh writer, historian, and researcher. He has written books and articles about dramatic episodes in history. Biography Dash was born in London. He attended Peterhouse, a college at the University of Cambridge particularly noted ...

observes that while ''"there is no doubt that ismastery of the technology with which he dealt reinforced the independence of the submarine branch, he was a remote and stubborn centraliser who rarely admitted he needed help from anybody"''. Dash, Michael. ''British Submarine Policy 1853-1918''. Unpublished PhD thesis, Department of War Studies, King's College London, 1990, p. 158 who had been the Admiralty's Director of Naval Ordnance since August 1907. By early February with admiral Bacon on board and Mulliner off it the directors could report an order from the British Admiralty for the mountings of all the heavy guns of one of the latest battleships that brought into operation for the first time the most costly and most important part of the company's new plant ending a long difficult period for Coventry Ordnance Works. Early in 1915 Bacon was appointed to the Royal Marines.

World War I

Coventry Ordnance Works gun mountings WWI IWM Q 30133

NLS Haig - Getting Granny ready to strafe the Germans

Coventry Ordnance Works designed and built: * the highly successful QF 4.5 inch Howitzer which entered service in 1910, * Coventry Ordnance Works Biplane a 1912 military aircraft * the 5.5 inch Naval gun 1913, and * the 15 inch siege howitzer completed 1914 for the British Army. * Their C.O.W. 37mm gun was the first modern

autocannon An autocannon, automatic cannon or machine cannon is a fully automatic gun that is capable of rapid-firing large-caliber ( or more) armour-piercing, explosive or incendiary shells, as opposed to the smaller-caliber kinetic projectiles (bulle ...

developed in 1917.

Interwar

At their Annual General Meeting four days after the armistice Dick, Kerr & Co Limited announced a provisional agreement for amalgamation with Coventry Ordnance Works Limited. Subsequently English Electric Company Limited was formed at the end of 1918 to own all the shares of Coventry Ordnance Works,

Phoenix Dynamo Manufacturing Company Phoenix Dynamo Manufacturing Company Limited of Hubert Street, Leeds Road, Bradford, Yorkshire, electrical engineers, manufactured small and large motors, alternators and generators at their Thornbury works. They briefly manufactured major aircra ...

and Dick Kerr & Co together with the

United Electric Car Company The United Electric Car Company was a tramcar manufacturer from 1905 to 1917 in Preston, Lancashire, England. History The Electric Railway and Tramway Carriage Works was formed in 1897 registered on 25 April 1898 to acquire works at Preston ...

and Willans & Robinson. It was anticipated that the new combine would be one of the three principal electrical manufacturing concerns in the country. It was intended that its business would be in large schemes such as the electrification of railways, the construction of large central power stations and the development of hydro-electric installations.Chairman's address to the Annual General Meeting, Fairfield Shipbuilding And Engineering Company (Limited). ''The Times'', Saturday, 8 March 1919; pg. 16; Issue 42043

Coventry

It struggled in the recession after the end of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

which affected Britain's arms industry and closed in 1925.

Scotstoun

Harland and Wolff Harland & Wolff is a British shipbuilding company based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It specialises in ship repair, shipbuilding and offshore construction. Harland & Wolff is famous for having built the majority of the ocean liners for the ...

, who took over the Scotstoun, Glasgow, works from Coventry Ordnance Works in 1920, converted it for diesel engine manufacture. Little investment was made and the firm had to seek civil engineering contracts away from shipbuilding in order to minimise losses. In 1927 the factory was put on a care and maintenance basis.

World War II

The beginning of a national rearmament programme in 1936 prompted the re-commissioning of the works to make gun mountings.

Postwar

After the war, they continued to build naval guns into the late 1960s, building the " standard" 4.5" turrets for the County class destroyers and other classes. Barrels were brought in from

Vickers-Armstrongs Vickers-Armstrongs Limited was a British engineering conglomerate formed by the merger of the assets of Vickers Limited and Sir W G Armstrong Whitworth & Company in 1927. The majority of the company was nationalised in the 1960s and 1970s, w ...

but in earlier times they were made locally at Beardmores in Parkhead. Work was also switched to the manufacture of hydro-electric plant for the

North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board The North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board (1943–1990) was founded to design, construct and manage hydroelectricity projects in the Highlands of Scotland. It is regarded as one of the major achievements of Scottish politician Thomas Johnston, w ...

, Notable examples are the turbines for Cruachan power station and the Snowy Mountains scheme in Australia. and then to 'Danly' steel presses for the motor industry. these were supplied to British Pressed Steel at Linwood, Paisley, Longbridge, Dagenham and Liverpool. and gas engine driven compressors. In 1969 the works was sold to Albion Motors, whose main factory had been situated on the opposite side of South Street. This factory had some of the largest

machine tool A machine tool is a machine for handling or machining metal or other rigid materials, usually by cutting, boring, grinding, shearing, or other forms of deformations. Machine tools employ some sort of tool that does the cutting or shaping. All ...

s in the UK. One, a vertical boring mill had a turntable 36' in diameter, used for machining the gun turret gear rings. This and other machines lent themselves to the machining of large turbine casing castings for the hydro-electric schemes. The building had three tiers of overhead cranes and could together lift several hundred tons. The building still continues to manufacture automotive parts under the ownership of Albion, now a subsidiary of American Axle.

Notes

References

Bibliography

External links

The 15-inch Guns of Vanguard, Courageous and Glorious

Glasgow University Archive Services, photographic collection

{{Coord, 52, 25, 8.12, N, 1, 29, 34.73, W, scale:12500_region:GB, display=title Defunct manufacturing companies of the United Kingdom Defence companies of the United Kingdom Buildings and structures in Coventry