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Haigh Foundry was an ironworks and foundry in Haigh,
Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated ''Lancs'') is a ceremonial county in North West England. It is bordered by Cumbria to the north, North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to the east, Greater Manchester and Merseyside to the south, and the Irish Sea to ...
, which was notable for the manufacture of early
steam locomotive A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, Fuel oil, oil or, rarely, Wood fuel, wood) to heat ...
s.


Origins

Haigh Foundry was established in the Douglas Valley in Haigh around 1790 by
Alexander Lindsay, 6th Earl of Balcarres General Alexander Lindsay, 6th Earl of Balcarres, 23rd Earl of Crawford (18 January 175227 March 1825), styled Lord Balniel until 1768, was a British Army officer, politician and colonial administrator who served as the governor of Jamaica fro ...
and his brother Robert, as an
ironworks An ironworks or iron works is an industrial plant where iron is smelted and where heavy iron and steel products are made. The term is both singular and plural, i.e. the singular of ''ironworks'' is ''ironworks''. Ironworks succeeded bloome ...
and
foundry A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal into a mold, and removing the mold material after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals pr ...
. The ironworks was not a success but the foundry was, particularly after Robert Daglish became chief engineer in 1804, and the works acquired a reputation for manufacturing winding engines and pumping equipment for the coal mining industry. The foundry was leased by E.Evans and T.C.Ryley in 1835 for 21 years. The partners intended to produce railway locomotives and were later joined by Mr Burrows. In 1855 Haigh Foundry and Brock Mill Forge were offered for lease. They had manufactured some of "the largest pumping engines and the most powerful factory engines in the kingdom" in the previous decade. The iron works, on the bank of the River Douglas, consisted of a foundry, five
cupola furnace A cupola or cupola furnace is a melting device used in foundries that can be used to melt cast iron, Ni-resist iron and some bronzes. The cupola can be made almost any practical size. The size of a cupola is expressed in diameters and can range ...
s, three air furnaces for making the largest
casting Casting is a manufacturing process in which a liquid material is usually poured into a mold, which contains a hollow cavity of the desired shape, and then allowed to solidify. The solidified part is also known as a casting, which is ejected or ...
s and another foundry for smaller pieces. Also on site were blacksmiths' and pattern-makers' shops, an office, a drawing shop, the foreman's house, a boiler yard and an iron warehouse. A
water wheel A water wheel is a machine for converting the kinetic energy of flowing or falling water into useful forms of power, often in a watermill. A water wheel consists of a large wheel (usually constructed from wood or metal), with numerous b ...
driven by the river powered the machinery,
line shaft A line shaft is a power-driven rotating shaft for power transmission that was used extensively from the Industrial Revolution until the early 20th century. Prior to the widespread use of electric motors small enough to be connected directly to ...
s and furnace blasts. The forge was powered by water and steam. Part of the works where spade making was carried out had Naysmyth
steam hammer A steam hammer, also called a drop hammer, is an industrial power hammer driven by steam that is used for tasks such as shaping forgings and driving piles. Typically the hammer is attached to a piston that slides within a fixed Pneumatic cylin ...
s and a
rolling mill In metalworking, rolling is a metal forming process in which metal stock is passed through one or more pairs of rolls to reduce the thickness, to make the thickness uniform, and/or to impart a desired mechanical property. The concept is simi ...
. Also for lease was the
firebrick A fire brick, firebrick, fireclay brick, or refractory brick is a block of ceramic material used in lining furnaces, kilns, fireboxes, and fireplaces. Made of primarily oxide materials like silica and alumina in varying ratios, these insulati ...
and tile works which used
fire clay Fire clay is a range of refractory clays used in the manufacture of ceramics, especially fire brick. The United States Environmental Protection Agency defines fire clay very generally as a "mineral aggregate composed of hydrous silicates of alumi ...
from a nearby pit and had a
kiln A kiln is a thermally insulated chamber, a type of oven, that produces temperatures sufficient to complete some process, such as hardening, drying, or Chemical Changes, chemical changes. Kilns have been used for millennia to turn objects m ...
, drying sheds and steam powered grinding wheels. The manager's house and cottages for workers were part of the lease. A railway line connecting it to the Lancashire and Yorkshire and
London and North Western Railway The London and North Western Railway (LNWR, L&NWR) was a British railway company between 1846 and 1922. In the late 19th century, the LNWR was the largest joint stock company in the world. Dubbed the "Premier Line", the LNWR's main line connec ...
s was being built.


Locomotives and other products

Lancashire's first three steam locomotives were built here in 1812, 1815 and 1816 for John Clarke's Winstanley Colliery Railway at Orrell. In 1819, the firm built an 84" cylinder Cornish beam engine and beam engines were also exported to the colonies before 1820. After 1835 the foundry produced and type locomotives, many subcontracted from
Edward Bury and Company Bury, Curtis and Kennedy was a steam locomotive manufacturer in Liverpool, England. Edward Bury established the works in 1826, under the name Edward Bury and Company. He employed James Kennedy (engineer), James Kennedy as foreman; Kennedy later ...
. In 1837 ''Ajax'' was supplied to the
Leicester and Swannington Railway The Leicester and Swannington Railway (L&SR) was one of England's first railways, built to bring coal from West Leicestershire collieries to Leicester, where there was great industrial demand for coal. The line opened in 1832, and included a tun ...
, followed by ''Hector'', an , a design so powerful that orders were received from a number of other railways. The company built two broad gauge locomotives for the
Great Western Railway The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a History of rail transport in Great Britain, British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, ...
with upward gearing in 1838 but these were not successful and the gearing was removed around 1840. Four more s for the South Devon Railway were built to a design by
Daniel Gooch Sir Daniel Gooch, 1st Baronet (24 August 1816 – 15 October 1889) was an English railway locomotive and transatlantic cable engineer. He was the first Locomotive Superintendent, Superintendent of Locomotive Engines on the Great Western Ra ...
in the 1850s (''Damon, Falcon, Orion'' and ''Priam''). The works continued to build locomotives on their account, and under sub-contract. Among these were long boiler types for Jones and Potts and three for T.R.Crampton. In 1855 two locomotives for use in the
Crimean War The Crimean War was fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, the Second French Empire, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Kingdom of Sardinia (1720–1861), Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont fro ...
, capable of hauling guns up inclines as steep as 1 in 10, were reputed to have been built with horizontal cylindrical furnaces, rather than rectangular fireboxes, and boilers fed by force pumps. They were described as having outside cylinders driving the third set of wheels, while two pairs of wheels were flangeless. The description given here is from the only reference to them from an unreliable list produced in the 1890s. No such engines were recorded in the Crimea, and it is probable they were never built. When the lease expired in 1856, Haigh Foundry had built over 100 locomotives, produced
swing bridge A swing bridge (or swing span bridge) is a movable bridge that can be rotated horizontally around a vertical axis. It has as its primary structural support a vertical locating pin and support ring, usually at or near to its center of gravit ...
s for
Hull Docks The Port of Hull is a port at the confluence of the River Hull and the Humber Estuary in Kingston upon Hull, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. Seaborne trade at the port can be traced to at least the 13th century, originally cond ...
, ironwork for the Albert Dock in Liverpool and some massive pumping engines. The pumping engine for Mostyn Colliery, Flintshire weighing 30 tons was 17 feet long and had a 100" bore cylinder and it is believed that when built in 1848, it was the largest cylinder in the world. Bettisfield Colilery at welshcoalmines.co.uk
/ref> In 1849 the company delivered about 1000 yards of 40 inch cast-iron water pipes for the Manchester Corporation Waterworks Scheme in the Longdendale Chain.


Birley & Thompson

The new leasees, Birley & Thompson, concentrated on heavy engineering but made at least two locomotives and quoted unsuccessfully for the Festiniog Railway's 'Prince' class. The company produced stationary engines including a 100" x 14 ft stroke beam engine for the Talargoch Lead Mine (the engine house survives) and a 1000 h.p. McNaught compound beam engine for a cotton spinning mill. Other examples were supplied to many Lancashire collieries. Until 1860, everything that Haigh Foundry made had to be hauled up the steep and twisting Leyland Mill Lane. Teams of up to 48 horses were needed, many hired from local farmers. However a railway line was built from the Earl of Crawford & Balcarres' colliery network at
Aspull Aspull is a village in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, in Greater Manchester, England. Historically in Lancashire, Aspull, along with Haigh, is surrounded by greenbelt and agricultural land, separated from Westhoughton, on its southeast side ...
in 1860 and was replaced in 1869 by a link from the
Lancashire Union Railway The Lancashire Union Railway ran between Blackburn and St Helens in Lancashire, England. It was built primarily to carry goods between Blackburn and Garston Dock on the River Mersey, and also to serve collieries in the Wigan area. Most of th ...
's 'Whelley' loop. The foundry designed and built large winding, pumping and mill engines, heavy engineering and architectural castings until early 1885. The firm's assets were sold in September of that year. Many of the foundry buildings survive along with two cast iron bridges used by the works railway line. Part of the premises is still an iron foundry, though on a somewhat smaller scale.


References

{{Reflist Locomotive manufacturers of the United Kingdom Companies based in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan