Droylsden

Location:

Clinker manufacture operational: ?1914-?late 1930s

Approximate total clinker production: unknown: ?300,000 t

Raw materials:

Ownership:

I began this page by saying that I know almost nothing about this plant, and have only a number of tangential references. However, it is gradually emerging as a spectral presence. That I was ignorant of its existence for so long (as was everybody else) is a profound embarrassment. The tiny snippets of information which allow a picture to be built up are as follows.

The site is now called Copperas Fields. It is on the north bank of the Ashton Canal. The canal allowed transport of products to Manchester city centre, and transport of Dove Holes limestone and lime via the Peak Forest tramway and canal. Copperas - iron (II) sulfate - was made on the site throughout the 19th century, by the Buckley family. It was made by the traditional method of rotting down a mixture of crude pyrite and scrap iron, and leaching out the salt. Iron sulfate was used as a mordant for textile dyes before the new synthetic dyes were introduced. The last of the owners, Edmund Buckley, MP for Newcastle under Lyme, having purchased a great many properties in Wales, went bankrupt following a slump in the slate industry in 1876. He seems to have kept the copperas works, which continued in operation, and also began making potassium ferrocyanide on an adjacent site.

He died 21 March 1910. On 23 July 1912, the trustees auctioned his English properties in Manchester.

On 23 December 1913, an article appeared in the Manchester Courier, saying:

We are given to understand that a new industry is about to be introduced into this district, viz., the manufacture of Portland cement within three miles of the Manchester Town Hall.
Mr B. Carrington Sellars, J.P., proprietor of the East Lancashire Chemical Co., has acquired the old-established works and land covering 14 acres, at Fairfield, lately belonging to Sir Edmund Buckley, Bart., which have been established since about the year 17890. He is at present engaged in reconstructing them, and is putting down boilers and plant of the very latest type for the production of a large quantity of Portland cement weekly, the whole of which, he says, can be consumed locally in the ferro-concrete buildings which are becoming so popular, as well as numerous other purposes for which cement is now required.
The raw materials are lime, from the Buxton district, and shale, which is obtained about a mile and a half from the Royal Exchange. The cement already produced from these materials has proved to be of the most excellent quality, and will pass all the severe tests of the B.S.S. The machinery is capable of extremely fine grinding. The cement gives steady increase of strength, minimum expansion, and high tensile strain.
An interesting feature is that Buckleys is one of the few surviving firms in Lancashire which exhibited at the great London Exhibitions of 1851 and 1862, receiving honourable mention and prize medals.

I have found no further newspaper references to the plant. Barratt Obadiah Carrington Sellars (b. 1865 Birkenhead, d 23/02/1927 Audenshaw) was son of John Carrington Sellars (b Manchester) who was involved in the Seacombe cement plant. "Sellar's Cement", which continued to be made, was primarily a pipe jointing and insulating compound, including sodium silicate. Barratt Sellars moved to Manchester in the 1880s to manage the family's East Lancashire Chemical Company site at Edge Lane, Droylsden, which was primarily involved in alkali manufacture by the Leblanc Process. This required import of High Peak limestone down the canal, and produced calcium sulfide waste. He evidently acquired the Buckley copperas and ferrocyanide sites in 1912.

At the time of his death in 1927, he was described as "proprietor of the East Lancashire Chemical Co and the Portland Cement Works Droylsden".

A. C. Davis published small-scale maps of British cement plants in his 1909 and 1934 editions. In the Mersey valley area, the 1909 edition shows only the Crosfield plant. The 1934 edition shows the Ellesmere Port and Crosfield plants, and another further east that might be in East Manchester. I had always assumed that this was an error, since these maps are extremely inaccurate in other places. There is no plant list in that edition.

A 1944 report to the ICI Board (GCD13522) on the potential cement market in the Mersey area said:

The nearest cement plants are at Clitheroe, Lancs; and Hope, Derbyshire; and there is also a clinker grinder at Droylsden, Manchester . . . . .

However, the fforde Report on the cement industry (1946) did not include it in its comprehensive list of plants.

The Ordnance Survey maps of the area (at 1:2500) show no features that would immediately indicate a cement plant. However there are a few Aerofilms images (EPW060410, 11, 12 & 15) of the Ferguson Pailin Electrical Engineering Works, Openshaw, that show the plant site in the dim distance. They seem to show a rotary kiln.

There is no hard evidence about this plant; no maps or plans, no list of plant items, no production data, no firm dates. It might have been a grinding plant, but who could possibly have supplied it with clinker? A reference to the Sellars refusing to pay "kick-backs" during WWII suggests that clinker might have been provided "under the counter". At present, the balance of probability is that it did make Portland cement in a small way, perhaps along the lines of the other waste-consuming plants in the area.

Power supply

No information, but Sellars installed "boilers". Externally supplied electricity was readily available in the area.

Rawmills

No information other than the maps, which might show two washmills, and a set of four 30' mixers. The aerial photography shows a system of conveyors and elevators which suggests a closed circuit system, with perhaps a Trix-type separator and a re-grind mill.

Kilns

Perhaps one rotary kiln was installed. It might have been around 35-40 m long, output 50-70 t/day. It could have been supplied by one of the German firms, or by Newell although the latter did not mention it in their 1914 article (The Engineer 118, 20/11/1914, pp 477-8). If German, then as at Wishaw, etc, it may not have been commissioned until after the war.


Sources: