Four Families in the Fens
In a triangle marked by Bedford, Cambridge and Peterborough, there is an expanse of low country and fenland which was for centuries one of England's most productive agricultural areas. Towards the end of the 19th century, the area began to industrialise, with agricultural mechanisation and extractive industries such as brick making. During that period, four disparate families converged more-or-less accidentally, and created an industrial nexus that had a profound effect on the development of production of both bricks and cement in Britain. These were the Keebles, the Gilberts, the Stewarts and the Forders.
The Keebles
In 1859, George and Caroline Keeble moved to Timberland, in East Kesteven between Peterborough and Lincoln. They were both from northwest Kent - from Bexley and Meopham respectively - and George, having been apprenticed in agriculture in Shropshire, had taken a position of farm manager at the local manorial farm. Their two eldest sons were George Hedley Keeble (b 1854, Hounslow: d 1928, Peterborough) and Arthur James Keeble (b 1857, Hounslow: d 1914, Wereham, Norfolk). They grew up in Timberland and moved to Peterborough in 1886 to set up as corn merchants. As a public company, Keeble Brothers Ltd., incorporated 1894, they functioned as hay merchants. This company had major depots in London, Liverpool, Manchester and Nottingham, and many smaller regional depots. It should be remembered that, in the 1890s, there were 300,000 working horses in London alone. The company was said to have a turnover in excess of £250,000. The family invested their profits in land throughout Britain, and exploited it in all possible ways.
This led them into brickmaking and fertiliser manufacture. There exists a long outcrop of Ampthill and Oxford clays between Bletchley, Buckinghamshire and Peterborough. These clays could be used to make bricks at very low manufacturing cost. The "Fletton" process (named after the suburb of Peterborough) exploited the inherent fuel content of the highly carbonaceous clays. In collaboration with the McDougalls (corn millers), the Keebles founded the Peterborough Brick Co. on 21/7/1896, making Fletton bricks in competition with the local, slightly larger London Brick Co. On 12/3/1897, it was re-capitalised for major expansion as the New Peterborough Brick Co. Ltd. Eventually in June 1898, they acquired the Standard brick and cement works at Barrington, Cambridgeshire. This was a business which had failed and re-started several times and now was cheaply available. They were evidently mainly interested in its Gault brick manufacturing, extending their market into the Cambridge area. This led them into cement manufacture as a sideline.
The brothers were prominent in local and national Liberal party politics, and in 1903 George was mayor of Peterborough, with Arthur his deputy.
The Gilberts
The Gilberts had a longer history in the area. They came from Billinghay, a village a few miles from Timberland. Abraham Creasey Gilbert was a small farmer born in the area, as were his parents. His son William Gilbert (b 1867, Billinghay: d 1938) grew up on the farm. He worked for the Lincoln-Spalding Railway in 1883 as a pupil of the resident engineer, working on plans and surveys. In 1885 he became apprenticed at the Ruston Proctor engine works. In 1889, he gained a Whitworth scholarship to the City & Guilds College under William Cawthorne Unwin. From 1891 he worked for engineers Heenan & Froude, and in 1892 was said to be in charge of construction of the Blackpool Tower, followed by the ill-fated Watkin's Tower at Wembley. He was admitted to the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1893, and set up his own consultancy in Westminster in 1895. The Gilberts were clearly close acquaintances of the Keebles, because George Hedley Keeble married Abraham Gilbert's sister Louisa on 11/4/1876. The Keeble brothers called on William Gilbert's expertise to advise on their industrial developments around the turn of the century.
The Stewarts
Alexander Stewart (b 1790, Kirkaldy: d 1874) as a youth ran away to sea and was captured by the French in 1804. He was imprisoned for ten years before escaping and returning to Britain. He became a teacher and a Congregational minister. His diary of his tempestuous early life became a philosophical touchstone for his son and grandson.
Halley Stewart (b 18/1/1838, Barnet: d 26/1/1937, Harpenden) was the tenth of fourteen children of Alexander and Ann Stewart. He was educated at his father's schools in Barnet and Holloway. He became a clerk at the bank of Robert Davies & Co., Shoreditch, and after several other clerical jobs, in 1870 founded an oil-seed processing business in London and at Rochester - Stewart Brothers and Spencer. This provided income to support his other interests.
In 1877, he established the Hastings and St Leonards Times, which gave him an outlet for his politics, and later sought seats in Parliament. He was a radical Liberal, supporting the vote for adults of both sexes, disestablishment of the church, secular education, abolition of the House of Lords and Home Rule for Ireland. He chose to fight for the Spalding division of Lincolnshire, and this brought him within the political orbit of the Keeble brothers. He lost in the 1885 and 1886 elections, but won it in a by-election in 1887, holding it until 1895. He then stood unsuccessfully for Peterborough in 1900, but won in Greenock in 1906, holding that until he retired in 1910.
In 1899, one of a number of great monopoly companies was launched - British Oil and Cake Mills Ltd. Stewart Brothers and Spencer was one of its target constituents and the sale was completed in 1900. Halley Stewart and his son, as major partners, now had a substantial sum available for investment, and were guided in deploying it by the Keeble brothers.
Percy Malcolm Stewart (b 9/5/1872, Hastings: d 27/2/1951, Sandy, Bedfordshire) was the fifth of Halley Stewart's eight children. He received education at grammar schools in Hastings and Rochester and the Royal High School, Edinburgh. Aged nineteen, he joined James Fox & Co. - a lighterage firm operating on the Thames and Medway. In 1895 he became a junior partner in the oil-seed business, and negotiated its sale.
The Forders
The final members of this dramatis personae were the Forders. They were a large clan of farmers and wool merchants in the Winchester area. Benjamin Joseph Forder (b 21/9/1821, Southington, Hants: d 14/10/1890, Petersfield) was a draper in Winchester who in 1862 set up a lime works on the newly-constructed London-Portsmouth direct railway, at Buriton, near Petersfield. The Buriton area was already known for hydraulic and white limes, but the new plant was on a much larger scale than any previous.
His son, Benjamin John Harfield Forder (b 3/11/1848 Winchester, d 2/10/1916 Blandford, Dorset) was brought up in the business, becoming manager in 1873 and taking over as head of the business in 1886. He expanded the business rapidly, installing a rare Hoffman kiln at Buriton, then buying the lime works at Burghclere near Newbury, and three in south Bedfordshire, at Sewell, Blows Down and Sundon. At all these he installed advanced shaft kilns. He left Buriton in 1893, and took up residence at Bramingham Shott, Luton, which he re-named Wardown, after War Down - the hill south of Buriton he quarried for lime. He concentrated his activities in Bedfordshire.
He then branched out into brick making. He bought a brickworks at Bracknell, then established new works in central Bedfordshire, at Westoning in 1894 and at Elstow and Wooton Pillinge in 1897, all using the familiar Hoffman kilns, which were ideal for brickmaking. At the same time, he was contemplating making cement at Sundon, on a site well placed on the Midland Railway line to London. He knew the Keeble brothers because of their role in brickmaking and their recent entry into cement manufacture, and in 1898, for this more complex project, he reached out to the Keeble brothers for help. The Keebles put him in contact with the Stewarts, who had money to spend.
1900 to 1910
B J H Forder had constructed the Sundon cement plant along conventional lines and it commenced operation in March 1899. However, Forder was now contemplating retirement, and in collaboration with the Stewarts, his business was re-organised as B J Forder and Son Ltd. This was launched on 25/7/1900 - a week after the fateful launch of APCM. Its launch, being largely in private hands, did not suffer the setbacks suffered by APCM. The company had Halley Stewart as chairman, B J H Forder as vice chairman, and three directors - Arthur McDougall (the Keebles' collaborator at Peterborough Brick), Arthur Keeble and Percy Malcolm Stewart. B J H Forder subsequently retired and was replaced as a director by his son Benjamin Christmas Forder (b 20/12/1873, Buriton, Hampshire: d 9/4/1962, Bradford Abbas, Dorset). The company encompassed all the lime works, all the brickworks, and the cement plant.
This company paralleled the brick and developing cement business of the Keebles in Peterborough and Cambridge. A C Davis had begun to participate in this business in the 1890s. The hopeless Standard cement plant was rapidly abandoned, and new plants were built in Cambridge, using the Keebles' nephew William Gilbert as engineering consultant. These were Saxon in 1901 and Norman in 1904. Under Davis's management these were operated as an aggressively disruptive element in the cement industry of the time.
At Forder's, the brickworks were rapidly expanded under the leadership of Halley Stewart, while Malcolm took on development of the cement plant, installing innovative kilns and creating a plant with consistently low manufacturing costs. There was fierce competition with APCM ("the Combine") and Malcolm in 1906 successfully set up the Inland Cement Manufacturers' Alliance which fought for the interests of the much more dynamic and rapidly expanding companies that had escaped the clutches of APCM. He became its chairman in 1910.
William Gilbert continued as an independent consultant and designed the rotary kiln plant at Southam, commissioned in 1908.
In 1910, a further consolidation of the cement industry was being planned, with the formation of BPCM. The Keebles had had some setbacks in their agricultural businesses and were keen to sell up. The Stewarts and Davis were cautiously in favour of the sale of their cement businesses, provided that they could negotiate for themselves a position of power in BPCM. This they achieved.
The cement and lime elements of both businesses became part of BPCM in 1911. The brick-making part of the Keebles' business was absorbed by B J Forder & Son, making it one of the biggest British brick companies, and easily the biggest Fletton brick producer. The Wooton Pillinge brickworks was massively expanded, becoming the world's biggest. The company village there was re-named Stewartby. In 1923, Forder's acquired the London Brick Co., which also operated in the Peterborough area and Bedfordshire, creating Britain's largest brick company - the London Brick Company and Forders Ltd. Like A/BPCM, it became one of the founder members of the FT30 index in 1935, with, by then, Percy Malcolm Stewart as chairman of both companies.
1910 onwards
George Keeble remained for a while an ordinary director of BPCM, but the brothers withdrew from brick and cement to concentrate on their agricultural businesses, although some of their descendants played roles in the later history of Blue Circle. The Forders ceased to be involved in cement. William Gilbert, the Stewarts and A C Davis continued involved with A/BPCM. Davis and Malcolm Stewart consolidated their roles as Managing Directors of BPCM, as detailed in the Davis page, and emerged dominant after Henry Spence Horne's re-organisation of the company in 1924. Davis set up R&D for the joint companies in 1913. William Gilbert continued as a consultant, but was retained by A/BPCM to manage the plant research work. This continued from 1918 under the auspices of the British Portland Cement Research Association. When the latter ceased operations in 1925, Gilbert continued working in Blue Circle's research activities, and he continued publishing articles on kiln thermodynamics (despite his total ignorance of chemistry) until his death in 1938.
Percy Malcolm Stewart became chairman of A/BPCM (Blue Circle) in 1924, having been, with Davis, an advocate of radical replacement of obsolete plant and aggressive expansion. This began the period of confident growth that continued until 1970. He had become the chairman of the industry-wide Cement Makers' Federation and continued in this role until his death.
Both Malcolm and his father were dedicated to his grandfather's ideals and believed in the Carnegie-style distribution of their wealth during their life-times. They set up a foundation for education and poverty relief. Halley made substantial donations to King's College, London for Physics research. He was knighted in 1932. Malcolm was made a special commissioner by the coalition government of 1934 to devise schemes to reduce unemployment. He endowed many schemes for education and alleviation of poverty. He was made a baronet in 1938.