In our earlier newsletter article we told the story of Bolton’s Superheater & Pipe Works – the original occupants of our archive. In this article we move forward in time to a later occupant of part of the Bolton’s works: Johnson Machinery.

The Richard Roberts Archive occupies part of the former premises of Bolton’s Superheater & Pipe Works Ltd. – a fact commemorated in the name we have placed above our entrance: The Pipeworks.

Origins

In 1790 Alfred Johnson started the company Johnson & Hobbs on the banks of the River Irk, two miles north of the city of Manchester. Its business was the hand weaving of wire cloth for the paper-manufacturing industry. This continued to be its main activity until 1913.

During that year Alfred Johnson started to consider diversification, and obtained the rights to sell mobile conveyors – a complete novelty of particular value to the coal mining industry. Johnson therefore hired a young man to take on the task of selling the products to coal mines. His name was John Hartley – and he was destined to make a major contribution to the development of construction machinery in Britain. Hartley became the managing director of the firm, serving in that capacity from 1945 to his death in 1955.

The company further extended its range to miners’ lamps and haulage winches, and made substantial progress up to the First World War. After Hartley and many of his team were demobilised after the war, they continued to develop the machinery department. In 1932, at the height of the Great Depression, came the next diversification, into the building and contracting field, with the introduction of the Johnson Power Rammer, designed for the compaction of backfill in trenches – the first machine of its type to be sold in the United Kingdom. Production of the contractors' plant was moved from Manchester to the Adswood site in 1935.

Moving to Adswood

The first evidence of the move comes from a conveyance document a little later than 1935. It dates from 1941, when Johnson Machinery, named in the conveyance as C. H. Johnson & Sons Limited, purchased a significant tract of land and buildings from Bolton’s. However, the document referred to the fact that Johnson Machinery had already been renting the same properties from Bolton’s since 1937. The building now occupied by the Richard Roberts Archive is at the northern end of the lower rectangular building marked on the accompanying plan as “Bolton’s Superheater Works”. The buildings therefore sold to Johnson Machinery are thus all to the north of the current archive. The area marked in blue burned down in recent years and that area has been significantly altered by the current owners, Cheadle Skip Hire.

A modern building

Sometime after 1937 Johnson Machinery built a new office block. The photograph here dates from after 1949, when the Standard Vanguard Phase I in the photo was first available in the UK. This was not only a modern building, but it was topped by a boldly designed Johnson symbol featuring a ‘strongman’ using the J of Johnson as a lever to move the world – no doubt alluding to the loading equipment manufactured by the firm.

Made in Adswood

By the early post-war period Johnson Machinery was making an enormous range of equipment. A loose-leaf catalogue issued by the firm, impossible to date but after the move to Adswood, contains many illustrated ‘flyers’ – one per product. The front cover confirms branches in six cities, and confirms that Johnson were focused upon contractors’ plant and shows again the ‘lever moving the world’ logo seen on top of the office building. The rear cover lists the range offered by the company.

The front and rear covers of a Johnson Machinery loose-leaf catalogue, probably from the early post-war period. The company’s range of products was impressive.