The story
The company was formed by the merger of the shipbuilder A. Leslie and Company in Hebburn with the locomotive works of R and W Hawthorn at St. Peter's in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1886. In 1904, at their St Peters works they began building Parsons turbine engines for ships. The company displaced its locomotive manufacturing interests in 1937 to Robert Stephenson and Company, which became Robert Stephenson and Hawthorns Ltd.
Perhaps the most famous ship built by the Company was HMS Kelly, launched in 1938 and commanded by Lord Louis Mountbatten. In 1954, the shipbuilding and marine engine activities were put into separate subsidiaries, Hawthorn Leslie (Shipbuilders) Ltd. and Hawthorn Leslie (Engineers) Ltd. In 1968 the Company's shipbuilding interests were merged with that of Swan Hunter and the Vickers Naval Yard to create Swan Hunter & Tyne Shipbuilders.
The company's shipbuilding and marine engineering interests were both nationalised and subsumed with British Shipbuilders in 1977; in 1979 its engine business was merged with George Clark & NEM, which had also been nationalised, to form Clark Hawthorn.
The company's main shipbuilding yard at Hebburn closed in 1982, was sold to Cammell Laird and then acquired by A&P Group in 2001 but has been acquired by developers in 2018 who have secured a planning consent for 446 new homes and construction of Phase 1 has now commenced. The Company itself, deprived of its main activity, diversified into telephones. In March 1993, Vodafone made a bid for the Company which by then had become a mobile phone air time reseller.
The Hawthorn Leslie building still standing in Hebburn has been the target of numerous arson attacks in recent years. This, combined with the presence of asbestos in the brickwork and the ease of access to children, has led to repeated calls from Hebburn residents and councillors for the building to be demolished. Developers Hebburn Riverside Development Limited have fully demolished and remediated the site and commenced construction of the first phase of housing.
From Wikipedia’s article on R. & W. Hawthorn, Leslie and Company, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3