The Churchill Machine Tool Company

In an interview in the US towards the end of 1896 Churchill explained that for the financial year ending 1 September 1896 sales were £110,000, and the order book value was £30,000. He attributed much of the exceptional growth of that year to the boom in bicycling and the consequent demand for automatic screw machines and similar machinery, and commented that he had placed orders for between 15 million and 18 million steel balls and that gas furnaces were selling well. He explained that there was little competition for the imported machinery – not even a manufacturer of chucks, as far as he was aware – because "English" firms seemed reluctant to even copy US designs, partly because of "the Englishman's desire to have and to embody his own ideas" and to what they perceived to be the high capital costs of setting up production given the price at which US machinery was sold there. A few years later he did just that.

He commented in 1901 that what he called the "hump", caused by the bicycling bubble, needed to be put into context: growth in the trade had been steady for the company both before and since that time.

This period of British-US engineering development has been the subject of analysis by economic historians. S B Saul, writing in 1960, determined that British engineering and its methods were advanced in spheres such as the manufacture of textile machinery but less so in that of light machine tools and the machinery of mass production. He argued that in these areas the response by British manufacturers to imports from the US "belatedly matured so their influence permeated back through the whole engineering trade and began a rejuvenation of old fossilised trades" in the 1890s. He broadly agreed with the contemporary opinion of Churchill that the adoption of US methods was slow in the light machine tools sector primarily because there was a perceived lack of demand and return on investment to excite the interest of British engineers. He viewed the cycle boom as the catalyst for growth in this area but pointed out that the heavy machine tool sector was one of those which had not been previously neglected by British engineers.

Economic historian Roderick Floud's analysis, in the 1970s, of relative imports and exports led him to the conclusion that it was "unlikely that the American share of the British market was rising significantly, until the 1890s... [it rose to] a peak in 1899 before settling back to a period of less astonishing but still considerable growth to 1913." He also advanced a hypothesis, believing Saul's analysis to be "simplified", which placed a heavier emphasis on happenings in the US than in Britain: that the US import tariff of 45% on machinery and engineered products, which was the highest in the world until 1908, protected the development of the US industry in such products while it reached a maturity which enabled its prices to fall to a level that was highly competitive in the world market.

In March 1897 Charles Churchill & Co Ltd was put into voluntary liquidation to aid capital restructuring. This comprised an increase in authorised share capital to £50,000: £30,000 was fully subscribed, £10,000 allotted as goodwill for the old company and £10,000 retained for later issue. Within two years the company advertised with contact addresses at 2 – 10 Albert Street in Birmingham, 5 Cross Street in Manchester and 52 Bothwell Street, Glasgow, and its main office at 9 – 15 Leonard Street, Finsbury. By 1902 advertisements show the Manchester address as 2 Charlotte Street, Mosley Street and an additional office had opened at Albion Buildings, St James' Street, Newcastle. There were more than 30 employees at the London premises and 8 or 9 in Birmingham.

The capital restructuring also saw the addition of Herbert Chamberlain, brother of Joseph Chamberlain, to the board of directors. He was well connected in business terms as well as politically, having interests in Birmingham Small Arms Company (BSA) among other things. BSA had moved into producing bicycles and components after the end of the Crimean War, a product line it had an interest in before that event. Other members of the Chamberlain family were later involved in the company.

The new main office in Leonard Street opened around 1896 and comprised 12,474 square feet (1,159 m2) over four storeys, complete with internal hydraulic lifts, an external hydraulic crane and electric lighting; the company claimed in its press release that it had more than doubled its sales compared to any previous year and that it had sales lists for in excess of 100 US machinery manufacturers.

Examples of the agency agreements in place can be found from in the American Machinist of June 1897. They include: the Hamilton Machine Tool Company of Ohio (who were advertising a 16" sliding head drill); Baker Bros of Toledo, Ohio (advertising a combined sprocket turning and boring machine); Flather & Co, Nashua, N.H. (lathes); Warner & Swasey, Cleveland, Ohio (turret engine lathes); Chas. A. Strelinger & Co, Detroit (grinding and polishing machinery and pull countershafts by Builders' Iron Foundry, Providence, R.I.); and American Gas Furnace Co, New York (oil gas plants, gas blast furnaces and high pressure blowers). He had much to say about the correct manner of packing all of this equipment.

The American Machinist not only provided information on Churchill's business activities but in January 1901 announced he (and his wife and daughter) had returned to London after a visit to the US which was not for business but rather to see his ageing mother.

In 1907 the company was seeking to wind up the Aston Cantlow Mill Ball and Bearing Company Ltd. Indeed, that company was wound up on 17 January 1908, although the reasons for this are unclear. Charles Henry Prideaux was appointed to represent the company on the liquidation committee for Leitner Electrical Company Ltd in 1915.

Expansion

In 1901 Churchill bought a factory in Griffin Court, Chapel Street, Salford, initially as a facility to tool up the imported machinery. It was not the first British company to do this, as Sharp, Stewart & Co had built American machinery under license since at least 1873.

As business improved in 1904 the enterprise moved to larger premises in Pendleton, where an annual rent of £90 was payable. On 1 January 1906, this operation became a limited company, The Churchill Machine Tool Co, with an authorised share capital of £50,000, split as £20,000 in ordinary shares of £1 and £30,000 in £5 preference shares. To accomplish the transfer of manufacturing operations, Charles Churchill & Co sold the Pendleton business to the new company for £15,000, of which £7,500 was in cash and a similar amount in £1 ordinary shares. The directors were Charles Churchill, J W W Gabriel, Walter Chamberlain and C H Churchill. Herbert Chamberlain had died in 1904.

In 1904 Charles Churchill & Co was engaged in an unusual commission. The Royal Navy's HMS Bellerophon was one of three ships being converted to serve at Devonport as floating workshops for the training of 200 or so engine-room artificers involving the removal of the conning tower and the deck roofed-in to form a workshop area. Bellerophon was renamed Indus III, and Churchill supplied some of her workshop equipment.

The Glasgow office address changed between February 1905 and March 1906 to 9 Wellington Street.

By June 1906 there were nearly 200 machine tools under construction at the factory, and in 1907 around £5,000 was spent on enlarging the premises, although a year-on-year drop in sales of 36% in 1908 demonstrated that all was not a smooth progression. Dividends had to be suspended for that year but were resumed in 1909.

By this time the company manufactured machine tools to its own design. Rapid expansion in the use of precision grinding machines after 1910, particularly in the developing car manufacturing industry, focussed the company's efforts on producing machines of this type. Many were of a revolutionary design due to the technical flair of Harry Hales Asbridge, who had joined the company from Charles Churchill & Co at its inception. A large plain grinding machine, with a 50-inch (130 cm) swing, built and installed in Sheffield, remained in service at least until the 1990s and was used primarily to grind the journals of large crankshafts.

Slater's Manchester, Salford & Suburban Directory of 1911 listed Charles Churchill & Co Ltd (manager Sydney H March) at 6 Oxford Street and 7 Lower Mosley Street, as "engineers and importers of American machinery and tools"; and also The Churchill Machine Tool Co Ltd as "engineers and manufacturers of machine and small tools" at 107 Frederick Road, Pendleton, the address of Charles Churchill & Co's works. The details were the same in the 1909 edition. Despite this, the register of members for the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in every year between 1902 and 1915 shows Sydney Herbert March (AMIMechE, 1901, MIMechE, 1912) as being c/o Messrs Charles Churchill & Co, 2 Charlotte Street, Mosley Street, Manchester, and only from 1916 is he shown at the Oxford Street address referred to by Slater in 1909 and 1911.

As growth continued The Churchill Machine Tool Co's share capital was increased to £70,000, and in 1911 the four directors, who had not drawn a salary since its inception, were voted £25 each as remuneration. By 1913 the businesses had attained such a position with in-house manufacturing of grinding machinery that Charles Churchill was able to ignore a threat to withdraw from him, on the grounds of conflict of interest, the agency agreement with US company Brown & Sharpe which had been set up in 1872 before his bankruptcy.

The 1915 Post Office Directory for London listed Charles Churchill & Co Ltd trading from 9 – 15 Leonard Street EC (Finsbury) in various categories: under "Emery Wheel and Machinery Makers" as agents for Norton & Co of Worcester, Massachusetts; under "Engineers' Machine Tool Makers", "Merchants – American", "Merchants – General", "Toolmakers and Dealers" and under "Machinery Merchants". The address was shared with Carson James & Co Ltd, machine toolmakers, and The Churchill Machine Tool Co Ltd was also listed. The 1914 edition of the publication states Norton & Co was involved in "alundum and crystolon grinding wheels"; its appointment of Churchill as agents took place in 1910. In 1921, there was a US patent application for a lathe assigned to Churchill directors and in which James Carson living in London was cited as the inventor.

Charles Churchill suffered ill-health in his later years and retired from active involvement in the companies in 1915. His son, Charles Henry Churchill, assumed the responsibilities of chairman and managing director. Charles Churchill died on 14 or 15 February 1916; his last address was 321 Seven Sisters Road, Stoke Newington, London. His son, C H Churchill, had died six days earlier. W Chamberlain was appointed chairman, and Arthur Lyman Churchill, son of Charles, stepped up from head of the small tool grinding department to become managing director and, in 1920, chairman. Willis Clark Churchill, brother of Arthur, became a board member after 30 years of association with the business but died before the end of the war.

Demand for grinding machinery and specialist knowledge in the heat treatment of metals and other areas the company had developed was so high during the years of World War I that the government ordered other British manufacturers to produce Churchill designs. One specialist area was heat-treated blades used to cut the cables of sea mines. In April 1916 an increase in share capital to expand the factory further was authorised. During the war years the company was misled by a trade union such that it paid its male fitters, who were supervising female war workers, an increased wage of 48 shillings per week. The union told the company it was the rate paid for similar work at Armstrong Whitworth, when it was not.

A news item in an edition of American Machinist of that year suggests that the Churchill name had a certain cachet in the US, as it warned that: An imposter using the name 'Morris' has been falsely representing himself in this country as a representative of Charles Churchill & Co., London, England. His chief purpose has been to raise money under many of the guises to which such imposters usually resort. He judges his prospective victims and varies his story accordingly, Forewarned is forearmed.

The Churchill Machine Tool Co was a founder member of Associated British Machine Tool Makers Ltd (ABMTM) in 1917, an organisation that might be classed as a cartel but which was then perfectly. It was a joint-venture marketing company to develop export markets. Charles Churchill & Co continued to handle domestic sales. A further note of inter-company co-operation was informal Saturday afternoon exchange visits between local machine shops to aid the exchange of ideas and appreciate differences in development and working practice which lasted for a few years before 1923. Companies involved in this included Churchill, Mather & Platt, Hans Renold, John Hetherington, B & S Massey, British Westinghouse and Browett, Lindley & Co of Patricroft. In January 1919, Charles Churchill & Co bought a one-third share in Cornelius Redman & Sons Co Ltd, planer and lathe-makers at Pioneer Works between Parkinson Lane and Warley Road in Halifax, Yorkshire.

Fallow years

In 1918 The Churchill Machine Tool Co bought 11.5 acres (4.7 ha) of land at Broadheath, near Altrincham, from the Earl of Stamford. By 1920 the company had relocated all its production to that site, which put it at the heart of a growing concentration of engineering businesses which included H.W. Kearns & Co, George Richards & Co, Luke & Spencer Ltd, Schaffer & Budenberg and Linotype. The single-storey factory covered 3 acres (1.2 ha), affording potential for further expansion. "It forms in fact easily the largest concern of this type in Great Britain", said American Machinist, and was under the charge of H H Asbridge with S H March as general manager. March's business address according to the Institute of Mechanical Engineers' register in 1922 was Albion Street, Gaythorn, Manchester, and Fred Garbutt Anderson, AMIMechE, was at the Oxford Street address; the address for Asbridge, who was MIMechE, was Broadheath.