Image ID: 05848

Newark Town Wharf

Courtesy of Antoine

Town Wharf
Newark on Trent
England

Looking north west, not the barges (Probably of the Trent Navigation Company) loading/unloading at the wharf. In the background, across the River Trent, may be seen W N Nicholson's iron foundry of which a brief history follows: Sandwiched between River and rail, the Trentside location of Nicholson's foundry was ideal. A wharf beside the Trent, and sidings onto the Midland Railway's Nottingham to Lincoln line ensured that both the receipt of raw materials and the despatch of finished products was handled effectively and efficiently. Yet the origins of the factory lie some miles distant from Newark at South Carlton near Lincoln. For it was here, in September 1785, that the founder of the firm, Benjamin Nicholson was born. Little can be traced of his early life, but by 1809 he is known to have arrived in Newark and commenced trading as a partner in the firm of Nicholson, Bembrose and Co., retail ironmongers, with premises on the corner of the Market Place and in 1825 the firm was registered as a private company. In the same year he opened a foundry for the manufacture of cast-iron domestic goods. Nicholson was steadily working his way up the town's social hierarchy and reached his zenith in 1840 when he was elected Mayor, moving into one of the fashionable houses on South Parade. In 1816, Benjamin's wife, Frances, had borne him a son, William Newzam Nicholson, and in 1837, the year of Queen Victoria's accession to the throne, William (now aged 21) joined his father in the ironmongery business. This interjection of new blood saw the company branch out beyond the confines of selling into construction and by the late 1840's Nicholson's had become well known manufacturers of sturdy iron based implements for use in agriculture. By 1851, the firm was of sufficient repute to warrant a stand at Prince Albert's Great Exhibition of all Nations held at the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. And despite only employing four men in their factory, the Nicholsons- father and son - exhibited an impressive range of products, including oil cake breakers, barley grinding machines, improved corn dressing and winnowing machines, a prize cottage cooking stove, a large kitchen range and decorative gas brackets. They were awarded no less that 3 prizes for the quality of their workmanship. Suck public recognition necessarily bought the need for expansion, and four years later (in 1855), we find the first references to the embryonic Trent Ironworks, then located on Beastmarket Hill (on the site now occupied by the Ossington Coffee Palace). A year later the company removed to the Trentside location that was to remain their home for the next 90 years. Once established on the new site expansion appears to have been repaid, for by 1862 Nicholsons had added many new pieces of equipment for their range, including hay-making machinery, horse rakes, sack lifts, garden rollers, mowing machines, chaff cutters and turnip pulpers, as well as larger goods such as boilers for steam engines and bone crushers. A note in the 1871 census tells us that William Nicholson (by now the principal Proprietor, Benjamin having died in 1866 aged 81) was employing no less that 150 men at the works, a far cry from his father's corner shop in Newark Market Place 60 years earlier. For William this was a time of stability and contentment. In 1880 he had been returned as MP for Newark, and had purchased a handsome house at no 12 London Road, where he lived quietly with his wife Annie, and their two children, Mabel and William. Income from the Trent Ironworks enabled them to live in a fair degree of comfort, owning a horse drawn carriage and holidaying in Switzerland once a year. The Trent Ironworks continued as a successful business and staple employer in the town right up to the 1940's. When not engaged in war work, producing many thousands of high explosive shells, their high quality agricultural machinery found a ready market not only amongst local farmers, but nationwide too. By the 1950's, however, iron foundries all over the country were facing stiff competition in a diminishing market, and in August 1956 the first 16 men were laid off at Nicholsons. In 1966, the firm merged with Penney and Porter Ltd, machine makers of Lincoln, and in 1967 press reports began to speak of the possibility of more redundancies at the Newark plant. The end finally came in 1968 when the lease of the land on which the Trent Ironworks was built ran out and was not renewed. The Newark Factory was closed and production switched to Lincoln.

Date: 1930

Organisation Reference: NCCE000909

Organisation: