History:
The beginning of Gardner.
Lawrence
Gardner first went into business in 1868 as a 'machinist'. His
brass plate proclaiming 'L Gardner Machinist' was then screwed to
the wall of four houses in Upper Duke Street Manchester. Gardners
workshop is situated in the cellar that was shared by the four properties.
Installing equipment in the cellar workshop was a little problematical!
A 10 1/2 inch lathe and an 8 foot boiler had to be lowered through
the trapdoor in the pavement by attaching ropes and pulleys to planks
that were pushed out of a bedroom window above.
Lawrence and his wife occupied one of the four cottages and the other three were tenanted out in order to help meet the overall rent costs. When his tenants defaulted with the payments, the landlord threatened to sell off his workshop equipment to get the money. Lawrence Gardner then took out a building society loan to buy the properties - at a weekly repayment of 31 shillings and 6 pence.
When Lawrence Gardner decided to go into business on his own account and he put up a plate with the designation "L. Gardner, Machinist" it was no more than a description of the principal service he intended to offer. There was none of the self-conscious modesty that led Sir Henry Royce, after his partnership with Hon. C. S. Rolls had prospered, to describe himself as "Henry Royce, Mechanic".
Yet the two businesses have more in common than brevity of style in their founders (both of whom were the sons of millers, the mechanics of agrarian England). Both concerns were begun off Manchester's Stretford Road, and both were turned from the manufacture of electrical dynamos by cheap imports form America towards the products for which they are famous. And both were to dominate the quality end of their markets.
Lawrence Gardner was much the earlier. His brass plate was screwed to the wall of four houses in Upper Duke Street in 1868. Henry Royce did not become establishes in Cooke Street until 1884, six years before Gardner died. The year the business began was also the year that the Chair of Civil Engineering was established at the Manchester Victoria University. But Gardner's concern was not with putting technical education on to a proper footing (although his older sons Thomas and Edward were each to take up one of the thirty scholarships established there by Sir Joseph Whitworth, of screw thread fame). His Duke Street situation was not ideal. The workshop was in the common cellar of the properties. Equipping it meant lowering a 10 1/2 inch lathe, and an 8 foot boiler, through a trapdoor in the pavement, with pulley blocks on planks pushed out of a bedroom window to carry the load. Paving stones suffered.
Finding the rent was a more serious problem. Unfortunately, Gardner was not solely dependant upon his own efforts. He and his wife lived in one of the four cottages and the remainder were tenanted. When two of the householders defaulted, the landlord threatened to foreclose on Gardner's machines, for they were all that were of value in the houses. With a building society loan, Gardner bought the property, securing his base. But collecting the 31s 6d weekly rent roll in six lots of sums between 3s 6d and 6s 3d remained an embarrassment until his loan was repaid.
Gardner was the second son in a family of five, the three boys and two girls of Thomas and Jane Gardner. Seven years before setting up in business on his account at the age of twenty eight, he had married Ann Kynaston, another millers daughter. The infant business had to support a family of six sons, all of whom were to repay that support by taking by taking a share in its development, and two daughters. Gardner was hard working and inventive. His business quickly developed into more than the repetitive work on other peoples castings that the "machinist" label suggests. Machine parts, machines and machine tools were made: parts for sewing machines, a machine to score cardboard, another to cut dovetails in it and a small steam hammer to hammer them into place; milling and cutting machines; another for cutting out cloth. The business was that of a general engineer with no particular speciality.
But it grew. There was work for more employees and no room for them, so the first move was made. Not far away Gardner had a new works built on the other side of the Stretford Road, in Cornbrook Park Road. In contrast to the Duke Street basement it was of two stories, providing 1,300 sq. ft on each floor. Apart from the family, who were growing up and learning their trade as angineers, there were twelve employees. The engineering became more general than ever. A coffee roaster was added to the list of products. It comprised four horizontal drums rotating above a gas flame, geared together and belt-driven from a hot air engine. This, like every job, demanded invention and skill; there was no buying in of part finished components. Gears had to be cut out of brass and filed up by hand so accurately that they could serve as a pattern for castings.
In 1890, at the age of fifty, Lawrence Gardner died, leaving the business to his widow.
His son, Thomas Harry Gardner, was then almost thirty. The two had not always agreed. Thomas's drive, coupled with thte education of his father could not have had, widened the rift between the generations. Thomas had worked away from home for a while.
When responsibility came he was ready for it. But the respect which Thomas, Edward and the three younger brothers, Lawrence, Ernest and Joseph had for their father was to be shown ten years later when a much altered business came to be incorporated as a limited liability company. They chose to keep the style "L. Gardner & Sons" and not change the title to "Gardner Bros".
Thomas and Edward managed the business in partnership with their mother and they made changes. There was another move, in the year after their father died, to larger premises in Lund Street, again not far away. Employment was found for eighty men. More important pieces of manufacture were undertaken: a range of dynamos, the heaviest weighing three tons and driven from a mill engine via a 12 inch belt and a 14 inch pulley. The Dental Manufactuing Company became an importand customer. Dentists' chairs, some raised hydraulically, and some by rack and pinion, were developed and 106 were made in the first three years at Lund Street. Two are known to be still in use locally, an early example of longevity in a Gardner product. A machine for cutting rivets out of platinum wire for use in making false teeth was followed by moulds for the dentures themselves, and vulcanizing boilers.
In the same year as the move to Lund Street, on 21 November 1891, the Illustrated Magazine of Practice and Theory described a patent hot air engine designed by A. E. & H. Robinson as a "useful and thoroughly good motor for driving small machinery". Gardners arranged to manufacture this. It was their first "combustion" engine.
The Robinson hot air engine had a bore and stroke both of 10 inches and developed 5/8 hp when running at 170rpm. Heat was generated by burning coke in a fire box at the rate of 7 1/2 lb/hr which meant a thermal efficiency of between seven and ten percent. (Modern Gardner compression ignition engines achieve forty percent). It weighed 12 cwt. A pre-1900 example recovered from a farm in Horsham, Sussex, had pumped water until damaged by frost in the severe winter of 1958.
Although it was to sell well for many years, the Robinson engine offered little or no opportunity for development.
Credits.
Thanks to David Whitehead for information gleaned from his book ` Gardners of Patricroft 1868 - 1968' Published for L. Gardner and Sons Ltd. By Newman Neame Ltd. A member of the Pergamon Group. The text on this page is a précis form of the content of the book copyrighted to L. Gardner and Sons Ltd. 1968.
Apologies to L. Gardner and Sons Ltd.
