Citylife in Lichfield November 2022

The Foundries of
Lichfield
By Jono Oates
Afew miles from Lichfield lies the industrial heartland of the Midlands: Dudley,
Walsall, Tipton and Wolverhampton, now known as The Black Country, due to
the amount of soot that was generated by the many coal mines in and around
that area. Lichfield, in comparison, was not the centre of industrial activity and had no
coal mines, but towards the end of the 19th century contained a number of iron
foundries, whose names are still remembered by many Lichfeldians today.
Frederick Symonds ran the Lichfield Iron Works at St John Street from the 1860s and in
August 1861 he was offering wrought iron hurdles and flat bar fencing, to order and to any
size, at £9 10 shillings per ton and all made from the finest Staffordshire iron.
John Perkins and his brother, William Henry, were iron merchants based at Lower Sandford
Street from the 1870s trading as John Perkins and Sons. Their father, also John, had been a
blacksmith at Yoxall and the brothers made agricultural implements from iron providing
goods for the very large farming community that surrounded Lichfield at the time.
By the end of the 1890s the family business was struggling however and the partnership
between the two brothers was dissolved in 1897 due to bankruptcy. A younger brother,
Albert, continued as an iron merchant and later bought the Rugeley company Woodroffe and
Company, who ran the Albion Works at Mill Lane, Rugeley. The new company became
Woodroffe and Perkins, although they too suffered from financial difficulties and by 1903 had
gone in to voluntary liquidation. In 1905, a consortium of businessmen purchased the
company for £700, which was considered to be a bargain price. The businessmen included
John Fowler, a former Mayor of Lichfield, and Harry John Winterton, from the well-known
auctioneers’ family, Sheriff of Lichfield in 1897 and Mayor in 1912. The terms of the agreement
allowed the consortium to continue to trade with the name of Woodroffe and Perkins.
The new firm, in the Perkins’ family tradition, continued to make agricultural items but also
produced manhole covers, examples of which can still be found in and around Lichfield.
Woodroffe and Perkins occupied stand number 1 at the Staffordshire Show, Leek, in July 1910
showcasing their ‘celebrated’ grinding and crushing machines, ploughs, harvesting machinery
and chaff cutters.
The company finally ceased trading in 1920 and in August of that year Charles Perkins, the
younger brother of John, William and Albert Perkins, purchased the whole of the plant and
patterns of ploughs from the firm, stating that he could supply the items with ‘immediate
effect’ to local farmers and agricultural implement agents.
In 1923 the company was purchased by another well-known Lichfield business, Tuke and
Bell, whose foundry was on the junction of Wheel Lane and Beacon Street and was renamed
as the Lichfield Foundry. It continued to operate until 1983, when it closed, the foundry
buildings were demolished and it is now office buildings and apartments.
Tuke and Bell were a London company, originally founded in 1908, and in September 1918
they relocated to Lichfield, on the site at Beacon Street, which had previously been owned
by the Lichfield Brewery Company. The Lichfield City Council Development Committee
welcomed them to Lichfield, saying that the company was located close to the industrial
heartland, and coalfields, of the Midlands and their prosperity would also benefit the citizens
of Lichfield.
The company met with tragedy in November 1929 when their Chairman and Managing
Director, Major Percy Gordon Norman, died suddenly at the age of just 43, after returning
from a business trip to Spain, promoting the company’s business. At the time of his passing,
he had just completed his term of office as Sheriff of Lichfield.
The works on Beacon Street closed in the 1990s and are now residential properties but
two local streets, Tuke Place and Bell Close, on Wheel Lane give a ‘nod’ to the former foundry.
Tuke and Bell continue to operate in Lichfield today, with offices on Vulcan Road, off Eastern
Avenue.
Opposite the Tuke and Bell site was another foundry, Chamberlin and Hill. The company
was originally founded in Walsall in 1890 and the Lichfield site opened in 1898, producing
Workshop, Chamberlin and Hill, 1950s
Tuke and Bell Workers, 1970
Lichfield Foundry, Sandford Street, 1967
castings for the mining and textile industries. The
works were re-built in 1953 but closed in 1986, when
they were demolished and the site became the
Safeway supermarket, now the Morrison’s store. Like
Tuke and Bell, Chamberlin’s are still operating today at
their Walsall base.
Although Lichfield cannot claim to be the industrial
equivalent of the Black Country, it still had a
significant part to play in the manufacturing of iron
goods from the 1860s to the current day.
*Vintage photographs courtesy of the St Mary’s
Photographic Collection
Sources: The British Newspaper Archive;
Ancestry.co.uk; www.tukeandbell.co.uk.
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