Portal:Derbyshire/Selected article/14



Andrew Handyside and Company was an iron founder in Derby, England in the nineteenth century.

Handyside worked in his uncle Charles Baird's engineering business in Saint Petersburg before taking over the Brittania Foundry in 1848. It had first been opened around 1820 by Weatherhead and Glover to cast ornamental ironwork, and had achieved a high reputation from the skill of the workers and the quality of its moulding sand.

By the 1840s it was diversifying into railway components. Among the early customers were the Midland Railway's Derby Works for which it supplied cylinder blocks and other castings.

Handyside's output ranged from garden ornaments to railway bridges. He produced lamp posts for the new gas street lighting (one of which still exists in the Wardwick in Derby) and was one of the first to produce the new standard Post Office letterboxes. The company also supplied a dome for Henry Bessemer's conservatory.

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