User:Noswall59/Lincolnshire History

Rediscovery of sub-surface ironstone in 1859 led to extensive mining in the Scunthorpe area and its rapid expansion to become a major producer of pig iron and steel. This industry expanded until the 1970s, but retracted quickly thereafter.

The petrochemical industries became important in the Humber estuary after the Second World War. In the 1950s and 1960s, chemical plants were established south Humber area, providing an important source of employment which has shrunk since the 1980s. Oil has been imported and refined in the south Humber area in large quantities since the 1960s; a large amount of oil and natural gas extracted from under the North Sea has been transported into the region since 1972 and six gas-fired power stations were built off the south banks of the Humber between 1992 and 2004.

Agriculture
Business aspects

Population

Following earlier trends, the proportion of Lincolnshire's adult population working in agriculture fell from one third in 1901 to one tenth in 1971. This coincided with the mechanisation of many agricultural practices, replacing large plough teams or pickers with machines manned by one person.(Mills, pp. 18-19)

Ironstone mining; iron-making and steel-making in Scunthorpe
In 1859 the landowner Rowland Winn (later Lord St Oswald) of Appleby Hall discovered ironstone on his estate. The following year he leased lands to Messrs Dawes of Barnsley, who began mining at Frodingham. The first iron works opened nearby in 1864. Winn championed the construction of the Trent, Ancholme and Grimsby Railway (opened 1866) which transported coal into the area and iron out. Other companies opened works in the 1860s and 1870s; production increased rapidly, and steel-making began at Scunthorpe in 1890. The rapid development of the iron and steel works turned Scunthorpe, hitherto a small village, into a major iron-making town contiguous with Frodingham and other settlements. This led to interest in ironstone mining elsewhere: at Claxby (1868–85) in the Wolds and Greetwell (1873–1939) near Lincoln. In the early 20th century, the steel and iron works at Scunthorpe amalgamated into three companies, each producing pig iron and steel. The cheap cost of producing iron and steel in the town led it to increase its national share of iron production to 14% and steel production to 10% by 1926. As such, companies began mining ironstone further afield. Although the Greetwell mine closed in 1939, a mine at Nettleton (in the Wolds) had opened in 1929, and others followed near Scunthorpe at Santon (1938) and Dragonby (1948). Quarrying also took place between Lincoln and Leicester, including various sites in Kesteven concentrated around Grantham, some of which closed in 1946.

At Scunthorpe, by-products of iron and steel production were used to make tar and chemical products. By the 1950s steel foundries and fabrication plants emerged in the town. Substantial upgrades to the works took place in the 1950s and British Oxygen Engineering opened a site in 1958, allowing oxygen to be piped into the furnaces. The three iron and steel plants were nationalised in 1967 and Scunthorpe was identified as a national centre for steel production. Such rapid growth had led to its population rising fivefold between 1901 and 1971. The "Anchor" modernisation project (completed 1973) included the construction of major new works to increase steel production to 4.4m tons. This rationalisation effort led to the loss of 3,500 jobs; it also saw light plate production move to Teeside in 1972. Economic depression in the 1970s meant that the site was overproducing; job cuts and the closure of some of the works followed from 1979, as production was decreased. Scunthorpe’s unemployment rate doubled in one year, to over 16% in 1981. Three years later, the government designated the town an Enterprise Zone. The various ironstone mines also closed: Nettleton in 1969, Buckminster Quarries near Grantham in 1972, Denton Park in 1974, Dragonby and Santon in 1981, and at Frodingham in 1988.

Oil and gas processing in the Humber estuary
The first efforts to extract oil in Lincolnshire began at Gainsborough in 1959; pumps opened at Welton in 1985. More significant was the rise in imported oil which has been transported through the south Humber banks in large quantities since the 1960s. An oil terminal opened at the Port of Immingham in 1969. Total Oil and Petrofina built the Lindsey Oil Refinery at North Killingholme in 1968 and Conoco completed its Humber Refinery at South Killingholme the following year. In 1970 £70 million of oil was imported into the region. The emerging North Sea gas supply was transported through Conoco's Theddlethorpe Gas Terminal (opened 1972), which transports gas from the North Sea and supplied one tenth of the country's gas in the late 1980s. Immingham Gas Jetty opened in 1985. Full or partly gas-fired power stations were built at Glanford Brigg (1993), North Killingholme (A in 1992 and B in 1994), Keadby (1992), and at Stallingborough (1997–99). Conoco built Immingham Power Station next to its Humber Oil Refinery in 2004.

Heavy engineering at Lincoln, Grantham and Gainsborough
Lincolnshire's heavy engineering firms played important roles in the production of armaments and machinery during the First World War. Ruston, Proctor and Company built 2,000 aircraft and 3,000 engines, employing 3,000 people in 1918 (many of them women). Robey and Company built over a quarter of the Royal Navy's seaplanes. At Fosters of Lincoln, Major W. G. Wilson and Sir William Tritton invented the tank, designing and manufacturing the first prototype (Little Willie) in 1915 and developing the design further; the firm produced some of the first tanks to enter combat in 1916. Despite these large contracts, the war had profound effects on Lincolnshire's engineering houses. Many of them were exporters before 1914, but during the war many foreign clients had to find alternative suppliers. The economic and political turmoil which followed heavily disrupted the overseas market, while exports become more expensive after Britain returned to the Gold Standard in 1925. Companies cut costs and unemployment fluctuated in manufacturing towns. In the 1930s the Great Depression further hurt the industry and those dependent on it; in 1933, 7,800 people were unemployed in Lincoln out of a population of roughly 66,000. Some engineering firms amalgamated, and companies diversified with mixed results; Ruston and Hornsby (merged in 1918) bought a controlling share of the road roller manufacturer Aveling-Barford and moved its works to Grantham. Robey and Company was reorganised in 1934 and Marshalls in 1936, the same year that Clayton and Shuttleworth was dissolved.

In the late 1930s, Britain began to rearm and production increased at a number of firms. The Second World War saw all of them receive major state contracts for a diverse range of war equipment and machinery: among them, Ruston and Hornsby produced diesel engines, tanks and armoured tractors; Marshalls made submarines; and Aveling-Barford built tanks. The post-war years saw the industry change. Fosters was the last producer of steam traction engines in the country when it ended that line in 1942; Marshalls continued to make steam rollers until 1954, but they produced the successful and important Field Marshall diesel tractor from 1945. Marshalls also started to build combine harvesters, which replaced thrashing machines from the 1950s. After the war Ruston and Hornsby produced gas turbines at its Lincoln works. There were also amalgamations and reductions in operations across the sector (the successor to Fosters moved out of the county in 1960 and Richard Duckering closed in 1962). In 1966, manufacturing employed 51% of Lincoln’s workforce, but this fell to 35% within nine years. Ruston and Hornsby, which had seven factories in the 1950s and employed over 9,000 workers, was bought out by English Electric in 1961; two years later, they closed the Grantham works and, after other takeovers and reorganisations, the gas turbine operations at Lincoln were moved to Lancashire in 1973, leading to the demolition of their old works in Lincoln in 1983–84. Marshalls merged with Wards in 1969, and then underwent a series of financial crises eventually being nationalised under British Leyland, before being sold in 1979. Its operations dropped significantly, leaving 700 redundancies. Aveling-Barford halved its workforce of 2,000 between 1980 and 1984, with cuts following over the 1980s.

Small industries in towns and villages
Lincolnshire’s modern industry was often associated with its agricultural sector and farming communities. In the 19th century hundreds of windmills converted material grown in the county into flour, oils, paper and cloth. These were found in villages and small towns, with notable surviving examples including the eight-sailed windmill at Heckington near Sleaford and the smock mill at Dyke near Bourne. Increasingly steam mills came to replace windmills, with major operations at Spalding and Grimsby. Every town and a number of villages had their own breweries in the 19th century; by 1856 there were 166 brewers in the county. Half of them ran malthouses or engaged in malting, another common industry in towns in corn-growing areas. Over the next fifty years, local brewers faced competition from outside the county, with 32 brewers and 26 maltsters remaining by 1913. Major national brewers had constructed their own breweries or malthouses in the county, including at Barnetby, Grantham and, most notably, at Sleaford where Bass began work on its enormous maltings house in 1892 (completed in 1907). By the late 19th century, food processing became a growing industry, with ketchup and jam factories emerging, followed by pea-picking and canning plants. Towns also supported a range of other small industries. Boston had several feather processing factories including the one built in 1877 by Fogarty & Co (operating since 1826). Lee & Green, manufacturers of aerated water, had factories at Sleaford and Spalding. Ships were built on the river Welland at Spalding, supporting local rope- and sail-making industries. Other small industries included tobacco and cigar manufacturing.

Chemical manufacturing in the Humber estuary
The post-war period also saw industrial development on the southern banks of the Humber, between Grimsby and Immingham. Between 1946 and 1960 Grimsby Borough Council purchased over 800 acres of land and developed road and rail connections to the sites with the intention of attracting industry. This infrastructure along with good supplies of land, labour, water, docks and the Humber for effluent disposal attracted chemical companies. British Titan Products opened a plant in 1949, followed by Fisons (1950), CIBA Laboratories (1951), Laporte Titanium (1953), Courtaulds (1957), Doverstrand (1963) and Imperial Chemical Industries (1966). These companies joined the more established Albright and Wilson fertiliser works at Barton-on-Humber and the Nypro chemical works at Flixborough near Scunthorpe. This resulted in significant population growth in the area, with Immingham growing from 2,803 people in 1951 to 10,259 in 1971. Some of the Grimsby–Immingham sites underwent further expansion in later decades, but others have reduced capacity: Courtaulds and its successors went from employing over 3,000 people in the 1970s to less than 300 in 2012; one of the Norsk Hydro (formerly Fisons) plants closed in 2000, and the BTP (by then Tioxide) shut its Humber site in 2009. The Flixborough and Barton-on-Humber sites closed in 1981 and 1988 respectively.

Coastal economy
Trawlers and fisheries

Maritime trade and related economies in Grimsby, Cleethorpes, Immingham and Barton-on-Humber

Seaside towns: Skegness, Mablethorpe and Cleethorpes