Brunel's Sawmills in Battersea

Brunel’s Sawmill

As we will discover later this manufacturing enterprise was more than a simple sawmill: it involved boot making and knitting, too. The obvious historical sources are not helpful in providing its exact location. However, from a combination of Marc Isambard Brunel’s own words, an 1828 “Panorama of the Thames” and the 1838 (Battersea) Tithe Map it can be located.

“Brunel described the site (in October 1806) as “four hundred and seventy-six feet along the river and contiguous to two turnpike roads….(whence) the bridge will always be a clean walk to Chelsea Market.” Certainly there was a reluctance on the part of the late owners to part with the river frontage, and on 5^th November 1806, Brunel proposed that they should obtain permission to cut a canal through the ground “where the sluice now is, and extend it between the old lady’s ground and Watson’s premises*.” *Believed to be Edward Watson’s Sawmill which was still there in the 1860s.

The “Panorama” confirms that the sawmill was to the west of Battersea Bridge. (Depicted on a fold of the page in this 67 foot long document, hence the poor reproduction!). Brunel’s own words indicate that the site was 476 feet long, and the Tithe map shows just such a package of land. (It had formerly been a part of the gounds of the Lords of the Manor of Battersea and was shown on a map from 1760 as “Twelve Acres”.)

Bear in mind that this map shows the sawmill site as it was c.1838: 17 years after it was “recalled “due to Brunel’s bankruptcy when he was forced to relinquish it. Part of the site was absorbed by Morgan Crucible during one of their expansion phases (they found a large cache of boots whilst they were digging new foundations) and the area closest to Battersea Bridge became, in 1893, a boatyard for one of the major Thames pasenger ferry companies: Royal Victoria.

Early in the nineteenth century these works are thus described by a writer in the British Register:-

“But a few yards from the toll-gate of the bridge, on the western side of thee road, stand the work-shops of that eminent mechanic, Mr Brunel, who has effectedas much for the mechanic arts as any man of his time. The wonderful apparatus in the Dockyard at Portsmouth, by which he cuts blocks for the Navy with a precision and expedition that astonish every beholder, secures him a monument of fame and eclipses all rivalry. His work shops are free from ostentation.

In a small building on the left I was attracted by the action of a steam-engine of a sixteen-horse, or eighty men, power, and was ushered into a room where it turned, by means of bands, four wheels fringed with fine saws, two of them eighteen feet in diameter, and two of nine feet. These circular saws were used for the purpose of separating veneers, and a more perfect operation was never performed. I beheld planks of mahogany and rosewood sawed into veneers the sixteenth of an inch thick, with a precision and grandeur of action which really was sublime! The same power at once turned these tremendous saws, and drew their work upon them. A large sheet of veneer, nine or ten feet long by two feet broad, was thus separated in about ten minutes; so even, and so uniform, that it appeared more like a perfect work of nature than one of human art! The force of these saws may be conceived when it is known that the large ones revolve sixty-five times in a minute.”

The shoe factory where discharged soldiers and others were taught the craft of shoe making was added in 1809 and thus described by a writer in the Monthly Magazine:-

“At Battersea there is a manufactory of shoes, full of ingenuity, and which, in regard to the subdivision of labour, brings this fabric on a level with the oft admired manufactory of pins. Every step in it is effectedby the most elegant and precise machinery; while as each operation is performed by one hand, so each shoe passes through twenty-five hands, who finish from the hide, as supplied by the currier, a hundred pair of strong and well-finished shoes per day. All the details are performed by ingenious applications of the mechanic powers, and all the parts are characterised by precision, uniformity, and accuracy. As each man performs but one step in the process, which implies no knowledge of what is done by those who go before or follow him, so the persons employed are not shoemakers, but wounded soldiers, who are able to learn their respective duties in a few hours.”

On 30 August 1814 there was a fire at Bankside to which almost all of the London fire engines were committed. Unfortunately that too was the day on which an observer at Chelseaespied another blaze: at the Battersea Mill. The Times correspondent reported that the observer immediately directed the watchman to give the alarm at Mr Brunel’s. According to The Gentleman’s Magazine the fire had totally destroyed the Mill “in two hours.”

Brunel decided to rebuild the mill. In 1816 it started up again. Now circular knitting machines which Brunel had invented and patented were installed.

An innovative inventor, Brunel was both unskilled and unlucky in business dealings: the sawmills he built were all but destroyed by fire, the army-boot factory was no longer viable as the Battle of Waterloo (1815) ended the Napoleonic Wars. He ended up bankrupt. He and his wife were imprisoned for debt in 1821 and were released only upon the intervention of the Duke of Wellington, who compelled Parliament to grant £5,000 to free Brunel and his wife from debtors’ prison.

Upon his release from the debtors’ prison Brunel no longer had any connection with Battersea. His next great venture would be the Thames Tunnel, between Rotherhithe and Wapping. For this he used the tunnelling shield which he had patented in 1818 during his years as a manufacturer in Battersea.

Tom Champagne (2005)

Whilst we can find no illustrations of what Brunel's mill looked like before the fire of 1814 we do have an image of how it appeared after being rebuilt by him during the years 1814-1816.

The image comes from the heading on a debit note of Thomas Mudge & Co. who took over the operation of the mill once Brunel was declared bankrupt in 1819. Thomas Mudge was a lawyer, the son of the highly respected Plymouth clockmaker of the same name, and a nephew of of Marc and Sophia Brunel. (Sophia was a granddaughter of Thomas Mudge, senior.) Below are some diagrams from Brunel's patent of 1810 which give us some idea of what the boot and shoe making machine described there would have looked like.

Marc Isambard Brunel was the father of mass-production (many years ahead of the American, Whitney, to whom that title is normally accorded) and is seriously overshadowed by his son, Ismabard Kingdom Brunel. So it's nice to restore some of the credit to which he was due and to give him a larger place in Battersea's history.

Tom Champagne (2006)

For more information see: BAGUST, Harold "The Greater Genius?" Ian Allan Publishing, 2006 ISBN (10) 0711031754 This biography dedicates itself to Marc Isambard Brunel on the basis that he should have as great a claim to fame as his son, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. It has two chapters covering Battersea: Chapter Seven is particularly about the boot factory which existed some 40 years before the introduction of British mass-production in and around Nottingham.

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