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GUN BARREL MAKING 1690-1983
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A SHORT HISTORY OF GUN BARREL MAKING AT HAYSEETCH MILL, ROWLEY REGIS, (1690-1983)
Information contained in a brochure produced by the present owners and developers of the Gun Barrel Industrial Centre
EMERY (HALESOWEN) LIMITED
Telephone 021 550 1137
Has been used to produce this short history of Hayseetch Mill
INTRODUCTION
In our present age of atomic power, it is difficult to appreciate how important cheap water power was to the development and growth of industrial areas in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The river Stour was to be the power house for the Halesowen area with several mills having water wheels along its course as it passed through the areas of Mucklow Hill, Furnace Coppice, Hayseetch and Corngreaves.
Of the many mills in the area, at least three of them were to be involved in and associated with gun manufacture. The larger ones being the Old Mill at the bottom of MucklowHill, the Hills Mill and the Hayseetch Mill (The Hayseetch Mill site is now known as the Gun Barrel Industrial Centre.)
The Hayseetch Mill and its associated works and buildings occupied a site on the north bank of the river Stour at a point where the Hayseetch bridge crosses over the river and forms the one end of the site. The course of the river at this point flows along side the site and forms the boundary between the modern Metropolitan Boroughs of Sandwell and Dudley. The older buildings and the house on the higher side of the site were used as part of earlier industrial activities within this area. Sword making, edged tools and general smithying work was carried out at the Hayseetch site as early as 1690. The earliest deeds for the site now refer back to 1776 and indicate that the buildings had an industrial use well before that date. The only dated building that remains on the site is the largest building at the bridge end of the site which has a plaque built high up into its gable end which reads
BURR 1801'
The Burr family had an important local engineering and mining connection and were associated all around the Halesowen area as churchwardens, Governors at the Free Grammar School just off Old Hawne Lane, Short Cross, Land owners and Industrialists.
In 1835 the first registered postal service between Birmingham and Halesowen commenced. The mail arrived and was delivered on the same day. The service started with twenty subscribers out of a population of less than two thousand in Halesowen, one of whom was John Burr of Hayseetch.
By the late eighteenth century the Hayseetch area was surrounded by industrial activity for in the vicinity of Burr's Gun Barrel Works were located coal mining, iron, brick and fireclay works in addition to the many small backyard out workers making nails, chains, nuts and bolts.A contemporary Auctioneer's particulars for Hayseetch Mill describes Hayseetch as being "about seven miles from Birmingham, is contiguous to the Hawne Colliery, Corngreaves Ironworks and other mining establishments and is situated in the midst of a populous district".
However, apparently, not all the inhabitants of this populous district were friendly natives if we are to believe what happened to John Westley when he came preaching as described by this local rhyme which says:
John Westley had a bony hoss
The leanest ere yowd sin,
They took him down to Haysich brook
And shoved him yedfust in.
Although John Westley, the Methodist preacher did visit Cradley, preaching there in 1770 with the north wind whistling round his head, it was very unlikely that he was thrown in Hayseetch Brook. It is more likely that this rhyme is a folk memory of when he visited Walsall in 1734 and was thrown into the river off the bridge in the High Street
Birmingham became established as the major gunmaking centre and virtually all gun barrels produced in England were produced in Birmingham and its immediate neighbourhood. There were possibly only a total of thirty-two gun barrel makers treating this as their main business.
In 1795 a company known as the Birmingham Gun Barrel Company moved from Birmingham to occupy and manufacture gun barrels at the Hayseetch Mill Site.
GUN BARREL MANUFACTURING
For the manufacture of a gun, all the various different parts including the lock, the stock and barrel and all the furniture were collected together by a manufacturer (who was known as the Gunsmith) these were then assembled together and finished by him alone.
For the purpose of making gun barrels, a substantial amount of plant needed to be set up to enable the processes of rolling, boring and grinding. Large machinery was required and the manufacture of barrels fell into three separate types
Barrels for
(a) barrels for cheaper sporting guns and African muskets:
(b) barrels for quality sporting guns:
(c) barrels required for military trade.
As warfare progressively changed the pattern of arms required for military use, the high demand here became important to the gun trade, especially in supplying North America during the years of the American Civil War. To meet this demand the production of barrels of all kinds i.e. musket, carbine, rifle and pistol peaked in 1862 to reach a total of 996,256 barrels produced at Hayseetch Mill.
FORGING THE BARREL.
Barrel making was a distinct trade and required a great deal of skill. The earliest method of making barrels was by hand forging and then fire welding the length of barrel. This was later followed by a more mechanised method where the process consisted of rolling a slab of iron about 12inches long,5½ inch wide and a ½ inch thick. This was heated to forging temperature in a furnace and then passed repeatedly through a set of grooved rolls, until the grooves of which turned the edges inwards until they met. The blank was then reheated, this time to welding temperature and then the seam was closed and welded in a third groove in the rolls.
The twelve inch rough formed tube was then again reheated and passed through a succession of grooved rolls on a mandrel, which extended the short length to the required barrel length, usually about 42 inches.
The invention of making gun barrels by means of grooved rolls was due to a Birmingham manufacturer by the name of Henry Osbourne and it made possible cheap volume production of standardised barrels.
Some high quality barrels continued to be made by forging and twisting strips of iron around a mandrel. These were described as Plain twist, Stub twist or ‚Damascus‚. These were made by twisting flat strips of iron around a mandrel to make a tight coil, which was then fire-welded. This method appears to have originated and been developed in the East in the 17th century or even earlier.
GRINDING THE BARREL
Irrespective of the method used to manufacture the barrel or in fact the type of barrel, most were ground to a reasonable shape and finish before being sent to the Gunsmith for assembly and final finishing.
The grinding process needed water both to power and turn the huge grinding wheels and also to keep the wheels wet during grinding. At the Hayseetch site there still exists a few examples of these hard, sandstone grinding wheels, which could weigh more than 3½ tons and be eight feet in diameter.
The wheels were rotated quite slowly by the water wheel but due to their large outside diameter their peripheral speed was quite high. They were mounted on the first floor landing thus allowing enough clearance above the ground for the huge wheels to revolve. This landing was the working platform where the men sat astride these huge revolving wheels hand grinding the barrels. Water poured from above onto the wheel from a high level where it ran down the wheel both cooling and lubricating the grinding action. It ran off the bottom of the wheel below into a sluice running along the floor and through the building to return to the river. These grinding wheels were tremendously powerful when once their mass was turning, surface speed was not critical but the skill of the grinder was all-important.
By an Act of Parliament in 1813, the Birmingham gun trade established a proving house in Banbury Street, Birmingham. Early records from this proof house indicate that defects of all kinds identified during proving were as low as 1.3% in rolled barrels from Hayseetch Mill.
THE FALL IN DEMAND
Although the Master Guilds sometimes required journeymen (who sought admittance to the guild as Masters of the craft of Gunsmith) to make their own barrels, this was not the usual practice amongst Master Gunsmiths, who would usually obtain their barrels in the rough form from a specialist Barrelsmith. The provincial barrel makers had to be versatile for where they did not always obtain sufficient orders to keep fully occupied as barrel makers, especially as the demand for guns waned, they had to turn there hands to other allied trades.
In the case of Hayseetch Mill, this diversification came in the form of the manufacture of tube fittings, which activity was commenced by the company in 1897. By now it was a Limited Company, but still retained the name of the Birmingham Gun Barrel Company under which it had now been trading for more than a century. With the addition of the additional new trade the original buildings were soon outgrown and new workshops were added from time to time. By 1914 the gun barrels which were being made by the company, were all being used for sporting purposes only, and with the outbreak of the Great War in 1914-1918 a tailing off in demand for the companies gun products coincided with an increase in the demand for tube fittings and so it was after a span of over 120 years the manufacture of gun barrels at Hayseetch was finally brought to an end.
Development of the site as a tube-fitting factory continued between the two world wars 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 and after so that in 1977 a completely new factory and office block were built on land adjoining their old Hayseetch Mill. When the old premises were eventually vacated in 1983 the site was sold off for redevelopment to take place
THE HAYSEETCH SITE TODAY
In 1983 the site was sold off and redeveloped as The Gun Barrel Industrial Centre. In view of the historical importance of the old buildings redevelopment of the site has been carried out to retain as much and as many of the original architectural features as possible. Unfortunately the water wheel disappeared many years ago but the proud elevations and the strength of the remaining buildings still create a picture of industrial history, of which they were a part
NOTE: Hayseetch was an early spelling. The ‚T‚ appears to have been dropped in the 18th century.
THE EDGE CONNECTION
Several generations of the Edge Family have worked at the Hayseetch Mill site employed in many of the associated occupations at this works. This included gun barrel making, boring, grinding burnishing, browning etc The fact that the Mill was within easy walking distance of the many houses occupied by various generations of Edges was probably a key factor. The ongoing changing nature of the company is also reflected in the later Edge occupations to include gas fitting maker and gas tube maker.
Below is a list of the Known Edges‚ dates and occupations within the Hayseetch Mill and surrounding trades.
NAME__________OCCUPATION________BIRTH
1JosephEdge........BarrelMaker..............1785
2Rueben Edge.......Barrel Grinder...........1820
3 Joseph Edge......Barrel Grinder...........1842
4 John Edge........Barrel Grinder...........1848
5 Roland Edge......Barrel Grinder...........1856
6 Ryland Edge......Barrel Borer.............1859
7 Edward Edge......Gas Tube Maker...........1862
8 Mary(Roland 5)...Barrel Borer.............1864
9 Andrew Edge......Gas Fitting Maker........1866
10 Louisa (William 11)..Chain Maker.........1844
11 William Edge.........Chain Maker.........1846
12 Rueben Edge..........Chain Maker.........1867
13 William Edge.........Chain Maker.........1871
14 Caroline Edge........chain Maker.........1875
15 Elizabeth Edge.......Chain Maker.........1878
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