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Entry TypeCorporate
Corporate NamePlowright Bros
PlaceNew Brampton, Chesterfield
Epithetengineering firm
Dates1878-1963
HistoryFounded by Robert Plowright and his three sons. Specialised in machinery for the coal industry.

The firm was begun in 1878 by the brothers William Oliver and Henry James Plowright, who took over the long-established site of the Brampton Iron Works. Both brothers were skilled engineers who had been trained at the Portsmouth Royal Naval dockyard, and they were later to set up another engineering factory in Russia. The Brampton Iron Works had been a brass foundry and engineering works whose main customers were the local Brampton potteries and the beaver hat factory at Beaver Place.

The Plowrights continued for a time in this line of work, but before long their skills were called upon to provide repairs for mechanical breakdown of machines in local collieries, and the firm switched its operations to the design and manufacture of coal handling equipment and coal preparation plant. They won long-term contracts with coal mines throughout the British Isles, and extended their business to supply collieries in South and West Africa, India, Canada and China.

Plowrights were for many years one of the main industrial firms in the Chesterfield area. (One of their employees was Mr Henry Shaw, who is said to have riveted the sections of Chesterfield F.C's grandstand at Saltergate). By the early 1960s, though, problems were being encountered, and following the death of Mr. Robert Plowright the firm was sold off in September 1962.
Authorised Form of NameNew Brampton, Chesterfield; Plowright Bros; 1878-1963; engineering firm

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