| History | Ironworks were initially established in 1787-1794 for Charles, 3rd Earl Stanhope to exploit the mineral resources of his estate at Stanton by Dale and Dale Abbey. Although production ceased in the 1800s following the failure of the company that ran it, Hanky, Raby, Druce and Woodward, the ironworks were revived as a business proposition to take advantage of the new opportunities provided by the expansion of the railways in the early 1840s. Benjamin Smith and Son of Duckmanton re-established the ironworks in 1845-1846, building new blast furnaces and opening small pits nearby. After the bakruptcy of the Smiths in 1849, it was the Crompton family, bankers of Derby and Chesterfield, who eventually acquired the business. They established the Stanton Ironworks as a viable concern, targeting the Black Country in the West Midlands in particualr as a suitable market for their produce. The business prospered under the Cromptons, who provided strong financial backing in difficult times and employed talented and experienced managers. "New Works" were established at Hallam Fields in 1872-1874. Coal was used from the small pits at Stanton and the Miller Mundy pits at Shipley, but they also built thier own collieires at Teversall (1869), Pleasley (1877) and Silverhill (1878) .
The company was incorporated as Stanton Ironworks Company Limited in 1878, although it remained very much a family-run for several more decades under chairmen George Crompton (1878-1898) and John Gilbert Crompton (1898-1913) . The company had seen a lot of growth in the 1870s when the Franco-Prussian War drove demand for iron. It also started to develop the manufacture of iron pipes, which grew dramatically as a market area with the burgeoningof municipal authorities providing gas and water supplies to the populations they served. This would become the main and very successful focus of the company's business, with the foudning of an iron pipe foundry. Another far-sighted development was the leasing of several iron ore sites in Leicestershire and Northamptonshire, as the local ironstone seams at Stanton were being worked out. The development of "New Works"turned the company into the joint top Derbyshire iron producres with the Butterley Company. Modernising and mechanisation of the collieries and ironworks led to increased production and profitability.
After the appointment of Edmund John Fox as Managing Director in 1917, the company experienced a period of dramatic growth. He recruited the best engineers and salesmen from rival firms, developed a new colliery at Bilsthorpe, Nottinghamshire and took the opportunities provided by the pioneering new ways of producing iron pipes by centrifugal casting (as developed by International Delavud Corpoartion). On account of these new methods of production it took on the supply of iron pipes for major concerns such as the London Underground and Mersey Tunnel in the 1920s. It also began to take over rival firms, such as James Oakes and Co. of Riddings in 1920, Holwell ironworks in Leicestershire (also in 1920), Cochranes of Middlesborugh (1933) Wellingborough Iron Company (1938).
In 1939 the company was purchased by the steel pipes manufacturers, Stewarts and Lloyds, which severed the company's connection with the Crompton family. The Stanton Ironworks Company maintaind its independence, but it lost some of its drive after the resignation of Fox from the board in 1942. The company also lost its collieries following the nationalisation of the coal industry in1947, although it had looked in1936 into selling them away. Fox had devloped a strategy of building a fully integrated works to produce the whole range of different products possible from an ironworks.During the 1950s the company faced strong pressure in export markets for its products and this led to investement in and collaboration with some firms in overseas countries. In 1960, Staveley Coal and Iron Company was taken over by Stewarts and Lloyds Ltd, and in 1965 the two Derbyshire companies were merged to form the Stanton and Staveley Company. |