 |
THE COMPANIES
Although most of the names presented here long since vanished
as companies these names now stand witness to a time when thousands found
employment making and selling these most seasonal of goods. They capture
a period of industrial history when several generations of a single family
might work together mixing, sieving, loading, tamping, fusing, labelling
and packing fireworks under a brand name their own ancestor could well
have created. A time when the manufacturer meant useful contracts for
local printing and packaging firms. A time when newspapers, comics, periodicals
and television carried the adverts, making for an heirloom brand loyalty
of favourite makes, types and names.
What follows is by no means a comprehensively detailed or complete list
of all the names involved in producing fireworks in Britain during the
last century. Many of the firms, both small and large had scant regard
for their own company record keeping and archive storage and losses of
physical evidence has been rife. Even within the past decade invaluable
archive material relating to some of the more famous companies has been
lost during factory clearances due to a general lack of understanding
as to the cultural importance and relevance to social heritage of this
material.
It is possibly a measure of the quaint, cottage-industry style approach
of many firework makers that has lead to this situation and maybe their
very appeal would be lessened had their business acumen and record keeping
matched their pyrotechnic knowledge. Very few firework companies were
run with the sole intention being that of financial gain, the work being
too seasonal, unpredictable and labour intensive to allow for such luxury.
Most companies were started and run by enthusiastic firework lovers who
happened to make a living, often only just, from their passionate interest.
They did not keep complex, detailed records because in their business
they did not have to. All they needed to know and to record were their
methods, chemical ingredients, mix recipes, where to source the most economic
raw materials and where best to sell the finished product; these were
the mainstay requirements of firework making and could be easily passed
on verbatim to those who would follow, a gradual drip-drip of hand-me-down
knowledge and practical experience gained entirely through learning the
trade from within.
Did this simplistic approach help bring about the near total cessation
of the British firework making industry and the reason why all the images
within this book are paper fossils of yesteryear? Probably, it certainly
did not help make firework making a tempting industry for budding entrepreneurs
to enter into but then again let us not kid ourselves into thinking that
fireworks, even in their heyday, could ever compete in the FT100 index
alongside the big food producers, media companies, petrochemical and electronics
giants. Granted, more people in any given year may use fireworks than
might use a new drug which has had millions invested in it but that fact
alone is not going to make the investment capital fraternity wave their
cheque-books in the direction of grubby wooden sheds full of cardboard
tubes and gunpowder. Although millions of people use the product annually,
hundreds of millions worldwide, the product, its profits and its manufacture
are by necessity restricted in scale. Fireworks are by their very nature
small disposable items, necessarily affordable, utilitarian and practical,
manufactured out of sight and out of mind and the industry that once produced
them here in Britain clearly reflected these factors both in it's scale
and in it's way of thinking.
ASTRA
Created in 1946, Astra Fireworks were one amongst a number of new companies,
created following the war to supply the burgeoning new demand by the public
for fireworks. Founded by two émigrés from Eastern Europe,
Bertie Yellin and Dr Paul Lax, Astra Fireworks began primarily
with the production of sparklers, under the Cleveland brand name,
manufactured at their then base of Bromley in Kent. They began to make
fireworks proper in 1948 and would do so from a new factory at Richborough,
near the town of Sandwich in Kent, until 1989 when following a serous
fire they ceased all home based manufacture and switched instead to supplying
imported items. They did so until their final demise in 1997.
BENWELL
Started in 1949 by Benjamin Weller, who was then part of Haley
and Weller toy makers, a company with a major line in the manufacture
of dartboards. Benwell's full retail range was produced in Draycott until
1974 when they moved to the old Wizard Fireworks site at Chedburgh. There
they remained until 1988 when they pulled out of firework production all
together, the name being taken over and kept alive for a while by firework
importers Fiestal.
BRITANNIA / PHOENIX
This company began life possibly (it is not entirely certain) under the
name of Gray's Fireworks, started by Kenneth Gray in 1938
who sold on the firm in 1948 to Alfred Goldstone and Philip Rose
who began to manufacture under the name Phoenix Fireworks, using a site
very close to the famous Brock's factory in Hemel Hempstead. Philip
Rose lasted only a year before departing to start Wizard Fireworks
in 1949.
Mystery surrounds the existence of Phoenix and it appears that due to
the use of a few dodgy mixtures they suffered some nasty accidents and
a spate of exploding Snowstorm fireworks, which, given the bad
publicity associated with these incidents, led the company to begin selling
their fireworks under the Britannia Fireworks brand name from 1950. They
never really shook off the problems and saw just four more years before
selling out to another local firm, Continental Industry, a sparkler
manufacturer, who wanted the factory site for their own purposes.
BROCK'S
By far the oldest and most respected of the firework firms and one whose
very name is synonymous with the national and international face of the
British firework industry. Brock's began life in the early 1700's as the
creation of John Brock, with its first factory located in the most
unlikely of modern locations for such a practice, namely Islington, London.
After passing through the control of several generations of the Brock
family the company became world famous for presenting what would become
forever known as 'Brock's Benefits,' displays for the enjoyment
of the common public, the first of which was fired on July 10, 1826 and
from 1865 onwards became a regular attraction at the site of the fabulous
Crystal Palace. These Brock's displays continued regularly with a just
a decade long break between 1910 and 1920 until the Palace was completely
devastated by fire in 1936, an event which spelt the closure of this traditional
and hugely popular firework institution. So connected with the palace
was the company that they were renamed C.T. Brock & Co's 'Crystal
Palace' Fireworks in 1865, a nomenclature reference that would live
on long after Paxton's famous glass and iron structure had cooled to the
touch.
During their long existence the Brock's production site moved a number
of times, from South Norwood to Sutton and then in 1910 to Hemel Hempstead
where it remained until the 1971 when the business undertook its final
relocation to two factories, one in Sanquar, Dumfriesshire, Scotland and
the other at Swaffham in Norfolk, remaining there until 1981.
The Brock's name was re-enlivened in the early 80's with the advent of
a new product range and moreover a brand new image. The introduction of
designs for labels, boxes and point of sale, created by Michael Peters
and Co. Design Agency, brought a new lease of life and for a while
at least Brock's shone brightly. It was not to last. In 1988 Brock's were
bought out by Standard Fireworks who switched the remaining manufacture
from Scotland to Huddersfield before ceasing home production all together
in favour of imported goods. Standard did however maintain this fine old
name as a distinct product line until into the new century thereby enabling
Brock's to see four different centuries.
CRANE'S
Based at Kingswood, Bristo, they were started by I.Crane in 1887
and closed in 1938, after failing to recover from a fire in the October
of 1937 which although not directly destroying that season's stock did
immeasurable and ultimately terminal damage to the buildings.
EXCELSIOR
This firm actually started life sometime prior to 1909 as Oswald Bradley
and Co. Ltd, in Ripon, Yorkshire, before relocating firstly in 1911
to Freshfield on the Lancashire cost south of Southport, before moving
for the final time to the outskirts of that Victorian seaside resort in
1913 and becoming known thereafter as Excelsior Fireworks. It was a name
for which they would become rightly famous. From its Russell Road factory
the business produced a wide and very respected range of retail fireworks
right up to its much lamented closure in 1971 when its then owner, Fredrick
Bradley, Oswald's son, retired, with no-one else seemingly willing
to guide the dwindling company through the quagmire of anti-fireworks
feeling which grew around that time.
GUY'S
Started out under the title Comet Fireworks in 1946 as the result
of the efforts of a school chemistry teacher named Hugh Allen.
After a couple of years the name was changed to Guy's and they carried
on trading from their Leeds based factory until their cessation in 1957.
There was an ill-fated attempt during the 1980's to bring this brand name
back from the dead. It failed.
HAMMOND'S
This Edinburgh based firm was one of those who's ownership remained within
the same family for all of its existence, having been set up by Thomas
Hammond sometime prior to 1880 and brought to a close nearly a century
later on the retirement of his daughter in 1974.
JESSOP
One family, one hill, four businesses. There was a time when Rowley Hill,
near Huddersfield in Yorkshire, was a not the best place in the country
to strike a match, mostly due to the industrious zeal shown by a single
pyrotechnically minded Yorkshire family. The spark for all this activity
was struck by the father of the clan, Mr. Allen Jessop, in 1875
when he started up a fireworks factory there and brought in his sons,
Ben, Humphrey, Eli and Elliot to assist.
After Allen's death in 1880 there seems to have been a slow-burning clash
of sibling personalities that resulted in a split during the 1890's and
a resultant complex of separate firework businesses thereafter, all fully
independent and yet all seemingly within a good quality rocket shot of
each other.
Leaving Elliot to run the original firm of Allen Jessop & Sons,
Humphrey and Eli worked together to run their own company of Jessop
Brothers, whilst the fourth son, Ben, joined forces with a budding
firework maker named Harry Kilner to start Jessop & Kilner
Fireworks. They remained in business until early in the new century
when Harry departed just a short distance across the hill to start his
own Yorkshire Firework Company, a firm which would in 1936 change
its rather long-winded name to a far shorter one and would so thus become
one of our most famous and well loved firework brands, Lion.
Eventually Jessop Brothers were purchased by another long established
Yorkshire based firework concern, H. Shaw & Son, who had been
making fireworks since 1876, whilst in 1914 Ben Jessop sold what was left
of his half of Jessop & Co. to another locally based and rapidly
growing firm called Standard Fireworks, a firm destined for much
greater things.
Although many of the details are uncertain with this close family of companies,
one thing is certain and that is that by 1917 not one of them was left
trading. The Jessop name may have faded from the firework scene but their
legacy would continue for many a year.
KIMBOLTON
This company is the last British based manufacturer to have been successfully
formed and are now the only remaining manufacturer of any type of British
made fireworks. Their main manufacturing effort is directed into the production
of high quality display items, candles, mines and shells. Started in 1966
by the U.K's pre-eminent firework authority, Reverend Ronald Lancaster,
as well as supplying retail goods they have supplied, staged and fired
some of the most illustrious major public displays of recent times.
LION
The Lion brand of fireworks, complete with its eye-catching logo of a
Lion leaping through the O of the name was owned through its entire seventy-five
year history with that of the Kilner family, having started out early
in the century under the leadership of Harry Kilner following his
separation from partnership with Ben Jessop. Trading initially as The
Yorkshire Firework Company, the name changed to Lion in 1936 and the
business grew to produce a typically wide range of very good quality shop
goods, from sparklers to rockets and shells.
After the war and with the returning availability of materials, the company
thrived, selling nationally a variety of retail items and selection boxes.
With the changes brought upon the industry following legislation and safety
issues in the late 1960's plus the economic downturn encountered at the
start of the 70's, the company began to struggle. They finally ceased
trading in 1973 amidst a spate of similar fates within the industry.
PAIN'S
Here is one of the great names. A name that encapsulates the spirit of
Guy Fawkes Night in so many ways. Pains have enjoyed a long and complex
journey through firework history and popular belief even has it that an
early ancestor of the founder James Pain, supplied the gunpowder
to Guido Fawkes and his co-plotters. What is known is that James founded
the company during the late 1860's and based the early production at a
site on Walworth Road, in southeast London. After a brief interlude of
production in Brixton the firm moved to its more famous and longer lasting
base at Mitcham, Surrey, in 1877. From there, the company, called James
Pain & Sons went onto to establish itself as one of the major
players in both retail goods manufacture an in the staging of professional
displays.
In the early 1960's Pain's were sold to Bryant and May, the match
people, and merged with another established firework company, Wessex
Fireworks, who had also recently been acquired by Bryant and May.
Pain's-Wessex carried on manufacturing at Mitcham until 1965 when
the site was required for housing development and closed.
Firework manufacture was uprooted and moved to the Wessex factory site
near Salisbury but in 1973 it moved again, after British Match, the then
name of old Bryant and May, was sold to Wilkinson Sword, who with
their ownership of Schermully, the distress rocket manufacturers,
were the current owners of the old Well's Fireworks site at Dartford.
From there fireworks would continue to be made under the Pains-Wessex
label, wrapped in some of the most imaginative firework designs ever produced,
until their regrettable withdrawal from shop-goods supply in 1976.
Much of the inventiveness of those designs owed its existence to the creative
energies of a Glasgow based printing firm called J.J Murdoch a
company which had taken on the design work for Pains in 1963.
Having been bounced for too long around one too many a boardroom, Pain's
Fireworks, as a separate company, returned to the fore following the purchase
of the name by John Deeker, in 1980. Pain's Fireworks have since
then gone from strength to strength under the Deeker family, supplying
both an extensive range of self-fire display packs as well as being regarded
as one of the major professional display teams in the world.
RAINBOW
Another of the post war business start-ups, this firm began in 1948, at
Bracknell, the creation of a Herbert Nobbs. The imagination of
this factory and that of its label designers is plain to see in the wonderful
artwork they produced during their 25-year existence. From 1969 the firm
co-traded a range of goods with Astra Fireworks before closing
down just before Bonfire Night in 1972. The remaining stock and raw materials
were taken over by Astra who continued the Rainbow name under franchise
for a few more years before ending the run in 1975.
RILEY'S
Began in 1844, by Michael Riley and based at Ossett, by the early
1920's Riley's were regarded as one of the largest firework making firms
in Britain, with a product range to match their size. What happened to
them, when and more to the point, why, is not entirely certain. Considering
that during their prominence this company occupied the industry heights
with such illustrious names as Brock's, Pain's and Well's their fall from
the pyrotechnic pedestal was indeed remarkable.
STANDARD
Standard Fireworks must be considered the most recognisable and most popular
of all British firework makers, occupying the number one slot in both
sales figures and company size throughout the bulk of the twentieth century
and in their time giving firework-lovers some of the most memorable firework
names and labels.
Output from their Huddersfield factory was genuinely vast, covering every
single type of consumer and professional display firework from sparklers,
bangers, serpents and ripraps right up to the largest shells and giant
rockets used for public displays. In their prime Standard produced fireworks
and designs that are still recognizable and identifiable even if the textual
element of the design is removed, such was the effectiveness of their
artwork. Traffic Lights are instantly identifiable purely by the
stark black and white design and the three central spots of colour. Harlequin
also, its swirling geometric pattern of blue and red immediately recalled.
Standard Fireworks came into being in 1892 as a wholesale business selling
fireworks produced by other local Yorkshire makers. Started by James
Greenhalgh, the firm entered into it's own firework production in
1910 and by purchasing some of their local rivals around the time of the
First World War they not only snuffed out the local competition but also
acquired new factory space, machinery and labour. These assets were put
to immediate good use and soon the company grew to reach national prominence,
a position where they would prove to remain.
Standard acquired Brock's during 1988 and amalgamated all remaining
firework production in Huddersfield for the remaining years before the
full impact of imported goods was felt. By the early 1990's firework making
was over forever at Standard's Crosland site, their home of over 70 years.
In 2001 the company was bought out by Black Cat Fireworks and thankfully
they have maintained the Standard name as a distinct brand, thereby keeping
the lineage alive.
TASKER'S
Yet another of the many-fold Yorkshire firework makers, this one being
based in Bradford during the 1930's, the only decade they appeared to
have existed within.
WELLS’
Quality. The one word many would use to describe both this company and
their product. In manufacture, design, imagination and presentation this
company produced arguably some of the finest fireworks and artwork ever
to emerge from the firework industry.
Good quality paper, printed with clever and delightful artwork would encase
the best quality tubes available, which in turn were meticulously filled
and finished at their famous Dartford factory. Some might say they were
fortunate to survive as long as they did.
Established by Joseph Wells in 1837 and controlled by his descendants
for the remainder of its 134 year history, Wells’ Fireworks' problem
ultimately lay in the fact that towards the later years the product was
often costing considerably more to manufacture than they could ever hope
to recoup in sales. It was not the best approach to running a business
and in the end this company was out of time and out of place. The late
sixties and early seventies were an unforgiving time for hard-nosed multinationals
let alone quiet little family run fireworks company with one lovingly
polished shoe set in a previous century and the other mistakenly set in
a time of thinking that one should give your customer the absolute best
and to hell with the cost.
The firework world at large and November the Fifth in particular lost
Wells’ Fireworks in 1971 and although their premises stayed active
in the production of pyrotechnics for other companies for more than another
decade, it really was as if a shinning light had blinked out within the
industry. Nothing would ever quite be the same again - if Wells’
could go, anyone could.
WESSEX
The well-known Wessex Fireworks brand represented the market name of civil
pyrotechnics manufactured by the Wessex Aircraft Engineering Company,
or WAECO, which had began life in 1933 as engineering company specializing
in the servicing of light aircraft. Their pyrotechnics division had come
about during the war and following on from the expertise gained during
those years a thriving retail goods range was developed, all produced
at their factory at High Post, near Salisbury. In 1961 the company was
taken over by Bryant and May and was soon merged, within the realms
of that company, with another of their acquisitions, Pain's, to
form the Pain's-Wessex range that would become so popular for the
next decade.
WILDER
Founded during the 1830's Wilder is mostly remembered due to the fact
that they were acquired by Brock's Fireworks in 1961 and their
name kept alive as a distinct brand of retail goods, complete with some
wonderful designs for another four years before being phased out all together.
WIZARD
Wizard burst, like one of their famous penny bangers, upon the fireworks
scene in 1949 following Philip Rose's sudden departure from Phoenix
Fireworks. This is one of the few examples of when a firework's company,
intent on making money, actually managed to do so. Having identified a
particular niche within the British market for cheap bangers, Wizard stepped
in and from their factory at Chedburgh, in Suffolk, filled it thoroughly.
Although they would ultimately create a complete range of retail fireworks
it is for their mass-produced, unpredictable and popularly cheap bangers
that they will forever be remembered.
Through an unfortunate combination of bad debts, bank pressure and the
beginning of the anti-firework lobby, Wizard Fireworks disappeared as
quickly as they had appeared, closing for business in early 1963. It may
be that the management panicked and grabbed at the first opportunity to
bale out without incurring any losses. This was a pity, for with a little
more confidence this company could have been one of the long-term survivors.
Many more companies existed than these, their records lost now, some recalled only by the odd business record or a few scraps of paper in a collection. For some of the companies all that now remains to show the effort, skill and energy of the workers are their labels, their posters and a few price lists and brochures. This is the reason why these bits of paper and card are so important to preserve, record and study. Although many fields of industry have grown and declined over the years, few have virtually vanished without a trace. The British firework industry has the dubious honour of nearly doing so and were it not for the dedication of the collectors and enthusiasts and their fascinating collections there would be precious little to show today for the centuries of industrial effort and creativity given over to the pursuit of pyrotechnic pleasure.