Soho Foundry
1796 · Boulton & Watt Works · Work 85 of 1,871
The Boulton and Watt works at Soho, engine components laid out in the erecting shop, part-assembled cylinders and beams on the floor, roof cranes overhead.
- What it was used for
- Soho Foundry at Smethwick, begun in 1795 and opened in 1796, was where Boulton & Watt first made complete steam engines: every component cast, machined and assembled on one site. Before that the cylinders came from Wilkinson and other parts from other suppliers, while the firm lived on selling rights. From 1798 William Murdock managed the works; from 1800 to 1803 it was lit by gas, one of the earliest gas-lit factories anywhere. In 1895 the Foundry closed and was bought and rebuilt by the Avery scale works.
- What was new
- What was new was not the foundry but that every stage of making a steam engine came together in one place. The cause was not a plan but a breakdown. In 1795 the Wilkinson brothers, who cast the cylinders, fell out and stopped production. At the same time Watt's patent was running towards 1800, after which anyone could copy the engine. So the firm that had lived for a quarter century on licences and other men's foundries became a manufacturer because its supplier collapsed and its monopoly was expiring. The works outlived both by a century and ended as a scale factory.
Connections
Every connection names its kind. “Forerunner” on its own would be a claim.
- Follows fromWatt Separate Condenser1769Until 1795 the firm lived on selling rights to Watt's condenser and had its cylinders cast elsewhere. When the Wilkinson brothers stopped supplying and the patent ran towards 1800, the works at Smethwick followed: there Boulton & Watt built complete engines of that design for the first time.Source: Historic England, List Entry 1268451: Soho Foundry ('Boulton and Watt produced, for the first time, complete steam engines, making and assembling all the separate components on one site') · Historic England Research: When Soho Led the World (Streit der Brüder Wilkinson 1795, Ablauf des Patents 1800, 'no choice but to build their own manufactory')