One hundred voices speak in a new book about their lives working in one of the North-East’s most famous industrial companies

THE voices are helping to keep alive the manufacturing reputation of Head Wrightson because since its closure in 1984, it has become even more famous as an image of post-industrial dereliction. It was on its desolate, weed-grown, wind-blown site that Margaret Thatcher took her “walk in the wilderness” in September 1987.

Throughout the previous 150 years, the land inside this loop of the Tees at Thornaby had manufactured things out of iron. The Teesdale Iron Works had been founded on the carrs in 1840 when the Stockton and Darlington Railway had been extended towards Middlesbrough, opening up new industrial opportunities as it went.

In 1866, the works were bought by Charles Arthur Head and Thomas Wrightson, and gradually output grew from small castings into large bridges, blast furnaces and harbours that were exported all over the world.

It wasn’t always easy going.

In 1931, during the last great economic slump, the Wrightson family had to mortgage their mansion, Neasham Hall near Darlington, to keep the firm from going under.

This, though, enabled it to move into the profitable armaments sector in the run-up to the Second World War. It was so successful in building landing craft and portable harbours that the Germans singled out its “eisenwerk” – ironworks – as a target from the sky.

In peacetime, new avenues opened up, most notably the nuclear power industry, and on January 14, 1959, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan – the former MP for Stockton – visited Head Wrightson which he saw as the epitome of modern Britain. The Conservative PM came to see the parts for the new nuclear industry that would power the country in the future; he came to see pieces for the new motorways that would drive the country into the future, and he came to see contracts being fulfilled for India which symbolised Britain succeeding in the new global age.

It was Head’s heyday. On six sites across Teesside, it employed about 6,000 people.

The Northern Echo: Machine burning at Head Wrightson’s
Machine burning at Head Wrightson’s

Yet the global age actually created cheap foreign competition that overwhelmed Head Wrightson. It slimdown began in 1969 with the closure of the Stockton Forge, and continued apace until the late 1970s when, after having three generations of Wrightsons at the helm, it was gobbled up into a global group called Davy McKee. The idea of the merger was to create a firm with clout to take on the Far East, but the clout backfired and Head Wrightson closed in 1984.

It left a post-industrial wilderness for Mrs Thatcher to trip through in September 1987, and it left memories for the thousands who had worked, generation after generation, in the family atmosphere of an old-fashioned, world-class British manufacturer.

The Northern Echo: A consortium of Head Wrightson, Cleveland Bridge, Cargo Fleet and Whessoe built 238 landing craft ready for D-Day in 1944. This is a quarter of them
A consortium of Head Wrightson, Cleveland Bridge, Cargo Fleet and Whessoe built 238 landing craft ready for D-Day in 1944. This is a quarter of them

Many of those memories have been superbly collected by the Teesside Industrial Memories Project for its third book – its previous books have captured the oral history of ICI and Smith’s Dock.

The Northern Echo: Launch of a Bradwell boiler in the 1950s from the Teesdale site on the Thornaby bank of the Tees
Launch of a Bradwell boiler in the 1950s from the Teesdale site on the Thornaby bank of the Tees

  • Life at Head’s: Memories of Working at Head Wrightson, edited by Margaret Williamson (Teesside Industrial Memories Project) costs £8.99 from Waterstones in Middlesbrough, Guisborough Bookshop and Preston Hall Museum, Stockton.