SUGAR, BRISTOL and

ISAMBARD KINGDOM BRUNEL

Alan N. Mead October 2011

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SUGAR, BRISTOL and ISAMBARD KINGDOM BRUNEL

Paper Presented to the BRITISH SOCIETY of SUGAR TECHNOLOGISTS in BRISTOL on Thursday 13th October 2011

INTRODUCTION

The 2011 ATM being held in Bristol, on board the SS Great Britain and in a Sugar House converted into a hotel, it was considered appropriate that there should be a paper relating the two and I was volunteered to prepare and present same. Sugar processing being very ‘heavy engineering’ orientated; I was confident that I could find a link between sugar and Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

The HISTORY of SUGAR in GREAT BRITAIN A significant percentage of the population today think only of Liverpool, Greenock and London as being the primary homes of the Sugar Refinery industry in Great Britain. Sugar refining first started in Britain in London the mid 16th century, with two of the early sugar houses, as they were then known, being found in Bristol very early in the 17th century. Sugar houses were variously referred to as sugar refiners, sugar bakers and sugar processors, it now being difficult to identify how many were true refiners as we know today. John Stow, the historian and map-maker of London around 1720, noted that:

"About the year 1544 refining of sugar was first used in England. There were but 2 sugar-houses; and the profit was little, by reason there were so many sugarbakers in Antwerp and thence better and cheaper than it could be afforded in London."

Liverpool - while there is evidence that a couple of ships brought back one or two cargoes of sugar to Liverpool in 1665, the first sugar refinery was not established until 1667; that being by Allyn Smith. Further refineries were established soon after by Richard Cleveland and Daniel Danvers by 1673; a total of 82 sugar houses are recorded as having been established in Liverpool.

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The import of sugar to Liverpool increased significantly and rapidly: In 1704 760 tons

1711 1,120 tons 1785 16,600 tons 1810 46,000 tons

In Britain, it was ships from Bristol and London which in the mid 17th century were first to take up the slave trade; the ‘triangle of trade’, manufactured goods to Africa; slaves to the West Indies and America; sugar, rum, cotton and mahogany to Britain. Liverpool's first slave ship sailed in 1709, but by 1720 it had outstripped its rivals. This also brought about a dramatic increase in the population, estimated to be 7,000 in 1708, rising to 30,000 by 1766, 80,000 by 1800 and 376,000 by 1851.

Sir Henry Tate

1819 – 1899 Became the 1st Baronet Tate

of Park Hill (Streatham)

in 1898.

Died leaving assets of

£1,263,565 5s 5d

Painting by

Hubert Von Herkomer in 1897

It was not until 1809 that John Wright established his refinery, in which Henry Tate became a partner in 1859 and who, in 1869, after the death of John Wright, renamed it Henry Tate & Sons. Other prominent ‘sugar’ names of that era in Liverpool include Fairrie, MacFie and Sankey; Fairrie and MacFie also being very prominent names in Greenock. Henry Tate established Liverpool’s Love Lane Refinery in 1873 followed by London’s Thames Refinery in 1878; soon becoming very successful, thanks largely to his patenting of a means of cutting sugar into dice-sized cubes. Sir Henry Tate died in 1899, leaving assets of The Love Lane Refinery shut down in 1981 and Thames Refinery now being part of the American Sugar Refineries group.

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‘Ancient and Modern’ Views of Liverpool’s Love Lane Refinery

Greenock - at that time called Port of Glasgow, saw its first sugar refinery built by Mark Kuhll in 1765 at the bottom of Sugarhouse Lane, adjoining the West Burn (West stream to the Sassenachs); in total, 119 sugar houses are recorded for Greenock.

Abram Lyle

1820–1891 Died leaving assets of

£ £42,540 0s 0d Artist and date unknown

WESTBURN REFINERY 1930s CLOTH SACK

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It was in 1831 that Thomas Young erected the first of the Glebe sugar refineries, later to be bought by a consortium of five people, including Abram Lyle. Another refinery, later to be known as Westburn was built close by in 1852 and operated until 1997. After the death of the principal partner, John Kerr, in 1872, Abram Lyle sold his shares and looked for a site for a new refinery.

This picture of the Greenock Refineries - viewed from the South and looking out across the Clyde and possibly viewed through rose tinted glasses - was

published 1891, but is believed to be much older. It is said that the weather can be forecasted from this spot; if you can see across the Clyde from here, then it will rain shortly; if you can’t, then it is

already persistently raining (or words to that effect).

In 1883 Abram Lyle & Sons started melting sugar at Plaistow Wharf Refinery; having brought 400 families from Greenock to provide the skilled workforce necessary. However, it made a loss of £30,000 in its first year, and on several occasions the workforce were asked to delay drawing their wages. It soon became successful, dominating the market with its flagship brand of Golden Syrup. London – The first recorded sugar houses in London were sited in Mincing Lane; five starting in 1554 but all ceasing operating within their first year; only a further seven commenced operating before 1700. In total, over 1500 have operated in London since then; the majority starting in the first half of the eighteenth century but many of them also not surviving a single year.

Charles Smith and Robert Tyers operated a liquid sugar refinery at 203 Thames Street from at least 1838-53.

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THAMES STREET,

LONDON

Picture drawn by

Thomas H Shepherd

and engraved by

J E Roberts circa 1830

Each of the six buildings shown in this picture, apart from the church, St Mary Somerset, was at some time between 1780 and 1853 a sugar refinery. The one on the extreme left, numbered 207, with the crane was owned by Richard Quelch in 1768, Laborde & Son in 1780, and Frieake & Co in 1794 through to 1813. The building on the extreme right, numbered 203 was a liquid sugar refinery owned by Charles Smith and Robert Tyers from at least 1838-53.

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Height: 20" / 51 cm Diameter: 13" / 33 cm Weight: 28 lbs / 12.5 kg Capacity: 6¾ gallon / 30 litres Made by Fulham Stone Pottery Date, ~ 1838 The stoneware flagon contained ‘Capillaire’; a water-clear syrup originally flavoured with dried maidenhair fern though later with orange-flower water, much used by confectioners and also as a cordial. When full, it would have weighed at least 50 kg. The concept of liquid sugar is not therefore new; even though the marketing may have changed a little. Britain – in addition to Bristol, Greenock, Liverpool and London, their have been sugar houses in Aberdeen, Chester, Cork, Dundee, Earlestown, Edinburgh, Leith, Exeter, Gloucester, Goole, Hull, Ipswich, Lancaster, Manchester, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Newcastle upon Tyne, Plymouth, Preston, Sheffield, Southampton, Stockton on Tees, Warrington, Whitehaven and York. The Beet Industry - Franz Karl Achard began selectively breeding sugar beet in 1784 and under the patronage of Frederick William III of Prussia, he opened the world's first beet sugar factory in 1801, in Silesia; at various times in history being part of Germany, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia. In 1807 the British began a blockade of France, preventing the import of cane sugar from the Caribbean and, partly in response; in 1812 Frenchman Benjamin Delessert devised a process of sugar extraction suitable for commercial industrial application. By the end of the Napoleonic Wars, over 300 sugar beet mills operated in France and central Europe. Sugar beet was not grown on a large scale in the United Kingdom until the mid-1920s when, following war-time shortages of imported cane sugar, 17 processing factories were built; one factory had, however, been built by the Dutch at Cantley in Norfolk in 1912. There are now only 4 beet factories remaining in Britain; Cantley, Wissington, Bury and Newark all operated by British Sugar.

SUGAR in BRISTOL Bristol’s first sugar house was set up in 1612 by Robert Aldworth who was the richest of the Bristol merchants of that period.

The tomb, in St Peter’s Church, of Robert Aldworth who died in 1634, and his Wife Martha. Painted by Edward Cashin in 1825.

.

Five sugar loaves can be seen, carved

at the bottom right hand corner

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He was a Bristol born English merchant and philanthropist who became the Mayor of Bristol in 1609; much of his wealth, although often used for generous purposes, was acquired through the trade and exploitation of slaves. His tomb in St Peter’s Church (now derelict) had sugar loaves carved on the base. The raw sugar that he imported into Bristol came from the islands of Madeira and the Azores; sugar was not imported into Bristol from the Caribbean slave plantations until 1653. The second sugar house in Bristol was established in 1653 at the Great House on St Augustine’s Back (on the site of the present Colston Hall); the main investors were John Knight, his cousin Sir John Knight and Shershaw Cary. There are records of there having been 164 sugar houses in the city by the end of the 19th century. Sugar became a very important part of the city’s 18th century wealth and there were many merchants involved in importing sugar from the Caribbean. The sugar refiners were extremely important and influential men in Bristol; many being involved in the politics of the city; sixteen of them becoming Mayors of the city. Many had other business interests; several went into banking as partners in the many private banks which developed in the 18th century.

Banknote for £30 of the

Bristol Bank.

Founded in 1786

George Daubeny, one of the original partners, was a major sugar refiner in Bristol

During the 18th century, Bristol grew very quickly; the population in 1701 was about 20,000 but by the end of the century it had risen to about 64,000). The increase was primarily due to the work availability brought about by the ‘triangular trade’ Bristol dominated the English slave trade in the first half of the 18th century. It quickly became home to a booming sugar import trade, which was not overtaken (by Liverpool) until 1799; sugar became the most lucrative of all Bristol's industries. The city's quaysides and warehouses were joined by sugar refineries processing the crude sugars shipped across the Atlantic from the slave plantations. With a booming British market for sugar to sweeten foodstuffs, but most of all for tea, Bristol grew in prominence and civic stature. Like the tobacco warehouses in Glasgow, Bristol's sugar buildings are a reminder of the importance of imported tropical staples. They are also reminders of the ways in which British life, particularly the nation's sweet tooth, is linked to the slave trade. The city became home to groups of prosperous sugar merchants, and West Indian planters who returned 'home' to retire to grand houses in the West Country. Inevitably, the city contains important architectural monuments to those links: Guinea Street; Queens Square was home to prominent sugar merchants

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Merchants Hall was the site of local Merchants Adventurers who profited from the boom in slave trading in the 18th century

Most famous perhaps is The Georgian House at No 7 Great George Street. John Pinney, who owned several sugar plantations on the island of Nevis in the Caribbean, returned from Nevis in 1783. He used his wealth to have this house built; it also served as an office for the sugar company that Pinney had set up with James Tobin on his return to Bristol.

The house is now owned by the Bristol City Museum and has been turned into a free museum with the house laid out as it would have been in the 18th century. There is a small display at the top of the house, with information on John Pinney and on Pero, his slave.

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A modern reminder is Pero’s Bridge, opened in 1999 and named after the slave brought to Bristol from St Kitts by the Pinneys. The horn-shaped sculptures of Pero's Bridge act as counterweights for the lifting section; leading it to be commonly known as the Horned Bridge

The bridge was built as a memorial to the many slaves brought to Bristol as part of the ‘Trade Triangle’ and is particularly crucial to Bristol where an anonymous commentator opined;

"(T)here is not a brick in the city but what is cemented with the blood of a slave". The horns are meant to symbolise the musical culture synonymous with the African slaves.

Christmas Steps & Three Sugar Loaves

The Three Sugar Loaves pub at the bottom of Christmas Steps. This fashionable hotel and restaurant in Lewins Mead, the venue for the

meeting, was once a sugar house / refinery. It was here, and in similar buildings in other ports, where sugar was imported and then refined. The barrels of ‘wet molasses’ and sugar were refined further locally before being cast into sugar loaves for distribution to shops. These were then sold in various forms to the better off British public who came to depend on regular supplies of sugar for their drink and food

The HOTEL du VIN The first sugar house on this site was built in 1728; at which time Bristol was referred to as 'The Metropolis of the West'. It was England's second city, a thriving, wealthy merchant port & important cultural centre. During the 18th century, the geography of Bristol was vastly different to its current standing. The course of the river Frome came right through what is now the Town Centre; looking from the front door of the sugar house there would have been a forest of masts belonging to the tall ships and cargo vessels that plied their trade through this port. It was the task of the Bristol sugar refiners to remove the impurities & produce various grades of pure white crystalline sugar. The sugar house on this site was one of the many sites around Bristol carrying out this refining process; interestingly, clay pipes were also manufactured on this site at the same time.

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Towards the end of the 18th century, steam engines were developed and added in order to speed up sugar production and the refinery design was modified accordingly. A boiler room ( now the Hotel Reception ), an engine house ( now the wine cellar ) and a chimney were added. This is the only remaining sugar house in Bristol and the building represents an important period of industrial innovation and, as such, is Grade II listed.

The Hotel as it is Today

With the decline of the sugar industry in Bristol, even the latest technology was not sufficient to preserve the sugar house and it closed as a refinery in 1831; after which

The Grade II Listed Building in 1994;

before reconstruction commenced

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it continued to be put to a wide range of industrial uses including tobacco storage and bird seed manufacturing. After lying empty for 11 years, there followed a sensitive reconstruction by the Alternative Hotel Company, which recognised the importance of this building as a fine example of Industrial Archaeology and re-opened it as HOTEL du VIN in November 1999. Close by is the Three Sugar Loaves public house, which was the name of the sugar refinery which stood on the site.

The DECLINE and EVENTUAL DEMISE of BRISTOL’S SUGAR INDUSTRY Bristol's sugar refining industry began to drift into relative recession after about 1780 when there were still more than 20 sugar refineries in the city; the following ten years seeing that number drop by 7. Although it was probably not realised at the time, at the end of the 18th century the overseas trade of Bristol had become dangerously specialized and though some Bristol merchants were still engaged in the Newfoundland fish trade, and others were beginning to develop commercial connections with Canada, the sugar trade with Jamaica, the Leeward and Windward Islands was then worth twice as much as all Bristol’s other overseas business combined. This was Bristol's most lucrative trade and one in which the greatest accumulation of wealth occurred, so it was upon the sugar refining industry that such trades as provisioning and confectionary, as well as the greater part of her shipping, depended. In May 1755, The London Morning Penny Post reported that thefts from sugar houses were so frequent that guards armed with cutlasses had been placed on them; the most recent theft had been of 100 pounds ( 45 kg. ) of sugar, valued at 25 shillings ( £1.25 ); less than 3 pence / kilo! Although the amount of sugar brought into the port rose significantly during the eighteenth century, by 1799 Liverpool had overtaken Bristol in terms of sugar imports. Liverpool was by then specializing in the slave trade and also had the advantage over Bristol of being able to send its ships out into the Atlantic to the north of Ireland thereby avoiding the Bristol Channel and English Channel where enemy privateers were more active. In spite of the Anti-Slave Trade campaign, in 1800 Bristol's merchants failed to foresee the utter ruin of the sugar industry which was to occur in the West Indies during the next fifty years. The city continued to concentrate on trade with the West Indies, where many of her most important citizens had large capital investments, and so it was that Bristol's prosperity declined along with that of the Caribbean Islands. In 1794, William Matthews' New History of Bristol stated: 'The Ardor for the Trade to Africa for men and women, our fellow creatures and equals, is much abated among the humane and benevolent Merchants of Bristol.’ Nevertheless, by 1787, there were still 30 Bristol ships employed in this 'melancholy traffic'. This down turn in West Indian fortunes took place in stages during the first half of the nineteenth century: Starting with the long campaign against the slave trade which culminated in the

abolition of slavery in British colonies in 1833 Followed by the freeing of indentured apprentices in 1838

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The removal of the special privileges in the British market previously enjoyed under the old Colonial System in 1846

And in 1849, by the repeal of the Navigation Acts Irretrievable ruin finally came with the passing of the Sugar Equalisation Duties

Act of 1851 which finally placed West Indian sugar on an equal footing in the British market with European beet sugar and the slave produced products of Cuba, Brazil and other foreign plantations

By 1911, only two sugar refiners were listed in the Bristol directory of that year. They were John Bessant and Burton, Son & Sanders Ltd.

These tales of woe are all too familiar and not too different from those faced again by the sugar industry in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Owing to a shortage of supply, there was something of a revival in the industry during the French Wars. However, an increase in world production and a fall in price, coupled with increased import duties, by 1812 the number of refineries in Bristol had dropped to 12. By this time, Bristol sugar merchants had lost much of their competitive edge and although the number of refineries nationally also declined Bristol's failure to introduce modern technology brought about the reduction to only 3 refineries by 1850. But, one of these 3, Conrad Finzel, Son & Co. at the Counterslip was about to revolutionize sugar production by the use of vacuum pans and centrifugal driers. The improved processes placed the trade in fewer hands while giving employment to greatly increased numbers. By 1875, the Counterslip Refinery had 25 steam boilers and employed 600 men. It could turn out 1,200 tons of sugar per week. W. B. Murray provided a wonderful description of ‘ Sugar-making at the Counterslip Refinery, Bristol ‘ on page 515 of The Illustrated London News of 29th November 1873. The full text is included here; but with some of the more notable points highlight in red:

THE GREAT SUGAR REFINERY AT BRISTOL - 1873. It has lately happened that sugar in its various forms has attracted very general attention. The importation of sugar into the United Kingdom last year amounted to nearly sixteen million hundredweight, (812832 tonnes - added by ANM) and of this amount fourteen millions and a half (736629 tonnes –added by ANM) were entered for "home consumption." We may remark, moreover, that this represents about half a hundredweight a year for every individual in the population, so that, even reckoning a vast quantity consumed for making preserves and other articles of luxury and ordinary diet, a large quantity must be left for consumption in its natural or refined condition. We observe also that of the sugar destined for home use 5,224,470 cwt. came from British possessions, 3,091,275 cwt. from the Spanish West India Islands, 1,878,587 cwt. from Brazil; while 2,238,811 cwt. came from France and 34,816 cwt. from Germany, a large proportion of the latter two items being probably coarsely-prepared beet-root sugar of a low saccharine quality. It appears, indeed, from the returns that by far the largest quantity consisted of what is called raw sugar, and that a very considerable proportion of this must be converted into refined or loaf sugar, though doubtless the use of raw or moist sugar is still falsely regarded as economical among the poorer classes.

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It is true that even some of the moist sugars undergo a process of refining, and that loaf or lump sugars of low quality are sold at a price so little above that of the raw sorts as to bring them within the reach of the million ; but in neither of these forms is actual purity attained, and in both moist and lump sugars the saccharine or sweetening quality is frequently small because of the intermixture of beet and other low-class sugars, which are in this way sold at the same price as cane sugar. By the old process, which is still retained in some refineries, either bullocks' blood or "finings", made by mixing a solution of alum with lime-water, is used for forming a coagulation, which rises to the surface and takes with it the impurities of the sugar, in the shape of scum, to the top of the "blowing-up pan". But a more complete result can now be obtained by filtering through animal charcoal, and this plan is mostly adopted. The question is, how to obtain perfectly pure sugar, which shall have the largest amount of saccharine property and can yet be sold at a price which brings it into direct competition with the coarse, impure sugars known as "moist". This result has been attained by complete crystallisation after refining, and the process by which it is produced may be seen at the largest refinery in England - that of Messrs. Finzel and Sons, of Bristol. The Counterslip factory, at Bristol, was established within the present century by the father of the present senior partner and the grandfather of the junior partners - the late Mr. Conrad Finzel, who by his application of centrifugal machinery to the completion of crystallised sugar, and by the adoption of various improvements in the earlier stages of manufacture, achieved a great commercial success and reputation, in obtaining a new and cheap form of the pure product. The original building at the Counterslip shared the fate of many other sugar factories, and was burnt to the ground. Of the present great block, which covers nearly two acres, one portion was not completed till 1847, the other having been erected in 1859 ; so that the three tall shafts which are visible almost as soon as we have left the railway station, mark the progress of a business which has grown with marvellous rapidity, until the weekly production of its special manufacture has reached 1200 tons. There is sufficient indication of its extent in the broad area between the factory and the warehouses - processions of drays and wagons bring boxes, bags, and tierces, which are conveyed on tramways to the lower part of the big building, to be converted into the brilliant colourless crystals, packages of which are coming out on another tramway in an almost endless train. Arriving first at the sale-room and the sampling-room, where a surprising variety of raw sugars are inspected and purchased, we are conducted through the ordinary offices, and thence to the private room of the firm, on the first landing. We go up to the laboratory, a plain but very completely appointed apartment on an upper story, where sugars in every variety are tested, and afterwards experimentally submitted to the refining process. The apparatus here consists of vats, filtering cylinders, vacuum-pan, and centrifugal machine, by means of which an able practical chemist and analyst conducts in miniature the operations that are consummated on a gigantic scale in the adjacent building. It is worth noting, however, that even in this laboratory, as the experiments are

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intended to have a practical result, 10 cwt. of sugar can be carried through all the processes for converting it into crystals. These processes, however, must be seen in the factory itself, and we will pass out of the commercial department and into the refinery, or rather into one of its departments on the first floor. Here casks, bags, and boxes of Demerara, Mauritius, and Havannah, together with baskets from Java, are disposed of with astonishing celerity by the men who receive them. Constantly as they come up, they are unhooped, ripped open, or staved in, and their contents are at once capsized through openings in the thick timber floor, beneath which lie the great boiling-pans, where the first operation of refining is effected by the reduction of the raw sugar to a brown viscid syrup, sufficiently fluid to be strained through coarse canvas bags, which are contained in a series of cisterns. This rough filtration removes from the sugar its coarser impurities, and it is allowed to pass from the bottoms of the bag-lined cisterns to a great reservoir, the magnitude as well as the contents of which enable us to contemplate it with a feeling like that of a fly peering over the edge of a dish of honey. Presently, having safely surmounted the difficulties of a tortuous iron staircase, we are in a great, dim expanse of floors and beams, strange side-lights, and sudden shadows. This is, in fact, the floor where, by galleries and footways, we reach the mouths of a numerous series of deep filtering cylinders, each of which is filled with animal charcoal finely ground. Into these the brown, viscid syrup is pumped from the main tank or reservoir, and here the actual refining process may be said to be effected. So important is this second filtration, and, if properly conducted, so completely does it remove every particle of foreign impurity, that its results are very carefully watched. The operation of each separate cylinder is marked and recorded by means of copper pipes, one of which runs from the bottom of each, and terminates in a tap fixed over a long copper trough, so divided into compartments as to make it quite easy for an inspector to detect any imperfection in the syrup yielded by any one of the long series of filtering cisterns, and to trace it to its source. The liquid syrup, or clarified fluid sugar, when it leaves these charcoal filters, is perfectly colourless and of intense sweetness, while its purity is so complete that crystallisation may be at once effected. A number of reservoirs receive it from the cylinders, and from these it is at once pumped up again into enormous vacuum pans, some of them capable of containing from 27 to 30 tons of sugar each ; while two of them - the largest in the world - will turn out respectively 400 and 500 tons a week. It is in these pans that the sugar is crystallised, by evaporation of the moisture and concentration of the clarified syrup, and this is the process which requires the greatest attention. By the old process this concentration was effected by boiling the syrup in open pans, where, of course, the temperature was much greater, and all kinds of devices were employed for regulating the heat to an even degree. Seventy years ago, we are told, the Hon. Charles Edward Howard, starting from the ascertained principle that fluids will boil in a partial vacuum at a much lower temperature than in an open vessel, invented a closed copper pan or boiler, the middle of which was cylindrical, and the top and bottom spherical in form. This vessel had a double bottom, to the cavity of which steam was admitted, so that the contents of the pan could be raised to any required temperature, while a coil of copper pipe carrying steam through the body of the pan itself assisted the evaporation of the syrup. The bottom cavity contained

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steam at low pressure, the spiral coil being supplied with steam at high pressure, and consequently at great heat ; and from the centre of the crown or dome of the pan a bent tube and apparatus was connected with an air-pump, so that the pan could be almost entirely exhausted of air, while a valve served to admit small quantities of air in case of a too rapid exhaustion. With this contrivance and the air-pump at work the sugar could be boiled at a temperature of 130 deg. to 150 deg. (added by ANM – 54 to 66° C), while the exact heat could at any moment be ascertained by properly adjusted thermometers and immediately regulated.

All modern adaptations of vacuum-pans are founded on Howard's invention, and the gigantic vessels used at the Counterslip refinery are on the same principle, with the addition of certain improvements and modifications which serve to reduce the degree of heat at which boiling may be effected, and to secure facilities for frequently testing the progress of crystallisation. The operation may be seen going on in the most extraordinary manner through a round, thickly-glazed peep-hole in the side of the copper monster, within which the sugar bubbles and stirs into aggregated crystal forms, which ultimately fall to the bottom of the vessel in a moist, warm, grainy mass.

Early Copper Vacuum Pan (added by ANM)

This granulated mass is allowed to fall into one or other of a long row of copper coolers in a floor beneath the evaporating pans, and thence, when its temperature is considerably diminished, is subjected to the process which first distinguished Messrs. Finzel's sugar from that of other manufacturers. It is this process which perfects the sugar and reduces it to pure saccharine divested of superfluous moisture and any remaining syrup by submitting it to the action of the centrifugal machines, a large number of which occupy two separate floors of the refinery, and are unceasingly at work. These machines are large cylinders of copper, set in a frame or bed, like so many enormous camp soup-kettles without lids, but with this difference, that each cylinder is made to revolve with great rapidity on a central axis, and that within the cylinder itself is a lining of wire gauze, between which and the outer pan some space is left. To these centrifugal cylinders the cooled crystallised sugar is brought by means of a travelling trough running above them along the whole length of the room, and each machine as it receives its charge is set rapidly in motion, revolving with such velocity that every particle of moisture is flung off the whirling crystals, which come from this finishing operation hard, dry, and beautifully lustrous in appearance. So rapidly is this operation effected (the cylinders making many revolutions in a second), that a hundredweight and a half of sugar is completed by each machine in a minute and a half.

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From each cylinder the charge of sugar is taken by an attendant workman, who receives it in a perambulator, which conveys it to a lower floor to become perfectly cool. The process of refining may now be said to be complete ; but the mass of sugar has yet to be raised by means of lifts to the mixing-room, where a long detachment of workmen receive the products of the mechanical portion of the factory and deftly mingle it with wooden shovels. The mixing-room presents a very striking, and even a picturesque, appearance ; for it is a vast lofty hall, in which are elevated a number of high stages or galleries built of timber, and bound at the edges with iron. These stages mark off a great square space on the floor below, which itself has some distinguishing divisions, and into which the crystallised sugar is shot from the perambulators in which it is conveyed along the upper galleries.

Sugar-making at the Counterslip Refinery, Bristol Drawn by W. B. Murray; The Illustrated London News, 29 November 1873

“un-touched by hand and blue hairnets worn by all !”

The cataract of white crystals pouring down from the iron-bound edges of this upper gallery to augment the heaps below, amidst which the white dresses of the men offer an opaque contrast, suggests a confused recollection of early reports of Cape diamonds and rock crystals. But perhaps by this time the strong saccharine influence of the atmosphere is inducing a somnolent condition, which is only partially dissipated by an introduction to the basement of the building, where in the filling-room a series of traps in the ceiling admit the mixed sugar from the floor above into shoots, and so it is poured into the tierces, bags, and packages in which it is sent out. Each filler in this lower room has his particular shoot, and when he requires a fresh supply of sugar he gives a sharp

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peal on a bell, which apprises the mixers that they must open the trap with another discharge. The necessity for this careful mixing is to be explained by the fact that the crystallisation differs in its various stages, so that crystals of various sizes are turned out of the vacuum pans, and require to be mixed in order to secure a certain uniformity of quality. The filling-room is, of course, one of the busiest departments of the factory, and the rapidity with which the sugar is rammed down into the various packages with great iron pestles, and the deft dispatch which distinguishes the heading in of casks, the hooping of tierces, and the making up of big parcels, is enough to make the observer wink. It should be noted that each tierce and hogshead is entirely lined with a peculiar kind of waterproof paper, which excludes both dust and moisture, and that small parcels of sugar are made up in bags perfectly lined with the same material. Of course the supply of casks and tierces is in itself a very large business, and this is the work of a branch establishment - St. Paul's Cooperage - where, two or three streets off, above a hundred and fifty men are employed, under the direction of Mr. William Finzel, the youngest son of the senior partner. There is an atmosphere of sugar here also, from the number of casks and boxes which are sent to be utilised after they have been emptied of their contents ; but the saccharine flavour is almost superseded by the pervading sense of beech-wood, oak-wood, and ash, represented by piles and stacks of staves, by logs and trunks, which are to be reduced to heads and struts of casks by a great circular saw ; by stores and sheds where rushes, hoops, and old rope (for caulking purposes) are kept, and by the merry din of a hundred stalwart coopers, who seem bent on hammering each other into permanent deafness. The average consumption of timber in the cooperage is 450,000 ft. every week, so that we may regard the package department as a very considerable branch of the refinery - though a visit to the boiler-house on our return obliterates the figures of the cooperage from our estimate. About thirty steam-engines are at work night and day to supply the motive power of this great factory of sugar, and thirty-one boilers are required to supply the steam, not only for the engines, but for the processes of the refinery. With regard to the quality of this sugar, the latest analysis of the crystals gives:

Pure cane sugar 99.923 Fixed ash 0.018 } 0.077 Moisture 0.059 }

100.000

Moisture, which is no more than .059, representing by far the larger portion of the total of foreign matter, which altogether amounts no more than 1-1300th part of the gross weight - as near an approach as possible to absolute purity, and with the additional advantage claimed for this sugar, that its integrity of substance prevents it from absorbing moisture from the atmosphere and renders it most valuable for preserving or confectionery purposes, since it is not likely to ferment or to deteriorate, and does not waste material by the formation of large quantities of scum during boiling. And what about the 700 workpeople employed in this great hive? It would be almost impossible to visit a factory nowadays without seeking to know

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something of the relative position of "employer and employed". In this respect it is not too much to say that these relations at the Counterslip are characterised by liberality and mutual confidence arising out of a very pleasant organisation, which appears to have been originated by "the Good Conrad Finzel" (for by that title the founder of the house is still known in Bristol), and is well carried out by his present representatives. The hands here receive a higher rate of wages than is paid at any other refinery in the west of England, since it is essential to secure competent workmen to conduct the processes for obtaining this highly-crystallised sugar. But apart from this there are several beneficial provisions in connection with this industrial colony. There is a library and reading-room, and religious instruction and ministration by a duly qualified minister for the families of those who desire to embrace the privilege; there are also numerous beneficent provisions for the old, the sick, and the disabled, the widow and the orphan. The "benefit club", supported by the men themselves, has the firm amongst its best subscribers ; but the benefits established in connection with the factory itself are even of more importance, for they embrace provisions by which any man meeting with an accident serious enough to disable him receives half his wages if he has been more than seven years in the employ of the firm, and seven shillings a week if his services have been for a shorter period. Should the accident prove fatal and the man leave a widow, she receives five shillings a week for life. A large number of old and infirm workmen also receive superannuation pensions; so that in the little territory of the Counterslip some of the social problems of the day come near solution.

The ‘Fill House’ Filling & storing the Sugar loaves

pre centrifugal days

and ‘turning the dried loaves to produce ‘granulated sugar’

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The LINK from SUGAR to ISAMBARD KINGDOM BRUNEL Having established that Bristol was a major sugar processing city and knowing that the processes are very reliant on heavy engineering, I was confident that I could find a link between the sugar industry and Isambard Kingdom Brunel. But, as has already been shown, the sugar industry was very much in decline before he came to prominence, and the great inventions of vacuum pans and centrifuges are attributable to others. Much diligent searching did eventually establish a link; offered with my sincere apologies to those of the engineering fraternity for linking the two names

Alan Michael Sugar

Born 24th March 1947

Knighted in 2000

In 2009 was created

Baron Sugar, of Clapton and made an

Honorary Doctor of Science at

Brunel University in July 2005. ( Would he have hired

Isambard Kingdom Brunel as an apprentice ? )

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Born on 9th April 1806

in Portsmouth.

Educated in Hove

and France.

Died on 15th September 1859

in London.

Seen here standing alongside

the launching chains of the Great Eastern.

Isambard and his engineering works would warrant their own independent paper; so here are just a few anecdotes to complete the ‘association with sugar’:

Isambard’s father, Marc, was French and would likely to have loved the French influenced Hotel du Vin. His CV may have read as follows

Job title: Engineer Extraordinaire Interests: Building big and complicated things

Sideburns Large Hats Cigars

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Interesting facts:

Isambard is credited with building twenty-five railways lines, over a hundred bridges, including five suspension bridges, eight pier and dock systems and three ships In 1855 Isambard designed a 1,000 bed pre-fabricated army field hospital to be shipped to the Crimean War at Renkioi Baronet Sir Daniel Gooch, employed by Isambard as Superintendent of Locomotive Engines on the Great Western Railway from 1837 to 1864, wrote of him; “The commercial world thought him extravagant; but although he was so, great things are not done by those who sit down and count the cost of every thought and act.”

In 2002, Isambard was placed second in a BBC public poll to determine the "100 Greatest Britons" (first place going to Sir Winston Churchill).

Not all his inventions were successful; in 1843, while performing a conjuring trick for the amusement of his children, Isambard accidentally inhaled a half-sovereign coin, which became lodged in his windpipe. A special pair of forceps failed to remove it, as did a machine devised by Isambard himself to shake it loose. At the suggestion of his father, Isambard was strapped to a board and turned upside-down, and the coin was jerked free!

DATA SOURCES & COPYRIGHT PERMISSIONS: Bristol City Museum Bristol Avon – a Pictorial History The Illustrated London News The London Morning Penny Post Sugar Refining in Bristol William Matthews' New History of Bristol BBC History Sweet History Brian Mawer’s National Directory of Sugar Houses Various T&L publications All sorts of assorted snippets from the web Wikepedia