 The "Sentinel" logo of Alley & MacLellan | |
| Industry | Valve manufacturing |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1814 |
| Defunct | 1954 |
| Headquarters | Polmadie, Glasgow |
| Subsidiaries | Sentinel Valve Works, Worcester Sentinel Waggon Works, Shrewsbury |
Alley & MacLellan Ltd was a mechanical engineering company based in Glasgow, Scotland. Its products were sold under the Sentinel brand.
Alley & MacLellan was founded in Bridgeton, Scotland in 1875 by Stephen Alley and John Maclellan. [1] The company began by building valves, compressors and other parts for steamships. [2]
By 1880 the company had moved to larger premises in Polmadie, and began building complete ships. [2] [3] [4] Because of the factory location far from the ocean, the ships were designed so that they could be transported in sections and assembled at dockside. [5]
In 1883, the company designed a new type of high speed steam engine which was used to generate electricity on board ships. [6] [7]
The company was incorporated in 1903 as Alley & MacLellan Ltd. with Stephen Alley becoming a partner after his father's death. [2] Their factory in Polmadie was called Sentinel Works. [8] That year the company acquired Simpson and Bibby of Horsehay, Shropshire, a manufacturer of steam powered road vehicles, [2] and by 1905 it was manufacturing steam wagons. [9]
In about 1907 the company began building dump trucks; [10]
The company continued to manufacture steamships and boats, and in 1912 its output was about 2700 tons. [11] Eventually almost 500 small ships and boats were produced. The vast majority of these vessels were assembled at the Jessie Street works using nuts and bolts, then dismantled and shipped as parts in crates to their client destination where they were re-assembled using rivets. At least one Alley & McLellan ship is still in existence – the motor vessel (originally steamship) Chauncy Maples on Lake Nyasa (Lake Malawi).
in 1915 the wagon and truck aspect of the business had grown to the point that the company opened a subsidiary company in Shrewsbury as the Sentinel Waggon Works, manufacturing lorries and railway vehicles. [3] A group of the core Scottish staff moved from Glasgow to Shrewsbury.
In 1918 the company was acquired by William Beardmore & Co., Ltd, [1] and opened another subsidiary, The Sentinel Valve Works, in Worcester, England, to expand its manufacture of valves.
Both factory buildings were prefabricated in Glasgow, and reassembled on site, [12] again a group of core Scottish staff moved to Worcester from Glasgow. [13]
The company manufactured a variety of compressors, including ones used in foghorns. [14]
By 1937, Alley & MacLellan was once more an independent company. In 1945 it became a subsidiary of Glenfield & Kennedy Ltd. [1]
Alley & McLellan continued to operate in the original Sentinel Works in Jessie Street, Glasgow until the 1950s, producing various engineering products. The 'Sentinel' name continued to be used for the products of the original Glasgow works until the mid 20th Century.
In 1975 the company was dissolved.
The original Sentinel Works in Jessie Street, Glasgow was still in existence in 2017 though now in a very derelict condition. The design offices and pattern shop is Category A listed as a building of significant national importance. Designed by Archibald Leitch, it was the first steel-reinforced concrete building in Scotland. [15]
In 1915, a subsidiary company, The Sentinel Waggon Works was created in Shrewsbury, England, to focus on the production of land-based powered vehicles. Initially these vehicles, lorries, were steam powered. The modern factory was pre-fabricated in Glasgow for rapid assembly giving the local management a state-of-the-art design and production facility.
In 1918, Alley & Maclellan formed a second subsidiary company based in Worcester, England, this expanded and continued the design and manufacture of mechanical valves allowing the company to again expand production away from shipbuilding at Glasgow and into new lucrative markets.
PS Waverley is the last seagoing passenger-carrying paddle steamer in the world. Built in 1946, she sailed from Craigendoran on the Firth of Clyde to Arrochar on Loch Long until 1973. Bought by the Paddle Steamer Preservation Society (PSPS), she has been restored to her 1947 appearance and now operates passenger excursions around the British coast.
SS Shieldhall is a preserved steamship that operates from Southampton. She is the largest operational historic steamship in Europe and one of the last reciprocating steam engined ships built, using technology that dated back to the last quarter of the 19th century and which was obsolete at the time of her construction. She spent her working life as one of the "Clyde sludge boats", making regular trips from Shieldhall in Glasgow, Scotland, down the River Clyde and Firth of Clyde past the Isle of Arran, to dump treated sewage sludge at sea. These steamships had a tradition, dating back to the First World War, of taking organised parties of passengers on their trips during the summer. SS Shieldhall has been preserved and offers cruises to the paying public.
The Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, Limited, was a Scottish shipbuilding company in the Govan area on the Clyde in Glasgow. Fairfields, as it is often known, was a major warship builder, turning out many vessels for the Royal Navy and other navies through the First World War and the Second World War. It also built many transatlantic liners, including record-breaking ships for the Cunard Line and Canadian Pacific, such as the Blue Riband-winning sisters RMS Campania and RMS Lucania. At the other end of the scale, Fairfields built fast cross-channel mail steamers and ferries for locations around the world. These included ships for the Bosporus crossing in Istanbul and some of the early ships used by Thomas Cook for developing tourism on the River Nile.
Sentinel Waggon Works Ltd was a British company based in Shrewsbury, Shropshire that made steam-powered lorries, railway locomotives, and later, diesel engined lorries, buses and locomotives.
Archibald Keir Leitch was a Scottish architect, most famous for his work designing football stadiums throughout Great Britain and Ireland.
William Beardmore and Company was a British engineering and shipbuilding conglomerate based in Glasgow and the surrounding Clydeside area. It was active from 1886 to the mid-1930s and at its peak employed about 40,000 people. It was founded and owned by William Beardmore, later Lord Invernairn, after whom the Beardmore Glacier was named.
Oatlands is an area in the city of Glasgow, Scotland. It is situated south of the River Clyde, falls within the Southside Central ward under Glasgow City Council, and is part of the Gorbals historic area. Its boundaries are Hutchesontown and the Southern Necropolis cemetery to the west, Polmadie to the south, Shawfield to the east, and Glasgow Green public park to the north.
Polmadie is a primarily industrial area of Glasgow in Scotland. Situated south of the River Clyde, Polmadie is close to residential neighbourhoods including Govanhill and Toryglen (south-east), with Oatlands and another large industrial zone at Shawfield to the north on the opposite side of major railway lines and the M74 motorway, Junction 1A of which serves the area.
Kinning Park is a southern suburb of Glasgow, Scotland. It was formerly a separate police burgh between 1871 and 1905 before being absorbed by the city. In 1897, it had a population of 14,326.
George Forrester and Company was a British marine engine and locomotive manufacturer at Vauxhall Foundry in Liverpool, established by Scottish engineer George Forrester. The company opened in 1827 as iron founders and commenced building steam locomotives in 1834.
A steam wagon is a steam-powered truck for carrying freight. It was the earliest form of lorry (truck) and came in two basic forms: overtype and undertype, the distinction being the position of the engine relative to the boiler. Manufacturers tended to concentrate on one form or the other.
The Riverside Museum is a museum in the Partick area of Glasgow, Scotland, housed in a building designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, with its River Clyde frontage at the new Pointhouse Quay. It forms part of the Glasgow Harbour regeneration project. The building opened in June 2011, winning the 2013 European Museum of the Year Award. It houses many exhibits of national and international importance. The Govan–Partick Bridge, provides a pedestrian and cycle path link from the museum across the Clyde to Govan, opened in 2024.
The Sentinel boiler was a design of vertical boiler, fitted to the numerous steam wagons built by the Sentinel Waggon Works.
A steam motor is a form of steam engine used for light locomotives and light self-propelled motor cars used on railways. The origins of steam motor cars for railways go back to at least the 1850s, if not earlier, as experimental economizations for railways or railroads with marginal budgets. These first examples, at least in North America, appear to have been fitted with light reciprocating engines, and either direct or geared drives, or geared-endless chain drives. Most incorporated a passenger carrying coach attached to the engine and its boiler. Boiler types varied in these earlier examples, with vertical boilers dominant in the first decade and then with very small diameter horizontal boilers. Other examples of steam motor cars incorporated an express-baggage or luggage type car body, with coupling apparatus provided to allow the steam motor car to draw a light passenger coach.
The London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) Sentinel No. 7164, was a small shunting locomotive. Its design was that of the single-speed Sentinel, a vertical-boilered geared locomotive, using Sentinel's standard vertical boiler and steam motor design. This was the smallest of the four Sentinel classes used by the LMS.
Metal Industries, Limited was a conglomerate of mostly British engineering companies. It was founded in Glasgow in 1922 by Robert Watson McCrone. In 1953 its activities were described as "electrical and mechanical engineering manufacture and metal trading" In 1967, Aberdare Holdings of South Wales acquired a controlling interest in the group, but was quickly thwarted when M.I. created a large tranche of new shares which it sold to Thorn Electrical Industries, giving Thorn overall control of the company. The City Panel on Takeovers and Mergers referred to "abuses and inequities" that occurred during this chaotic takeover, among others at the time, but declined to recommend tougher regulations. A good history of the company's shipbreaking activities was published by the World Ship Society in 1992 in Ian Buxton's "Metal Industries: Shipbreaking at Rosyth and Charlestown".
Glenfield is a large industrial manufacturing company based in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, Scotland. At its height it was reckoned to be the largest company of its type in the Commonwealth.
The Sentinel Valve Works Ltd was a British company based in Worcester, England, that made medium, large and enormous valves initially for civic clean water distribution and sewage treatment, and later the production of valves for steam heating and electrical generation, and the chemical and petroleum industries. The company traded under the brand name Sentinel Valves.
Thermotank was a Scottish engineering company specialising in heating, ventilation and air conditioning, founded in Glasgow in 1900 by Alexander William Stewart and his two brothers William and Frederick. The business was based on Alexander’s invention, the Thermotank, a system designed for maritime use which could maintain a constant temperature coupled to a change of air on board ships.
The Sentinel Works is a former factory building in Polmadie, Glasgow, Scotland. In 1991 the building was included in the Scottish Listed Buildings in the highest category A..
