Smith and Yardley

Last updated October 01, 2019

Smith and Yardley (also known as E.S. Yardley & Co.) were a firm of railway signalling and signal box contractors based in Manchester, England.

Manchester is a major city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England, with a population of 545,500 as of 2017. It lies within the United Kingdom's second-most populous urban area, with a population of 2.7 million, and third-most populous metropolitan area, with a population of 3.3 million. It is fringed by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and an arc of towns with which it forms a continuous conurbation. The local authority for the city is Manchester City Council.

Emily Sophia Yardley

Emily Sophia Yardley (1836-1905) was born Emily Sophia Buckley at Talk o' th' Hill, Staffordshire in 1836, the daughter of Thomas Buckley, a butcher and Emily, his wife. Her father died in 1838 and on 1 November of that year her mother married Humphrey Smith, a widower. Emily and her mother moved in with her step-father and his children at Duke Street, Manchester. She married Robert Pearce Yardley an ironmonger of Chorlton-on-Medlock on 2 May 1857 and they lived at 19 Darlington Street Cheetham Hill, Manchester. However, Robert died, aged 37, on 16 November 1860 leaving his wife as sole executor of the business. The 1861 Census returns for Duke Street shows Emily Sophia living there once again with her (by then twice widowed) mother. She was then described as "ironmonger." Emily Sophia married Robert Cox, a ‘manufacturer’s agent ‘ in 1872. By 1881 she had moved to Battersea with her husband and in 1891 she was in Southport ^[1] She died in 1905.

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Battersea is a district of South West London, England, within the London Borough of Wandsworth. It is located on the south bank of the River Thames, 2.9 miles (4.7 km) south west of Charing Cross.

William Smith

William Smith was the half-brother by her mother’s second marriage. He was born 26 August 1839, and the 1861 census described him as an engineer, and ‘deaf and dumb from birth.’ The 1871 census shows William Smith as ‘engineer on railway’. After 1881 he returned to live with his mother.

E.S. Yardley & Co.

Slater’s 1863 Directory of Manchester and Salford shows E.S. Yardley & Co. as a firm of ironmongers at 56 Market Street. About 1871 the firm became involved in the installation of signalling equipment, point connections and the construction of signal boxes for the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway (L&YR) from their Castlefield Signal Works in Manchester. William Smith took over the firm about 1876. Slater’s 1877-8 Directory of Manchester and Salford describes Smith as ‘a railway plant manufacturer (signal)’ at 1 Canal Street, and in 1881 as a ‘Patent Railway Signal Manufacturer’. After 1881 the L&YR entered into an exclusive contract with the Railway Signal Co. and orders to Smith and Yardley dried up. They ceased work on signalling equipment in 1882.^[2] The company held several patents under the names of Smith and Yardley, but William Smith held the patents for the lever frames used by the company.

Isaac Slater was a British publisher of trade directories.

The Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway (L&YR) was a major British railway company before the 1923 Grouping. It was incorporated in 1847 from an amalgamation of several existing railways. It was the third-largest railway system based in Northern England.

Smith and Yardley signal boxes

Between 1872 and 1882 the firm provided numerous signal boxes for the L&YR, including three that are still standing. The Type 2 box at Milner Royd Junction (near Sowerby Bridge ) in 1874, closed in Autumn 2018, and two remaining Type 1 boxes, at Bromley Cross, opened in December 1875, still in use and now Grade II Listed by English Heritage, and Type 1 Hensall (also 1875 and Listed), closed in May 2014.^[3]

Bromley Cross railway station, situated in Bromley Cross, a suburb to the north of Bolton, England, is served by the Northern 'Ribble Valley' line 2 ³⁄₄ miles (4.4 km) north of Bolton. It is situated on Chapeltown Road. The station is just south of the point where the double line merges into one.

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References

↑ Census returns for 1881 and 1891.
↑ "Signal boxes built by Smith & Yardley". The Signal Box. Retrieved 28 June 2015.
↑ Minnis, John (2012). Railway signal boxes (PDF). Research Report Series. Portsmouth: English Heritage. p. 15. ISSN 2046-9799. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March 2016.