The Eagle Ironworks was an ironworks owned by W. Lucy & Co. on the Oxford Canal in Jericho, Oxford, England. [1] [2] William Carter founded the works in 1812 [3] with a shop in the High Street [4] and moved it to its site beside the canal in 1825. [1] It was on Walton Well Road at the northern end of Walton Street and backed onto St Sepulchre's Cemetery. The works ceased production in 2005, [1] was demolished in 2007 and has since been redeveloped, mainly with apartments. [5]
William Carter had an ironmongery shop in High Street, Oxford by 1812, [3] when he founded an iron foundry [1] in Summertown [3] which was then a rural location north of Oxford. He moved the foundry to the banks of the Oxford Canal in 1825, [3] one of the first developments in what is now the district of Jericho in central Oxford. The company specialised in iron castings including lamp-posts, manhole covers, ornamental ironwork and agricultural machinery. [1] [6] William Grafton became a partner and in 1830 Carter moved to the Eagle Foundry in Leamington Hastings, Warwickshire. Grafton continued to manage the foundry in Oxford, which became called the Eagle Ironworks. In 1854 the company bought the freehold for the site from St John's College, which owned much of north Oxford. When Grafton died in 1861, William Lucy, his partner, took over the running of the foundry. When he in turn died in 1873, the name of the ironworks became "Lucy's".
The growth of North Oxford and the University of Oxford colleges in the Victorian era expanded Lucy's market. [1] The company responded by adding a new smith shop and foundry to the Eagle Ironworks, designed by local architect William Wilkinson and completed in 1879. [7] Lucy's became a limited company in 1897. [1] It expanded both its product range and its market, including shelving and storage equipment that it sold throughout the country. [1] In the decade after becoming a limited company, Lucy's accordingly increased and diversified the Eagle Ironworks buildings, including a north-lit factory extension designed by George Gardiner and completed in 1901. [8]
Production changed to electrical engineering and stainless steel, including arc lamps, electric lamp fittings, steam roller castings and, appropriately for Oxford, library stacking.[ citation needed ] In both World War I and World War II Lucy's made munitions. Between the wars it concentrated on electrical engineering and making switchgear. After World War II it also made machine tools.
In the 1960s the company built two large blocks on its wharves by the canal.[ citation needed ] In 2005 the company's new US owners moved manufacturing overseas from the United Kingdom[ citation needed ] and in 2007 it demolished the Eagle Ironworks and redeveloped the site with apartment blocks, which it lets out directly to tenants, trading as Lucy Properties. [9] This has been controversial for town planning reasons.
In 2006, the site's archaeology was evaluated prior to redevelopment. [10] During the archaeological excavations a 17th-century pit and a possible 19th-century well were found. A new residential road, William Lucy Way, was developed at this time, on the other side of the Canal from the original Lucy's site. [11]
Early in the 20th century the poet and short story writer A. E. Coppard (1878–1957) worked at the Eagle Ironworks, as recounted in his autobiography It's Me, O Lord! [12]
Oxford-based author Philip Pullman featured the Eagle Ironworks in his 2003 novel Lyra's Oxford . [13] The story includes a fictitious "Randolph Lucy", a 17th-century alchemist with an eagle-demon who had his laboratory on nearby Juxon Street. An entry for the Eagle Ironworks is included in an extract from a fictitious version of the Baedeker guide.
Braunston is a village and civil parish in the West Northamptonshire unitary authority area of Northamptonshire, England, next to the border with Warwickshire. At the 2011 Census, the parish had a population of 1,759. Braunston is situated just off the A45 main road and lies between the towns of Daventry and Rugby. Braunston is categorised by the Office for National Statistics as Suburbs and Small Towns: Suburbs There are 776 households in the village.
Lyra's Oxford is a 2003 novella by Philip Pullman depicting an episode involving the heroine of His Dark Materials, Pullman's best-selling trilogy. Lyra's Oxford is set when Lyra Belacqua is 15, two years after the end of the trilogy.
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Jericho is an historic suburb of the English city of Oxford. It consists of the streets bounded by the Oxford Canal, Worcester College, Walton Street and Walton Well Road. Located outside the old city wall, it was originally a place for travellers to rest if they had reached the city after the gates had closed. The name Jericho may have been adopted to signify this 'remote place' outside the wall. As of February 2021, the population of Jericho and Osney wards was 6,995.
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Lucy Group Ltd, formerly W. Lucy & Co. Ltd, is a privately owned international group headquartered in Oxford, England. The company's origins date back more than 200 years when its principal business was manufacturing metal castings. Since then the business has evolved and steadily expanded into a group comprising four distinct business units. The group operates in 8 countries, from 16 locations, employing over 1,200 people.
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William Hazledine was an English ironmaster. Establishing large foundries, he was a pioneer in casting structural ironwork, most notably for canal aqueducts and early suspension bridges. Many of these projects were collaborations with Thomas Telford, including the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and the Menai Suspension Bridge.
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Terence Lucy Greenidge was an English writer and actor. Greenidge was a friend of Evelyn Waugh, whom he met at Oxford, and collaborated with him in producing the Scarlet Woman: An Ecclesiastical Melodrama. Evelyn Waugh in Letters was published posthumously in 1994, which details many of Greenidge's recollections of Evelyn Waugh.
Blaenavon Ironworks is a former industrial site which is now a museum in Blaenavon, Wales. The ironworks was of crucial importance in the development of the ability to use cheap, low quality, high sulphur iron ores worldwide. It was the site of the experiments by Sidney Gilchrist Thomas and his cousin Percy Gilchrist that led to "the basic steel process" or "Gilchrist–Thomas process".
Daniel Harris was an English builder, prison governor, civil engineer, and architect prominent in Oxford.
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Tredegar Iron and Coal Company was an important 19th century ironworks in Tredegar, Wales, which due to its need for coke became a major developer of coal mines and particularly the Sirhowy Valley of South Wales. It is most closely associated with the Industrial Revolution and coal mining in the South Wales Valleys.
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