Peter Stubs Ltd, of Warrington, file, hand tool and steel manufacturers.
18-20 cent.
Archives
Total copies: 1
Parent Company
General correspondence, including orders, and papers relating to William Stubs' activity as a magistrate, 1777-1900 and 1933 (approximately 525 boxes); W. Stubs' diary, 1841; articles of partnership and related papers, 1845-1865.
Account and day book, 1776-1778; sales books, 1778-1782, 1806-1808, 1828-1830 (4 volumes); prices and discounts for various files orders, 1780-1882; bank pass books, 1791-1847 (10 volumes); order and payment books, 1801-1816 (12 volumes); accounts of rent paid for premises, 1802-1861; cash books, 1805-1809 (4 volumes); rent book for the firm's property, 1812-1841; bill books, 1815-1857 (2 volumes, 1824-1857 volume may relate to a different firm); account with carrier, 1824-1829.
Warehouse dispatch book, 1811-1815; production statistics for files, wages, steel produced, used and sold, and monthly turnover, 1815 (1 item) and 1820-1837 (6 notebooks); stock book, 1830-1833; steel deliveries book, 1834-1840.
Out workers day books, 1788-1839 (17 volumes); cutters work lists, 1805-1807; debt and stoppage book, 1808-1820; workmen's (out) ledgers, 1824-1840 (3 volumes); castings wage book, including brass and iron accounts, 1826-1852; forgers' weekly production details, 1828-1836 (4 volumes); apprenticeship indenture, 1839; piece work rates list, 1884.
Catalogues and price lists issued by Stubs and other firms, 1775-1909 (2 boxes).
Family accounts, 1798-1849; fire engine inspection reports, 1825-1827; legal papers concerning disputes about trade marks, 1831, 1842-1843; notes on the firm and ex-employees 1841-1905.
Subsidiary companies and concerns:
Stubs, Wood and Co., of Warrington, wire drawers and pin manufacturers.
Purchase and sales ledger, 1814-1824; sales day book, 1814-1821; carriage books, 1814-1827 (2 volumes); out-letter book, 1814-1824; general correspondence, including orders, 1814-1827 (19 boxes); workers' books, 1814-1829 (21 volumes, some include workers at shops in Runcorn in Cheshire and elsewhere): separate series of volumes for drawers, pointers, head cutters, headers, whiteners and stickers, also includes pin-headers' hiring books, 1821-1829; pin warehouse order books, 1814-1829 (2 volumes); petty cash books, 1814-1822 (3 volumes); cash book, 1815-1831; account of pins straightened, 1816-1817; record of debts, 1818; travellers' order books, 1822-1828 (3 volumes); bank book, 1827-1831; rent book, 1828-1829; coal and slack book, 1829.
Peter Stubs of the White Bear Inn, Warrington, maltster.
Correspondence relating to malting is included in the correspondence of Peter Stubs Ltd.
Malt ledgers, 1792-1805 (3 volumes); malt books, 1794-1806 (3 volumes); licence to trade as a maltster, 1796; barley book, 1803. USE MICROFILM (MF 2672)
John Unsworth of Warrington, cut and engraved glass manufacturer.
Sales account book, 1789-1805; sales day books, 1798-1806 (2 volumes). USE MICROFILM (MF 2676)
Bridge Iron Foundry, Warrington.
Records including miscellaneous financial papers, 1764-1830; promissory notes, 1788-1828; bonds, 1798-1814; correspondence, 1802-1830; account books (6 volumes) and accounts, 1806-1830; insurance policies, 1808-1829; stock and debt valuations and stock inventories, 1810-1830; cash books, 1812-1818 (2 volumes); domestic account book, 1796-1812; Whitely and other family papers, 1803-1824; Horse Market District Delivery Book, Warrington (possibly for a charity) 1816-1817. USE MICROFILM (MF 2673-2674)
Place:/Warrington/Lancashire/England
Title:
Peter Stubs Ltd, of Warrington, file, hand tool and steel manufacturers.
Date of work:
18-20 cent.
Reference number:
GB127.L24
Level of description:
Fonds
Includes:
Custodial history:
Peter Stubs was in business manufacturing files on a small scale by 1777. By 1788 he had acquired the White Bear Inn in Bridge Street, Warrington, and was combining file manufacture there with his business as an innkeeper, brewer and malt maker. He gave up the White Bear concerns in 1803. In 1802 the file business moved to a larger site at Scotland Road, in the Cockhedge area of Warrington, where a works including file cutting shops and forging shops had been built. After Peter Stubs' death in 1806 the business was developed by his sons, John, William and Joseph Stubs. The company remained in private hands until the 1960s, when it was acquired by James Neill Holdings Ltd. It was later bought by James Wilkes plc, and in 1996 became a subsidiary of the Ascot Group. Its present site is on Causeway Avenue, Warrington.
The firm sold files made from steel - principally saw-files, watch and clock files and, from 1815, larger machinery (engineers') files. It also sold a wide variety of other tools, clock engines, small machines and wire, including pinion wire, for making toothed wheels for watches and clocks, and steel wire. The Stubs workshop produced files, carrying out the basic processes of forging, cutting and hardening, and all the attendant subsidiary processes. By 1841 the file works had a work force of 200. To cope with demand, some file cutting was done by out-workers. All the other Stubs products were made by cottage industry out-workers and small firms, mainly in South-West Lancashire. Stubs products were sold throughout the U.K. and were also exported. Significant overseas markets included Russia, America, France and what is now Germany. The company later expanded into steel production at Warrington and became a major world manufacturer of Silver Steel. The modern firm produces Silver Steel, steel wire, key steel and a wide variety of other specialist steel products. It withdrew from file manufacture in the 1990s.
The family had connections with a variety of other business ventures over the years. John Unsworth, Peter Stubs' cousin, had a short-lived glass business in Warrington, from circa 1789 to 1805. He was primarily a glass engraver, supplying a wide variety of glass ware for domestic and business uses. He also sold plain glass and dealt in a variety of other goods. Bridge Foundry in Warrington was acquired by Peter Stubs' eldest daughter, Sarah, on the death of her husband, William Whitley, in 1807 and seems to have been leased out on her behalf at times.
Stubs, Wood and Co. was founded in 1814 to manufacture brass pins, with Joseph Wood, a salesman for the file company, as acting manager. The production process had numerous stages, including wire drawing and cutting, pointing, head cutting, pin heading and whitening (applying a coating of tin). The firm occupied a number of different premises in and around Warrington, although pin heading was moved to a factory at Runcorn, in Cheshire, in1824. A large number of juvenile workers were employed. Some staff came from traditional pin manufacturing areas like Birmingham and Gloucester. The business was given up in 1829.
In 1826 Stubs began producing steel themselves, at a newly acquired works in The Holmes, Rotherham, in Yorkshire. The Warrington Works in Rotherham supplied the file works in Warrington with steel and produced other types of steel for sale in England and Europe. The works was expanded in 1842 at a cost of £20,000. Steel for re-melting was imported from Sweden. The steel works was ultimately sold to J.J. Habershon and Sons Ltd. in 1958.
(This historical account is based on T.S. Ashton, 'An eighteenth-century industrialist: Peter Stubs of Warrington' (1939) and E. Surrey Dane, 'Peter Stubs and the Lancashire Hand Tool Industry' 1973) ).
Source:
The bulk of the collection was gifted to the University of Manchester in 1923 by Mr. F. Aylmer Frost, head of the firm of Peter Stubs Ltd. They were stored in the Lewis Library and used by T.S Ashton of the Economic Department of the University to write 'An eighteenth-century industrialist: Peter Stubs of Warrington' (1939). They were transferred to Manchester Archives in November 1958.
Further deposits (permanent loan) were made by the firm to Manchester Archives in Mar 1966, May 1968 and July 1970 by E. Surrey Dane, Director of the firm.
Access restrictions:
UnrestrictedThis material is stored off site and we require 2 weeks' notice in order to retrieve it.
Use restrictions:
Unrestricted
Topics:
Record types:
Manchester Archives and Local Studies
Language:
English
Record number:
7181764