Greenwich Inlaid Linoleum -Walton's mega machines

 

Linoleum was the universal floor covering in the late 19^th and early20^th centuries.  When I first began to study the history of industries on the Greenwich Peninsula I kept hearing about the linoleum works   but for a long time I could find that nothing about it and I began to think it was just a rumour.  I ended up going to Scotland to fimd out about it = but even so a lot of things were very unclear and I’ve never really sorted out when it actually closed. 

Linoleum is still made today but it’s now called Marmoleum.  It was originally the idea of one man who founded three Linoleum factories in the 19^th century.  Greenwich was the third of these factories and had machinery which made intricately patterned lino - every year they made enough to stretch to Warsaw.  Sadly this Greenwich factory – despite its revolutionary machinery – is almost unknown. A quick look on the web will show many sites about the history of Linoleum manufacture, but Greenwich is very rarely mentioned, if at all

Frederick Walton was the ’one man’ who invented linoleum. He was one of the most prolific and influential inventors and industrialists of the late 19^th century. He was full of ideas and had many international links. He was to take out 88 patents – only some of which were for linoleum. He was the son of an inventor, James Walton, who had developed an India rubber wire card which was used in the weaving industry. The family's factory was at Haughton Dale near Hyde in Greater Manchester. It was the largest works of its kind in the world.

 Frederick is said to have already held seven patents by the age of twenty-five. One of the things which he noticed was oxidised oil - the skin on top of paint – which he had noticed while he worked on finding a quick-drying varnish. He set about looking to find a use tor this material.  It was‘like rubber in that it was elastic and could be mixed with pigments and resins, yet unlike rubber because solvents, grease, oils, and heat had practically no effect upon it. At first he tried to find uses for it as a substitute for rubber and then had other ideas..He left Haughton Dale to seek his fortune in London and he experimented there for another three years.  He tried to use the oxidized oil for waterproofing cloth, for insulating electric conductors, and much else. He also realised that rubber based floor coverings had some problems and thought he might be able to produce them with his new material.

Eventually he found that if he mixed his new material with Iinseed oil and cork it could be rolled out onto a suitable backing to make a rigid sheet.  So linoleum was invented and the first pieces were made in 1863 -. He made up the name 'linoleum' from 'linus', - - flax - and ‘oleum’ - oil – because it was made of linseed oil stuck to on a base of woven jute. His experiments were carried out in British Grove, Chiswick where he later built a factory to make the new floor covering on the same site, following a fire. This building was replaced by modern housing only in 1996.

 

In 1864 Walton set up the Linoleum Manufacturing Company and in 1867 moved his works to a large site at Staines. . The Staines factory became famous – walk down the main street there today to see a statue of men carrying a roll of lino.  The site of the factory seems to have been almost as big as Staines itself. The works eventually closed in the 1970s and the site is now a trading estate.. Until relatively recently there was a small museum behind the old town hall in Staines where men who had worked in the lino factory were happy to talk about the works of which the town was very proud. Now this is part of a larger Spelthorne Museum in a modern library and there is a leaflet about the factory which you are given to read.

 

Walton himself soon moved on to bigger things and by the early 1870s had set up an American factory at 'Linoleumville', whch has since been renamed as Travis. He also developed Lincrusta wall covering - originally Linoleum for walls, this was another ubiquitous Victorian and Edwardian furnishing medium. He set up his Lincrusta factory in Sunbury-on-Thames, as well as others in France and Germany. He is also said to have been the originator of OK meat sauce. He is also said to have spent some years with Brin Brothers, British Oxygen, who were also soon to open a Greenwich works in Tunnel Avenue.

 

The Staines works was independent of Walton and he seems to have quarrelled with them over his new scheme for inlaid linoleum.  So he set up another company as Frederick Walton (New Patents).  This was to become the Frederick Walton Mosaic Linoleum Company, and later Greenwich Inlaid Linoleum. Moving to Greenwich he took over from Appleby Engineers what was to become known as Victoria Wharf – now used by Hansons as Victoria Deep Water Wharf.  Before Appleby this had been the site used by Henry Bessemer and Walton announced in his publicity material that it was where Bessemer had evolved his steel-making process. A second Greenwich works was built slightly to the north on- part of Bethel's Wharf. Another of Walton's projects  for the manufacture of flexible metal tubing –and an advertisement  card for this tubing shows an aerial view of the company's 'Greenwich Works' on the Victoria Wharf site. Early photographs show a rather grim castellated frontage adjacent to the Blackwall Tunnel gatehouse.

 

By 1910 the works was immense and making about twenty miles of linoleum each week. This was the intricately patterned linoleum which was on every floor in the early 29^th century. There were three gigantic machines at Greenwich and it did not prove easy to build foundations for them in the marshy sub-soil - Walton said the cost of this work was more than that for the machines themselves. The lino was made from the same mixture of cork, oils and had six different colours but each sheet was made up of tens of thousands of tiny pieces, set in an original pattern into a template by specialist craftsmen. It was said that each machine could cut ninety million pieces in a working day and include ‘all kinds of rolls and curves’. ‘The cutting rollers cut out and select and arrange .. the pieces into their respective order .. with faultless precision’.   There were many different patterns available and it would be interesting to know how the process was controlled in days when only mechanical devices were available.

 

Materials came from all over the world. Cork came from Spain and Portugal. Jute came from India to be processed in Scotland. Linseed oil came from South America and the United States. Linoleum could not help but be a success. In the later twentieth century it became unfashionable but a hundred years ago its practicalities were appreciated. It was cheap, durable, sturdy and clean and could be produced in all sorts of designs. It was even said to have germicidal properties.

 

The Greenwich Inlaid Lino works closed for a while during the Great War because, it is said, and most of their workmen went to earn better money at Woolwich Arsenal.  Walton himself died in his nineties in 1921 following a car accident at Nice in the South of France. In his later years he had spent much of his time in pursuit of psychic phenomena. His business interests were many and he was a very rich man.

 

Within a year of his death the Greenwich works had been taken over by Michael Nairn of Kirkaldy. In April 1922, when the merger was announced to the Greenwich share- holders, a big meeting was held. Mr. Mackay, who had been manager of the company for the previous eighteen years, pointed out that it was only during his time as manager of the company that it had paid a dividend. Other protestors were 'howled down'. The problem with the Greenwich works, it was said, was that it only had one product - the inlaid linoleum. Michael Nairn and Co. did not make this but made a wide range of related floor coverings. Although a merger seemed sensible it was in fact a takeover since Nairn's was a much bigger company. Nairn's kept the factory working through the 1920 and sales work was concentrated in Kirkaldy. They made the standard geometrical patterns fashionable at the time. Some specialist lino was also made - some for Lyons teashops with the Lyons name specially imprinted on it..

 

in 1926 the works was visited by The Duke of York – the future George VII, father of the Queen. He came as the President of the Industrial Welfare Society. He was received by Sir Michael Nairn himself and visited the whole works –including the in-house power plant, design office and laboratory. Invited to start one of the machines the Duke was asked to pick a colour at random – his unseen choice turned out to be royal blue!   It was also pointed that he should not have started the machine without a union ticket – although as the press widely reported, he was required to wear brown linen overalls in an atmosphere thick with cork dust.  The Duke met a number of long serving work people and others who, as boys, had attended the summer camps which he sponsored.  He was presented with a working model of the cylinders and commented ‘it quite puts to shame a jigsaw puzzle.

 

It has been difficult to find put when the factory closed. It was said to have been in 1934 or shortly afterwards. However 'The Kentish Mercury' records an accident which took place in the works in 1935 and the factory appears in local directories in 1937. In Nairn's archives are catalogues for Greenwich Linoleum which date from the 1940s. In 1937 Nairn’s erected a special building in Kirkaldy and it is said that one of the Greenwich machines was moved to what became known as the North Building. It is not there now. A visit to Kirkaldy in the 1990s showed specialist ‘mosaic’ designs being put together by a team of women with glue and tweezers – although the work was for one-off pieces showing company logos and illustrations for reception and similar areas which could never have been done by machine

 

I still don’t know when the Greenwich factory closed  There was clearly some activity there until the late 1930s and it may be that the factory then undertook war work to close after the Second Word War.

 

Although Greenwich lino went out of fashion its shapes and designs look set to make a comeback. The companyh is now Forbo Nairn, and they sell several varieties of linoleum. Linoleum is now called 'Marmoleum' and advertisements stress the natural products used - linseed and hessian - and the traditional designs. Linoleum is, they say, an environmentally friendly product - clean and natural - an interesting contrast to its high-tech sales pitch a hundred years ago.

 

Anyone really interested in lino production should really go to Kirkaldy.  There is information in the Staines Museum but nothing on the scale of what is in Scotland.  Kirkaldy was – and in effect still is – all about linoleum.  And in Greenwich? I guess knowledge of the industry is confined to me and readers of this and a couple of other articles.

 

 

This' article is based on archive material held in the Forbo Nairn collection at Kirkaldy Museum and Art Gallery. Help is acknowledged from them, from the archivist of Forbo Nairn and from volunteers and researchers at the Spelthorne Museum, Staines.