Ransome's Patent Stone Works - and in the US

 

The Golden Gate Park is in San Francisco – it’s a vast leisure area running between Haight Ashbury and the Sea and is stuffed full of attractions.  One very minor attraction is a small bridge carrying a major road over a park path.  It is however thought to be the earliest concrete bridge built in America and it was built by a British engineer who was to become famous in the US for his revolutionary concrete structures – Ernest Leslie Ransome.

Now in England, if you go to Ipswich you will learn all about the Ransomes.  Today there is a Ransomes Industrial Estate up near the airport, but previously their vast factory covered an area bounded by Duke Street and the river Orwell.  Web sites will tell you they were agricultural machine manufacturers – as well as stuff like buses, aeroplanes, and so on.  But when it came to artificial stone they opened a factory in Greenwich.

Frederick Ransome was one of the family, born in 1818. In the early 1840s he developed artificial sandstone using sand and powdered flint which could be moulded into - well whatever you wanted stone for. It is said he worked for ten years on .his ideas and ‘the difficulties he encountered were very great but he ended up with grindstones ‘with keen cutting powers which needed no dressing’ and could be used for decorative stonework’.  He set up the Patent Siliceous Stone Co in 1852 backed by no less than Charles Darwin.  In 1866 he moved the works to Greenwich on a site adjacent to Bessemer on what is now the Hanson’s site at Victoria Deep Water Wharf. Many of the work force for the new factory came from Ipswich as the 1871 census demonstrates. William Brooks, draftsman, from Mistley, his wife Ellen from Walton on the Naze; Thomas Parker Labourer, Ipswich, four children all born in Ipswich and so on. 

Fredrick Ransome himself had moved from Ipswich to Norwood with six of his children – but Ernest Leslie, his third son, had already left home. There seems to be some confusion over his date of birth – and it seems most likely it was in 1844 despite other dates given on US webs sites.   It seems that he had been involved with his father’s Greenwich works since his wife Mary Jane, is shown in 1871 as living at 14 Royal Place Greenwich.

So what was the Greenwich patent stone works like? We know it has a counting house, a wharf, e jetty, a chimney and some ‘premises’.    Or, in another version ‘an immense manufactory on the southern banks of the Thames ...in an ugly and pestiferous marsh’. In August 1868 the Society of Engineers paid a visit to the works – and what did they see and learn there?

They said that ‘more than a quarter of a century’ ago  ..after long research, and having acquired a knowledge of the properties of every cement in use’ he learnt that ‘it is possible to dissolve common flint, and obtain a material of the consistency of glue’. To make his concrete he boiled the flints ‘in a strong solution of caustic soda’. Then ‘the finest sand from Maidstone; was mixed up with it together with other chemical. It ended up with ‘a substance like putty’ which was turned into solid stone with ‘a solution of chloride of calcium’.

The stone was frequently used for decorative stone work and  it is said to have been used in the Brighton Aquarium, London Docks, the Indian Court, Whitehall, Metropolitan Railway stations,  St. Thomas's Hospital, and at the University of Calcutta as well as paving tiles, used on the Albert Bridge.   There must be a lot of Ransome’s stone about in and on buildings and it might be interesting to see what can be tracked down.   Quick look at the web will give some sites identified by enthusiasts but there must be much more.

 Frederick Ransome went on to develop in old age, what is thought to be the first prototype rotary cement kiln.   But – what of his son, Ernest Leslie.  There are many US based web sites which outline his career and his buildings many of which are now preserved. In the 1880s he patented a system of ferro-concrete with the iron rods twisted to improve the bond, and developed a Ransome system for practical reinforced concrete construction. Buildings on his system survived earthquakes and fires. They were vindicated by his Pacific Coast Borax Refinery building.  In 1903 his system was used in The Ingalls Building, in Cincinnati which is the world's first reinforced concrete 16 storey skyscraper.  There were many others,

When the 1871 census was taken for 14 Royal Place in Greenwich one of the residents, born in Greenwich, was two year old Frederick Leslie Ransome who was later to join his father in America. He became ‘a world renowned geologist’. He published over 100 learned papers, served on the US Geological Survey, was an advisor on projects like the Hoover Dam and held endless important appointments.    See all the web sites about him too

And watch out for decorative stone work. made in Greenwich