TWO FRIES

 

Well, I thought this week I would do another two or three ‘smaller’ works from Ted Barr’s list of engineering works in Greenwich. Ted’s list will take me some time to get through and I’m adding a lot of similar works ‘smaller’ works onto it all the time. So it might become a big thing! So, the next thing we have on Ted’s list is ‘Fry’and his entry for them reads:

“Fry's (London) Ltd. Catherine Grove. Tool Makers and consumables – eg they made hacksaw blades, drills etc., I have a copy of their catalogue from about 1930. There was also Fry Bros Ltd., Norman Road, Greenwich, S.E. Body Builders, Motor Engineers, and General Engineering.  They made private bodies, bus bodies, trailers and Char-a-bancs.  They were probably part of the Fry's in Catherine Grove but I have not checked this out.  The advert I have is c.1934.”

Now, I already knew about Fry’s of Norman Road.  I’ve written about them before in my book on Deptford Creek but I didn’t know what the other Fry factory was and if I had one Fry business of two. I was silly enough to ask ai to help find what works there were called ‘Fry’ in Greenwich. I then spent as an entire afternoon chasing after a fantasy foundry which ai claimed existed.   No one seems to have taught the wretched system that you can only say that something existed if you’ve got actual proper proof of it.  The sort of thing that I was taught in my earliest days of historical research in my 1950s A level - and I guess that’s still taught today.  Why do they design an electronic  system which just makes things up? And if it builds up its own stories, refers to them and builds more, then we have a whole different truth about the past.

Having said all that, establishing the Catherine Grove Frys has not been easy. Press stories about the firm and its works are very few and give several addresses in inner south London. The industrial history web site, Grace’s Guide, gives a list of references to the company in various trade and specialist magazines with just enough mentions of Greenwich to persuade me that this firm did exist and had a works here.

Looking at Catherine Grove itself we find what appears to be a factory converted into flats. It’s large and impressive and if that is Fry’s building then they clearly were not a small firm by any means. It appears it was known as ‘The Enox Works’; described as ‘a manufacturer, importer, and dealer in tools and machinery’. I am unable to discover what ‘Enox’ stands for except as a brand name. They also had ‘Wo Tan’ as another trade name. They seem to have made a wide variety of tools. In the 1920s they had developed a new type of hack saw blade specially produced for cutting tramway and railway metal and also a new tool for cutting large round holes in metal plates. This was followed by a new type of belt fastener.As late as 1968 they developed an electron beam welding device, ‘ahead of international competitors’.

Ted says that he has a copy of their catalogue and their 1937 edtion has ‘several power hacksaws, a bench drill, bench grinders, and table saws, as well as a variety of hand tools and a few imported machines.’  I note on EBay one from 1964 for sale. The seller has put copies of several sample pages on his description and I note that it runs to 245 close packed pages’ That’s an awful lot of products ! 

The company seems to have been started in 1916 by Arnold P. Schove and his wife, originally a Miss Justin – both names given as shareholders.  They were based in West Wickham and had strong Masonic links in that area. The firm was based in Upper Thames Street in the City which seems to have been their head office, with other premises at King Street, E1 and also in Southwark Street, south of the  River. As well as the works in Greenwich there was another works in Lewisham. They eventually concentrated manufacture at a site in Faraday Road, Crawley, selling out to a Birmingham firm in 1970.

The other ‘Fry’company in Greenwich was ‘Fry Brothers of Norman Road and Deptford Creek. Ted who I quoted above said that they were probably part of the Fry's in Catherine Grove. But I am quite sure that they are two completely separate companies.  They have completely different company names - Catherine Grove  Fry is’Fry (London) Ltd and the company in Norman Road was Fry Brothers. I wrote about Fry Brothers when I was writing up the various works on Deptford Creek and repeated what I had said in the book I wrote about Deptford Creek. I did consider just copying what I wrote then again now - But then I had some additional information. So, what you get here is similar but it’s a bit more detailed.

Lion Wharf, 48-52 Norman Road was  on Deptford Creek slightly downstream of the railway bridge. Fry Brothers – George and Edmund Fry had a hire and haulage business.

They  operated  from there a considerable fleet of spritsail sailing barges – including, for example: Winnipeg, Assiniboine, Minnedosa. Our Girls – all apparently built for them at Battersea and owned by Edmund Fry with a home address in the relatively unpretentious Langdale Road, off Greenwich High Road.

In 1913 Fry’s also dealt in heavy road vehicles saying “their works are adequately equipped to carry out all kinds of wheel repairs, tyre renewing, pressing-up, etc., to any make of motor wagon. …. should the repairs be of a protracted nature, Messrs. Fry. Bros. will … substitute a complete back-axle set … at a nominal charge”. 

Something of the nature of the vehicles they dealt with was revealed by a summons for the breach of bye-laws at West Ham. They had passed through West Ham without a licence to do so in their locomotive engine. They explained it had been hired by the local authority in Woodford and it was its way to its next hirer which was the local authority in Enfield. They were fined and should have had a London County Council temporary licence. I assume this vehicle was some sort of heavy road roller.

There are reports of their supply of granite to Deptford Borough Council…… then ’another 500 tons of granite for Grove Park Workhouse’… of a refusal of their tender for construction of Bramshot Avenue in Charlton... of building a siding at Brimsdown station ... Kentish brown pit flints for Sunbury on Thames Council and so on and so on and many, any more. They also used horses – advertising ‘wanted a smart youth who was an early riser’ to drive a horse and trap. And they frequently advertised horses for sale, or ‘wanted’.

In the 1930s Fry’s appear to have developed and made the EffBee water softener ‘Effbee’ as trade name  being a play on ‘F’ry ‘B’ros.

Clearly a great many of these softeners were sold but ‘to the trade only’ means that most advertisements for the softener are from local shops and agencies rather than from Fry’s themselves. It was advertised as being ‘made in Kent’ - which I suppose includes Greenwich. It claimed to : prevent limescale from furring up expensive hot water boilers and pipes while creating a rich lather with minimal soap for a "luxurious bath" and protecting sensitive skin from hard London water.

It is described as “a tall, cylindrical metal pressure vessel. It utilized natural green-sand or zeolites to exchange calcium ions for sodium ions. Homeowners had to manually "regenerate" the system periodically by pouring block or coarse salt into the top of the canister’.

Developing a water softener seems to be a long way from the sort of heavy haulage that Fry’s had previously been involved in. However Fry Bros heavy haulage repairs business  meant that they had the foundries and machine tools necessary to cast and construct these units. They had  casting floors where molten metal could be poured to create the external casings. A dedicated coppersmithing bay was used for rolling the internal multi-tubular piping and soldering water-tight joints.They had a Machine and Fitting Shop: with the lathes, drills, and thread-cutters needed to machine the complex, multi-way brass bypass valves for which that Fry Bros held the patent.,

The softeners were finished with vitreous enamel. There is no indication of a relationship with the gas industry  owned National Eanamels factory on the next door site.

Many of the webs sites I’ve looked at in relation to these water softeners go on about how South East London has very hard water so residents were crying out for it to be soft . I don’t see this myself – nothing wrong with hard water! I absolutely hate soft water - nasty slippery stuff.