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Power-related organisations

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Contractors

A & J Main & Co, Ltd

According to Grace’s Guide, A & J Main were “Structural engineers, of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Calcutta, Chittagong and Nairobi”, founded by James A R Main in 1867.

In their section of Industrial Britain (1930), the following was noted:

Among the Company’s latest achievements are a range of buildings for a large Artificial Silk Company, several contracts both at home and abroad for electrical transmission towers, and many large omnibus and private motor garages.

Only one tower type is known so far, that of the lines from Rannoch to Tummel and Tummel to Abernethy.

Responsible for:

See:

British Insulated

British Insulated Cables joined with Callender’s Cable Co. Ltd. in 1945 to become BICC.

Responsible for:

Callender’s

National Grid prefix: CC

Named Callender’s Cable Company Limited during the design of SEE PL1(b), it was named Callender’s Cable & Construction Company Limited when it was selected as the construction contractor for SEE PL16. However, (per the PL16 specification) the company was voluntarily liquidated on 29/06/1945. It was then joined with British Insulated Cables to become British Insulated Callender’s Cables Limited or BICC. The SEE PL16 contract was amended to adopt British Insulated Callender’s Cables as the project contractor.

Responsible for:

Balfour Beatty

National Grid prefix: BB

The present-day Balfour Beatty is former parent company BICC.

Responsible for:

BICC

National Grid prefix: BB (Balfour Beatty)

British Insulated Callender's Cables (BICC) is now Balfour Beatty. BICC acquired Power Securities who themselves owned Balfour Beatty. Formed in 1945 from British Insulated Cables and Callender’s Cable.

Responsible for:

Blaw Knox

National Grid prefix: BK

Milliken Brothers were an American firm who were the winners of the 1927 Central Electricity Board (CEB) competition to select a design for the towers that would make up the 132 kV lines of the original national grid. Whether the winning organisation was the the US or UK office of Milliken Brothers is not known. In August of the same year (1927), Milliken Brothers was acquired by another American firm, Blaw Knox, as reported in the New York Times. Blaw Knox had already set up a UK operation in London in 1921. Early UK tower drawings bore only the Milliken Brothers name for a few years afterwards, followed by the addition of the Blaw Knox name; the Milliken Brothers name would finally disappear. The hyphen in “Blaw-Knox” appears to have been dropped at the same time as the inclusion of Milliken Brothers.

Milliken Brothers and Blaw Knox appear collectively to be the most prolific organisation when it comes to tower design. Blaw Knox designed two of the most common tower types in Britain: the 132 kV PL16 type (still under the name of the Milliken Brothers branch) and the first major Supergrid type of L2. (The earlier L66 Supergrid type was also their design.) When the Supergrid was extended to quad-conductor lines, Blaw Knox provided one of the four L6 types. National Grid document TGN(E) 161 “Technical Guidance Notes - Modifications to L66, L2, L3, L3(c), L8 and L8(c) Towers” bears the summary line “A generic design defect exists in the layout of body extensions incorporated into Blaw Knox L66, L2, L3, L3(c), L8 and L8(c) towers.” The suggestion is that these are all Blaw Knox designs, and there seems to be no reason for this not to be the case.

Responsible for (not exhaustive):

The exact role played by Milliken Brothers and Blaw Knox is not clear. The SWE PL16 contract lists “Design of towers” as “Blaw-Knox Ltd. (Milliken Bros. Branch)” and, for “Fabrication” and “Galvanising” collectively, the firms of Painter Brothers Ltd. and Horseley Bridge & Thomas Piggott Ltd. Likewise, a 1954 Blaw Knox/Painter Brothers advertisement gives Painter Brothers as the fabricator.

With that said, various drawings suggest that the towers were at a minimum supplied through Milliken Brothers and Blaw Knox. The erection diagram of the Portsmouth terminal tower (Milliken Brothers E141 SWE PL1 DT60A) bears two comments reading “Shackle and 3 Link Chain to be fixed here. Not supplied by Milliken Bros.” Likewise, the L4(m) D90 general arrangement and erection diagram indicates that the barbed wire for the anti-climbing device is “NOT SUPPLIED BY B KNOX LTD”.

See also:

GEC

Primary organisation listed on the drawings for SEE PL1a.

J L Eve

National Grid prefix: JE

J. L. Eve Construction was a London-based civil engineering company founded in 1930 by its late namesake John Leonard Eve. J L Eve characteristically avoided giving any of their tower designs names. Their implementation of the CEB L132 specification is variously known as “L16” (in England), “L55” (in Scotland) and L132 in general, and there is no evidence to prove that these three are all the same specification; in the Tower Bible the series name is given merely as “J.L. EVE.” Eve drawings for the Thorpe Marsh–Stalybridge line depict Eve L6 towers but again do not name the series.

Eve were jointly responsible with BICC for L7, L6(c) and L7(c), with each series being a mixture of Eve and BICC tower designs.

Responsible for:

Milliken Brothers

National Grid prefix: BK (Blaw Knox)

See under Blaw Knox.

Painter Brothers

National Grid prefix: unknown

See Painter Brothers.

Pirelli-General

The Tower Bible gives Pirelli as the designer of SEE PL1a. The drawings indicate Pirelli-General was the main contractor to GEC.

Watsham’s

National Grid prefix: unknown

Watsham’s Ltd (company number 00196908) was founded on the 11th of April 1924. Companies House lists the name as Watsham’s P.L.C. from 11th April 1924 to 19th August 1987, but this is incorrect: the name was still Watsham’s Limited as of 1977.

The Reports & Accounts document dated 31st March 1977 indicates that tower construction ended in this year:

During the year, the company ceased to erect transmission and telecommunication towers but continues to manufacture these products. The erection facilities and outstanding contracts were transferred to Hawker Siddeley Power Engineering Limited for a cash consideration of approximately £1,350,000.

Watsham’s branched out into other areas of industry. The Reports & Accounts 1987 document notes:

At an extraordinary general meeting of the Company held on 31 July 1987 a special resolution was passed changing the name of the Company from Watsham’s P.L.C. to Optical and Medical International P.L.C. The purpose of the change of name was to more appropriately describe the activities of the Company and its subsidiaries.

The name was shortened to OMI International PLC on 15th August 1991, then on 15th January 1998 it changed to its current name of Solvera PLC.

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