Bridon Ropes, Cleckheaton Mills, Cleckheaton

The following source list was originally available only on paper in one of the West Yorkshire Archive Service offices. It may have been compiled many years ago and could be out of date. It was designed to act as a signpost to records of interest on a particular historical subject, but may relate only to one West Yorkshire district, or be an incomplete list of sources available.

Bridon Ropes began life as E & A Smith, wiredrawers, who were established in 1884. In 1889 the firm was incorporated as a public company under the Limited Liability Act. The company manufactured all types of wire but was celebrated for a number of products of exceptional excellence, these include rope wire for collieries and mines, galvanised wire for ships hawsers, wire for deep sea sounding, music wire for pianos, card wire for card machines and all kind of needle wire. In 1893, 200 people worked for the firm. The company exported largely to the United States, Germany and Italy. During 1925, E & A Smith & Co joined the recently formed company of British Ropes Limited. In 1974 the British Ropes Group reorganised with the formation of a new parent company, Bridon Limited. In the same year, Bridon Wire began a major modernisation and expansion project for its works at Cleckheaton. The extra output of the Cleckheaton factory was mainly used for the manufacture of normal and low relaxation strand for prestressing concrete, and in particular for oil production platforms in the North Sea. In the late 1980's the main market was still the prestressing concrete strand, together with rope wire, used for mining, shipping, lifts, cable-cars and in the automotive industry. They also developed a fibre optic submarine cable with a special aluminium inside layer to prevent it being chewed through by sharks in the Pacific Ocean.

These records are held at WYAS Kirklees, collection reference KC626.