Beer and Breweries of Britain

Roger Putman £5.99

978 0 7478 0606 6 (Album 434) 56 pp, 70 colour and 9 b/w ills

Do you know why King William IV appears more frequently on Britain’s pub signs than any other monarch, why the German beer purity laws were introduced, or how a can widget works? This book answers these questions and tells you much more about British beer and brewing. Much more complex than wine, beer is often a better accompaniment to food, and there are more than two thousand brands of beer in the United Kingdom to choose from.
The author explores beer’s six-thousand-year history and explains how different styles emerged through the use of different materials and processing methods. The story is brought right up to date with an insider’s exposé of the modern brewing process and an account of what additives are employed and why.

Roger Putman is a Master Brewer who worked for Bass for thirty years. He is now chairman of the judges at the biennial Brewing Industry International Awards. He contributes monthly to the Brewer International magazine and helps with the training of brewery staff from entry level through to the examinations taken by those seeking to become Associate Master Brewers or to receive the Master Brewer’s Diploma. He is a founder member of the Beer Academy, which aims to improve the image of beer through education.

Jacqueline Fearn £3.50

978 0 7478 0493 2 (Album 250) 32 pp, many black and white ills.

Coal Mining

Geoffrey Hayes £3.50

978 0 7478 0434 5 ((Album 349) 32 pp, 61 ills

From 1800 to the mid-twentieth century the burning of coal provided nearly all the power for British industry and transport. It also provided heat for homes. By distillation it produced gas for lighting and cooking and coke for the production of iron. Coal mining caused great disruption of the landscape. 'Dirt' removed from the coal was tipped in huge heaps around the mines and sinking of the land due to coal extraction below could cause flooding and great damage to property. This book briefly describes the technicalities of coal mining but the reader will also learn that coal mining was and remains a dangerous occupation.

Geoffrey Hayes, now retired, was consulting engineer for the restoration of major coal mining artefacts in the Museum of Scotland. Other titles for Shire by this author are:

Cash Carriers in Shops

Andrew Buxton £3.50

978 0 7478 0615 8 (Album 438) 32 pp, 50 b/w ills

Most people born before about 1950 can probably remember visiting or working in shops that had cash carriers – cash balls that ran on wooden rails, wire systems where the carrier was catapulted along an overhead steel wire, or pneumatic tube systems where the carrier was whisked off to the cash office. In the first half of the twentieth century there were thousands of systems in shops in the British Isles, North America, Canada, Australia, South Africa, China and elsewhere. Few now remain in shops but several have been preserved in museums, often in working order, and they bring back many memories for older visitors.

Cash carriers have fascinated Andrew Buxton since his childhood in Leicester, where he recalls the wonderful systems at the Beehive haberdasher’s shop. He has set up the Cash Railway website, contacted and visited many museums and collected references to over two hundred former systems.

Coopers and Coopering

Ken Kilby £5.99

978 0 7478 0584 7 (Album 426) 64 pp, many colour and b/w ills

Wooden casks, or what most people today call barrels, are containers of exceptional strength, durability, versatility and mobility, but they have become a rarity in Britain, displaced so completely by metal containers that it is hard to imagine their importance in former times. The coopers who made them were once numerous and independent craftsmen, while latterly many were employed by breweries. Their craft was not only economically vital but was physically demanding and required skill acquired only through years of practice. This book seeks to preserve the memory of their special skills, tracing the history of the craft and its considerable scope, while describing and illustrating how a barrel was made.

Ken Kilby is a Vice-President and founder member of the Tools and Trades History Society. He comes from a family of coopers, his great uncle founding the cooperage of Samuel Kilby & Sons of Banbury, Oxfordshire, in the 1860s.

The Cotton Industry

Chris Aspin £2.95

978 0 85263 545 2 (Album 63) 32 pp, 43 ills. 

The book tells the story of the cotton industry from its spectacular growth during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to its devastating decline in the second half of the twenieth. The impact of the British cotton trade was enormous. Goods mass-produced in busy factories undercut all competition and the industry became the first to make the whole world its market. Using much previously unpublished material, this book traces cotton's birth, growth and downfall. The development of the processes used to transform raw cotton into finished goods is also described and illustrated.

Chris Aspin is a historian with a particular interest in textiles. Other titles for Shire by this author are:

Marilyn Palmer £3.50

978 0 85263 668 8 (Album 119) 32 pp, 30 ills.

The stocking frame was one of the first technological developments in the textile industries, dating from the reign of the first Queen Elizabeth. It was probably invented in the East Midlands, but certainly knitted garments became one of the main products of the region from the seventeenth century onwards. The frame was intended for use in the home and the whole family was involved, the men working the frame while their wives and children wound bobbins and seamed stockings. This book explains how the stocking frame worked, describes the lives of the knitters and illustrates the kinds of buildings in which knitting was done.

Marilyn Palmer has lived in the East Midlands since 1965. She has always had an absorbing interest in survivals from the industrial past and is now Professor of Industrial Archaeology at the University of Leicester.

The Gunpowder Industry

Glenys Crocker £3.50

978 0 7478 0393 5 (Album 160) 32 pp, 34 ills.

This book outlines the history of gunpowder manufacture from its development as a propellant in the fourteenth century to its eclipse by high explosives. A number of gunpowder mills can still be identified and some are now preserved and interpreted for the visitor.

Ironworking

W. V. K. Gale £3.50

978 0 7478 0391 1 (Album 64) 32 pp, 35 ills.

Iron, in one or more of its several forms, has been used for about four thousand years, it was essential to the industrial revolution and it is still the principal metal of commerce. At first, and for centuries, ironmaking was a manual craft, the quantities were small and the metal was scarce. Then in the fifteenth century, means were devised for making iron on a larger scale and ironmaking began to develop into an industry. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries technology and the scale of production developed rapidly and new types of iron were introduced. One of these, steel, eventually took over.

The late W. V. K. Gale spent most of his working life in the iron and steel industry. He was a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a past president of the Newcomen Society, the Staffordshire Iron and Steel Institute and the Historical Metallurgy Society and a member of the Institute of Materials. He was a technical adviser on iron and steel history to the Ironbridge Gorge and Black Country museums.

Limekilns and Limeburning

Richard Williams £3.50

978 0 7478 0596 0 (Album 236) 32 pp, 46 ills.

Disused limekilns in various degrees of dilapidation can be seen all over Britain. The best known are probably those near harbours or coves but there are many on farmland, in disused quarries or beside inland waterways. Limeburning appears to have been practised in prehistoric times in the Middle East but the more extensive use of lime for mortar and agricultural manure may be attributed to the Romans. In this book the author describes the development of limeburning, the different types of limekiln and siting considerations.

Richard Williams has been an amateur archaeologist for many years and has become increasingly interested in industrial archaeology. He is a member of the the Surrey Archaeological Society and the Surrey Industrial History Group.

Looms and Weaving

Anna Benson and Neil Warburton £3.50

978 0 85263 753 1 (Album 154) 32 pp, 39 ills. 

This book describes the development of the loom from a crude wooden frame to a sophisticated electronic weaving machine. It introduces common textile terms and techniques and there is a description of primitive looms, such as Greek Tapestry and Navaho blanket weaving. Medieval craft guilds, the domestic system and Yeoman Weavers are dealt with, while handloom weaving is contrasted with the powerloom and the mill system. The authors examine the decorative fabrics such as brocades produced on early Chinese drawlooms and the introduction of Jacquard and dobby weaving in the nineteenth century. The reaction against industrialisation and William Morris’s inauguration of the Arts and Crafts movement are discussed in relation to the craft revival of the twentieth century. This book continues the history of looms and weaving beyond the invention of the Northrop automatic to include special woven effects and twentieth-century technological development, including today’s computer-based weaving machines.

Anna Benson and Neil Warburton are weavers and textile historians, with an extensive collection of antique hand and power looms. Other books by Anna Benson for Shire are:

The Potteries

David Sekers £2.95

978 0 85263 564 3 (Album 62) 32 pp, 40 ills.

While generations of collectors have studied the wares of the Potteries, the circumstances of their production have often been overlooked. The story of the Potteries deserves better, for no British industry was ever so concentrated, so polluting, and then so transformed. No industrial skyline was ever more memorable than the forest of bottle ovens which for almost two centuries dominated Stoke-on-Trent. This book shows how the Potteries became such a remarkable place and illustrates the traditional skills of the potters.

David Sekers was Director of the Gladstone Pottery Museum in Stoke-on-Trent and, later, Director of the Quarry Bank Mill Working Textile Museum at Styal, Cheshire. He is now Director of the National Trust's Southern Region.

The Salt Industry

Andrew and Annelise Fielding £5.99

978 0 7478 0648 6 (Album 454) colour and b/w ills

Shoemaking

June Swann £3.50

978 0 85263 778 4 (Album 155) 32 pp, 50 ills.

Before the 1920s everyone knew the local cobbler, a worthy representative of the ‘gentle craft’, who repaired shoes and made them look like new for a few pence. This book tells the story of shoemaking from the days of the isolated shoemaker, who made a shoe right through, to the groups of men who worked with apprentices in the larger towns and served the customer direct. It shows the growth of mass production in the seventeenth century, with a recognisable factory system and warehouses in the cities. Finally the book shows the late development of mechanisation in the 1850s and the rigidity it imposed.

June Swann MBE, was Keeper of the Boot and Shoe Collection, Northampton Museum, until 1988. She is now a consultant on the history of shoes and shoemaking.

Snuff

Ursula Bourne £3.50

978 0 7478 0089 7 (Album 258) 32 pp, 44 ills.

This Album traces the history of snuff and snufftaking, at its peak in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, explains how snuff was processed and describes snuffboxes and other collectables associated with the habit.

Steam Shovels

Peter Manktelow £3.50

978 0 7478 0483 3 (Album 355) 32 pp, 46 ills.

The steam shovel was the forerunner of all powered, single-bucket, ‘dry land’ excavators and was the first machine successfully to replace the hand shoveller in loading wagons on construction sites. This book explains the workings of the machine and its application to the tasks demanded of it.

Peter Manktelow spent his early working life as an engineering draughtsman. He later became involved in technical illustration and, as a natural spin-off and for light relief, he developed a fascination for past technical achievements.

Textile Machines

Anna Benson £3.50

978 0 85263 647 3 (Album 103) 32 pp, 39 ills. 

This book combines a description of about fifty important textile machines with an analysis of their evolution from the twelfth century to the present day. Each machine is dealt with in the context of its time, showing the impact that even a simple device like the fulling stocks had on textile production in Britain. The greater organisation of the domestic system in the eighteenth century gave impetus to the development of machines like the dandy loom and the spinning jenny. The author examines the revolutionary inventions of the late eighteenth century and how they led to the industrialisation of the textile industry. Detailed discussion is restricted to those machines which may be seen in the principal textile museums and collections of Europe and America, which are listed at the end of the book.

Anna Benson is a weaver and textile historian. She is a chartered textile technologist and has completed an MA specialising in the textiles of historic houses. Anna and her husband run a specialist weaving business reproducing fabrics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Other titles for Shire by this author are:

The Victorian Engineer

Adrian Jarvis £3.50

978 0 7478 0471 0 (Album 353) 32 pp, 50 b/w ills. 

The Victorian Railway Worker

Trevor May £3.50

978 0 7478 0451 2 (Album 351) 32 pp, 59 b/w ills

Water Supply

Peter Naylor £5.99 £2.99 *special price until 31.1.08

978 0 7478 0608 0 (Album 436) 56 pp, colour and b/w ills

The Woollen Industry

Chris Apsin £3.50

978 0 85263 598 8 (Album 81) 32 pp, 42 ills

Most places in Britain have had some connection with the woollen industry. For several hundred years it was Britain’s principal source of wealth and provided more jobs than all the other industries put together. The country’s fortunes were largely dependent on the wool trade, in which almost every family had a stake – from the spinster at her hand wheel to the merchant seeking foreign markets. The English language has been enriched by many phrases derived from the trade – ‘dyed in the wool’, ‘spinning a yarn’, ‘on tenterhooks’ – and many thousands of people owe their surnames to ancestors who were Websters, Weavers, Fullers, Tuckers, Walkers, Listers and so on. Mr Aspin traces the story of wool in Britain from prehistoric times to the present day and uses many previously unpublished illustrations to illuminate his story.