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GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

GWR Route: North Warwickshire Line

Tyseley Station: gwrt3877

A painting of the Webster & Horsfall wire works in rural Hay Mills in 1856, with a short train on the B&OR in background

A painting of the Webster & Horsfall wire works in rural Hay Mills in 1856, with a short train on the Great Western (Birmingham and Oxford Junction) Railway in the background. In 1856 Hay Mills was open farmland and the only other works in the district was a tannery. At that time the nearest urban area was Yardley some three miles distant and served by Acocks Green & South Yardley station which had opened on 30th September 1852. The train is where Tyseley railway station was built fifty years later (opened on 1st October 1906) and the land on the other side of the track became Tyseley locomotive depot and carriage sidings.

In 1847 the Great Western Railway paid James Horsfall £2,300 for his factory in Oxford Street, Digbeth, as it stood under their proposed Bordesley Viaduct. It was stated that ‘the sum includes compensation for goodwill, loss of trade, removal, improvements made in machinery and fixtures and for every description of injury whether permanent or temporary which the formation of the said Railway may occasion.’ The compensation was sufficient for James Horsfall to re-establish his wire works on a new site beside the River Cole at Hay Mills. Subsequently his company amalgamated with another prominent Birmingham steel wire manufacturer owned by Baron Webster of Penn on 1st July 1855. Forty years later Webster & Horsfall joined forces with Larch & Batchelor to become the most prominent manufacturer of wire ropes in the world.

Robert Ferris

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