Melksham and District Historical Association February meeting was led by Mike Stone who gave an presentation entitled, ‘The Brunel Brotherhood – Early Railway Engineering.’
Mike’s slide show and talk was focused on the railway development in Chippenham from the 1800s when its main industry was the manufacture of cloth, until Brunel brought the Bristol to London railway through the town.
In 1825 a public meeting was held outlining Brunel’s proposal for the line to run past Chippenham and was passed by Parliament in 1835. Brunel’s rail was Broad gauge 6ft, which was much wider that the rest of the country of 4ft 8.5 inches. This was probably the only mistake Brunel ever made and in the late 1800s all the GWR lines were changed to the national width.
In 1841 Chippenham Station opened and Roland Brotherhood was brought in to help Brunel. He built a railway factory on the side of the railway in Chippenham to construct wagons and carriages for Brunel, which later became the site for Westinghouse.
The rail link from Bristol to London speeded up the journey from a day, to just a few hours and in 1843 Prince Albert travelled from London to Bristol to launch the “SS Great Britain” and back to London again – all in a day.
Roland Brotherhood had 11 sons and one son, Peter, followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the company. Eventually the works were sold to Evan o’Donnell and then on to Saxby and Farmer. George Westinghouse, in America, took out a patent on railway braking systems and Saxby and Farmer and Westinghouse merged interests.
In World War 2 Westinghouse was involved in war production and was called a “universal provider,” as they made everything from parts for aero engines to grenades and bomb fuses. In 1979 Hawker Sydney bought the company and started to separate the company into smaller units and today, the Westinghouse site is more a site of small business.
Mike gave a very interesting talk on how a small area of Chippenham had developed from a piece of waste land to a large complex manufacturing area, all due to Brunel bringing the railway through Chippenham.
