Ransomes, Sims and Jefferies Limited was a major British agricultural machinery maker also producing a wide range of general engineering products in Ipswich, Suffolk including traction engines, trolleybuses, ploughs, lawn mowers, combine harvesters and other tilling equipment. Ransomes also manufactured Direct Current electric motors in a wide range of sizes, and electric forklift trucks and tractors. They manufactured aeroplanes during the First World War. Their base, specially set up in 1845, was named Orwell Works.
Ransomes' railway equipment business was hived off in 1869 with a different ownership as Ransomes & Rapier and based nearby at Waterside Ironworks.
History 18th century
The enterprise was started by Robert Ransome (1753–1830), who was born into a Quaker family in Norfolk, and became an apprentice to an ironmonger in Norwich. The Quaker values of frugal living, avoiding debt and keeping regular accounts served him well when he set up one of the first brass and iron foundries in East Anglia near White-Friars Bridge, Norwich. He obtained a patent for iron roofing tiles in 1783, and another for tempered cast iron plough shares some 18 months later. In 1789, he moved with his family and one employee named William Rush to Ipswich, where he started casting ploughshares in a disused malting at St Margaret's Ditches, with capital of £200. It was not an obvious place to go, as the town had been in decline for more than a century, and the Ipswich Corporation was almost insolvent due to huge debts.
The fortunes of Ipswich improved when Commissioners were appointed in 1793 to pave the streets, number the houses, and carry out other public works. It became a garrison town when war with France restarted in the same year, which resulted in increased economic and industrial activity. In 1805, an Act of Parliament was obtained, enabling River Commissioners to be appointed, who were to improve the river, allowing ships to reach the town. Despite a period of social unrest, caused by a really bad winter, high prices for coal, and food riots, Robert's son James Ransome (1782–1849) served his apprenticeship in the foundry, and then moved to Great Yarmouth to start his own business.
As a result of a mishap in his foundry in 1803, when a broken mould caused molten metal to come into contact with cold metal, making the metal surface extremely hard, Robert discovered the process of chilled casting. He used it to refine the manufacture of plough shares, which he advertised as 'self sharpening' ploughs, and obtained a patent for his discovery. His next patent was obtained in 1808, and was for the standardisation of plough fittings, enabling parts to be easily replaced when they wore out.
19th century
In 1809 Robert Ransome, now aged 56, was looking for someone younger to take the business forwards. His eldest son James returned from Great Yarmouth to become his father's partner, bringing with him several of his skilled craftsmen. Now called Ransome and Son, the business prospered, with output doubling over the next six years. Another period of social unrest followed, with agricultural depression and the introduction of the Corn Laws in 1815. Robert had employed William Cubitt in 1812 as the company engineer, and they diversified so they were not solely dependent on the sale of agricultural products. They cast the components for Stoke Bridge, Ipswich, which was swept away in a flood in 1818. Cubitt was responsible for the new design, and the bridge lasted for over 100 years. Cubitt's designs for wind-regulating vanes for windmills and a treadmill for grinding corn in prisons were also manufactured, and he then supervised the installation of gas lighting in Ipswich, which included the construction of a gasometer near to the foundry. Cubbitt became a partner in the firm in 1821, but continued to carry out consultancy work in his own right. He was in such demand that he moved on in 1826, to pursue his civil engineering career, for which he was later knighted.
In 1826 James's son known as Allen but technically James Allen Ransome (1806–1875) went to live at Yoxford, Suffolk, where he established a branch of the business. In 1839 Allen Ransome moved from Yoxford to Ipswich and under his direction the firm of J, R & A Ransome (James, Robert and Allen Ransome) was to assume huge proportions. Charles May had joined the company in 1836, and played a major part in the expansion, as he was a brilliant chemist and scientist. In 1837 William Worby the works manager was asked to find a new location for some of the workforce, as the St Margaret's Ditches site was no longer big enough. He found an old shipyard on the eastern bank of the River Orwell, covering . This became the Orwell Works, and the company embarked on the construction of a dock scheme, to give them over of quay on the eastern edge of the new wet dock, construction of which had begun in 1837, and continued for some five years. The designer and chief engineer for the wet dock was Henry Robinson Palmer, assisted by James Jones, one of the founder members of the Institution of Civil Engineers. He left the scheme in 1842 to become Ransomes' manager, a position he held until 1852.
After about 1841 the manufacture of ploughs and other agricultural machinery was supplemented by production of portable, traction and other steam engines and thrashing machines.Ransomes Sims And Jefferies, Limited. The Times, Wednesday, 7 Jun 1911; pg. 18; Issue 39605
In the middle decades of the 19th century the company produced heavy iron work for astronomical telescopes, mountings, and observatories.
These included The Airy Altazimuth Telescope for the Royal Observatory, Greenwich (1847) The dome of Arthur Kett Barclay's observatory in Bury Hill, Dorking, Surrey (1848) The Trophy Telescope (1851) The Airy Transit Circle for the Royal Observatory, Greenwich (1851) The Great Equatorial for the Royal Observatory, Greenwich (1857)
In 1851 export trade was initiated which by the early 20th century was more important than the home market and included distributing agencies throughout the world with a branch establishment in Odessa.
In 1869 four engineers, Allen, who remained the senior partner in the parent firm, his elder son R.J. Ransome, R.C. Rapier and A.A. Bennett, took the firm's railway department aside from the parent business and established Ransomes & Rapier at Riverside Works, Ipswich.
An independent factory was set up for the manufacture of lawn mowers of every class Ransomes produced the 'Automaton' hand-powered lawn mower in 1867.
20th century
In 1902 Ransomes produced the first commercially available powered lawn mower, driven by an internal combustion petrol engine. In 1910 they won gold medal at the South Russian Regional Agricultural Industrial and Crafts Exhibition for steam thrashing machines and portable steam engines.
During the First World War, they began building "Orwells", a brand of battery-electric commercial road vehicles. They also manufactured aeroplanes, producing 350 Royal Aircraft Factory F.E.2b fighters. These were constructed in a large building occupying , while the site at that time contained an administrative block of offices including a large drawing office, and laboratories in which physical, chemical and photo-micrographic testing of materials used in production was carried out. Once the War was over, aeroplane production ceased, and the aeroplane shop was used for the production of Orwell battery lorries from January 1919. In 1924 they added trolleybuses to their portfolio, continuing production of them until 1948, and selling them in Britain and abroad.
In the 1950s Ransomes started producing forklifts, Class 1 Lift Code 5 (Electric Sit Down Counterbalance). With the start of production of the A Series, Ransomes forklifts were sold by the Hyster dealership network under Hyster serial number codes (A21R, A22R, A23R - the R standing for Ransomes Ipswich plant). The codes still show in the Hyster serial number system.
Ransomes also started producing Class 2 Lift Code 3 (Electric Stand On Reach Straddle) machines. Later the company expanded to producing Class 6 Lift Code 1 (Electric Tow Tractors).
When Hyster Corporation bought Lewis Sheppard, the largest market for Ransomes forklifts disappeared. In the early 1980s Ransomes sold their forklift line to Hawkins Mechanical Handling, which produced machines under the Hamech Ransomes brand name. Hawkins Mechanical Handling was later purchased by Crown, and the Hamech name retired, until 2004, when Crown brought it back for use in an Internal Combustion Engined forklift line.
Ransomes also made electric stillage-carrying trucks for use in factories.
In 1989 the whole of the agricultural implement business was sold to Electrolux and merged with their subsidiary Överum.
This left Ransomes solely as a manufacturer of lawn mowers, with the Ransomes, Westwood and Mountfield mower brands. The company accepted a take-over offer from Textron Inc., USA, and their independent existence ended early in 1998. Westwood and Mountfield were later sold in a management buyout. Mountfield-Westwood Buyout
Museums and preservation
Somewhere in the region of 140 of the company's various steam engines survive in preservation.
The history of the company and preceding businesses is the subject of an exhibition at the Museum of East Anglian Life in Stowmarket, Suffolk and they are also represented in Ipswich Transport Museum.
Production Mowers
Ransomes started producing lawnmowers in 1832, at a time of social unrest when labourers were destroying machinery such as thrashing machines, and agitation for Parliamentary reform meant that some Tory farmers would not buy items made by the Quaker firm of Ransomes. The product had been invented by Edwin Budding of Stroud, and was manufactured under licence. They sold 70 to 80 machines a year for the next two decades.
Ransomes to this day still produce a variety of grass cutting equipment; from professional high quality turf machines to more industrial gang mowers for use on wider areas such as public parks etc. yet they do still make a range of pedestrian mowers for use on manicured lawns and bowling greens for example.
Orwell electric vehicles In the 1910s there were a number of electric road vehicles operating in Britain, but most were of American or European, particularly German, manufacture, and with the First World War cutting off supplies from the Continent, Ransomes decided to begin production of a suitable replacement. The construction of the vehicle was quite simple, with an electric motor mounted on a plate, which was attached to the stub axle of each front wheel. Helical gearing then drove the front wheels. 40 batteries were mounted in two panniers, one on either side of the chassis, which could easily be pulled out on a system of rollers, to aid maintenance. The controls were designed to be similar to those on a petrol lorry, with a foot pedal in the clutch position, which disconnected the batteries when pressed down, and reconnected them in three stages when it was released. The brake pedal operated brakes on both of the rear wheels, and the motor speed was controlled by a lever mounted above the steering column, similar to the throttle on petrol-engined vehicles of the time. There were five positions for forward motion, one for reversing, and one for electric braking. In 1916, the vehicles were marketed by Mossay and Co.