![]() In this period, Hyde was also served by Turnpike roads from Manchester to Stockport. Hyde's growth had been especially enhanced by the Peak Forest Canal which was opened in 1800. The centre of Hyde was not served by a railway until 1858, but Godley and Newton both had stations on the Manchester to Sheffield line, constructed in 1841. Many local cotton employers had shares in coal and Sidebothams and Ashtons owned their own mines. Hyde was fortunate in lying on the South Lancashire coalfield (altogether of course the town was actually in Cheshire, the River Tame forming the county boundary). Local coal was vital for the supply of these mills. Steam power arrived in Hyde a few years later than in many factory towns but by 1820 all the new mills built in the town utilised steam rather than water power. The earliest mill owners of much consequence in the town were the Sidebothams, in the cotton trade at Kingston from 1748. Dissenting churches existed prior to this, notably the Unitarian Chapel at Gee Cross dating from 1708. ![]() Significantly, Hyde received its first Anglican place of worship, St George's, in 1832. The name appears to have come into common usage by 1830. As new mills were erected, cottages were built to house the workers and these hamlets gradually grew together to form Hyde. As the town's historian, Thomas Middleton, said "Prior to its connections with the cotton industry, Hyde has no separate identity It was merely an outlying township of the Parish of Stockport". Hyde's growth was inseparable from that of the cotton industry. Altogether there were only 3,500 inhabitants in the district in 1801. Gee Cross was much larger and "Hyde" was still only used to refer to the estates of Hyde Hall on the banks of the Tame. In the late 18th century the area that was to become the town centre was no more than a cluster of houses known as Red Pump Street. The town is largely a creation of the 19th century and the Industrial Revolution. The Standard Knapp division of Hartford-Empire moved into the governor manufacturer’s old 33,500-square-foot facility on Pickering Street, ending Pickering’s almost 100-year-old association with Portland.Its name derives from "hide" meaning a measure of land roughly equivalent to 120 acres. Hartford-Empire quickly sold Pickering to the Champlain Company, Inc., of Bloomfield, New Jersey. In October of 1949, the Hartford-Empire Company purchased Pickering, largely to acquire the property on which the company operated. Unfortunately, as technological advances in industry bypassed the need for Pickering’s products, the company began to struggle. Milton Whitby, a man with 32 years experience at Pickering, took over the company’s operation. Seven years later, when company President Irving M. In 1940, the Hartford Courant ran a story on Wilmore Taylor, a 64-year-old assembler at Pickering who began his career there at age 14 painting governors by hand. The employees, in turn, remained very loyal to the company. ![]() ![]() At the start of the 20th century, with the opportunity to move to Hartford and share a building with the Colt’s Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company, the Pickering Company declined, in part because of the number of employees with homes in Portland and the hardship relocation would create for them and their families. Pickering Governor continued its growth as the company patented modification after modification to meet the demands of the bigger and more powerful gasoline engines gaining popularity at the time.ĭespite its growth and success, the Pickering Governor Company remained very much a close-knit, small-town operation. By 1904, the company had already outgrown its facilities and moved into a new E-shaped mill in town with elevators, a shipping room, warehouse, machine shop, and fireproof doors. The product’s popularity brought about tremendous growth in Pickering’s enterprise. Pickering’s invention, incorporated into the valve assemblies of steam engines, helped operators produce more consistent and steady speeds. The Pickering governor caught on quickly in a 19th-century world increasingly dependent upon the steam engine. ![]() Thomas Pickering – National Inventors Hall of Fame ![]()
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