ScottishArchitecture.com

James Howden's Engineering works is one of the last remaining Victorian heavy engineering works in Glasgow, and at the end of its life, this redbrick complex was the birthplace of the tunnel boring machines which dug out the Channel Tunnel.  The company, now called Howden Group, is still in business but left their home of ninety years in Tradeston in 1988.  The building’s future has been in doubt ever since, and it currently lies empty.

The company began in 1856, when James Howden set up in business on his own as a consulting engineer, and registered patents to his name for machine tools.  Before that, he was apprenticed to a firm of steam engine builders.  Howden’s interests gradually moved from machine tools to improving the design of boilers and steam engines, and he began experimenting with higher pressure compound engines, which would become more efficient than the basic simplex engines used until then.  The firm was incorporated as James Howden & Co. in 1862, and began building main boilers and engines to Howden’s own design, and built a factory at Scotland Street in the Tradeston area of Glasgow.  His next step was to begin experimenting with axial flow fans to force air through marine steam engines.  That was the root of Howdens’ business for the next century: fans, blowers, compressors, turbines and other steam machinery.  Today, they also make wind tunnels, refridgeration plant, circulators for nuclear power stations and mobile breathing systems for aircraft.

The original works further along Scotland Street from the present site were outgrown in 1870, and a new works was built a couple of blocks down the road.  “Howden’s Forced Draught System” was a great success, as it improved efficiency and fuel consumption, and in the 1880’s over 1000 boilers were converted or built to Howden’s patents.  Howden then turned his attention to auxiluary steam machinery, and realised his “new” factory wasn’t suitable, so he built another factory … this one … at 195 Scotland Street.  The works and foundry were designed by Nisbet Sinclair and opened in 1898, and had handling equipment and overhead cranes built-in plus (unusual in those days) a central heating system.  By then, the boilers in many famous ocean liners used the Howden system – the Lusitania and Mauretania – and later the Queen Mary, Normandie and Queen Elizabeth.  The original machine and constructing shop consists of six smaller bays running east-west; the much larger turbine fitting shop runs north-south with its brick gables facing the street: they’re largely hidden by the various offices which front onto Scotland Street. 

Business boomed, and extensions designed by Bryden & Robertson were built in 1904 then again in 1912 – and (according to Howdens’ official history) the firm went on to build the largest turbo-generator in the country, a 15MW set for Manchester Corporation.  In fact, Howdens were pioneers in the manufacture of steam turbines, and these were used on land as well as onboard ships.  When the Great War broke out, the Admiralty decided that all ships should be fitted with Howden blowers – the idea was to give them enough performance to outrun U-boats, and it probably saved the lives of hundreds of seafarers whose ships would otherwise have been torpedoed.  The company built a factory in Wellsville, New York in order to export their system to America.  After the war, Howdens gradually used their expertise in forced draught fans and preheaters to win orders for power station machinery, and in 1930, they were the probably first firm to use a fax machine to transmit data – they sent working drawings to America using radio-telegraphy. 

In the late ‘30’s, Howdens developed dust collectors to clean up the smoke from power stations, although the further development of these was put on hold during WW2.  From the early part of 1940, the Howden factories (Scotland St as well as Govan and Old Kilpatrick) were used to build Sunderland flying boat hulls; torpedo bomber fuselages; and fins and flaps for Lancasters.  Scotland Street employed 1700 people during the war, and also developed a gadget to eliminate visible smoke from the exhausts of steamships, which was a giveaway to the location of convoys.  During the war, Howdens took over the neighbouring Subway Power Station – it’s unique, as it powered the world’s only cable-haulage subway system until it was electrified in 1935.  Howdens used the building as a pattern shop.  Shortly after the war, the works received a large order of steel furniture, making use of the aircraft tooling, then orders came in from the CEGB for new power station equipment, including fans, air preheaters and dust collectors – flue gas cleaning equipment – and similar kit was fitted to a new generation of ocean liners.  Howdens supplied the massive forced draught fans at Inverkip Power Station, which are each around three storeys high. 

Architect’s impression of the 1954 Assembly halls – now demolished

A new block of research labs was built around 1950 at Scotland St., and as a result of their R&D, Howdens went on to supply the fans which cooled the atomic piles at Windscale from 1956.  As some of the new plant they were building was larger than anything that had gone before, Howdens extended the Scotland St. works westwards with a large new Assembling Shop in 1954, then another in 1964.  These parts lay behind Mackintosh’s Scotland Street School and have since been demolished … but as far as I know, the Channel Tunnel boring machines were erected there, and others before them.  I’ve yet to discover whether Howdens built the machines which excavated the nearby Clyde Tunnel, but it would certainly be logical and fitting if they had done.

Anyhow, perhaps the most famous artefacts to come out of this place were the “tunneliers” or tunnel boring machines (TBM’s) which excavated the Channel Tunnel.  I’ve mentioned them before, but they bear repeating, as they’re fascinating beasts.  The order was placed by Trans-Manche Link for three Howden open-face tunneling machines of just under 8 metre diameter and weighing over 500 tons, which made the landward drives of the main running tunnels; plus two Howden/ Decon machines of 5.3 metre diameter which excavated the service tunnel which lies between them.  Each of them cost £7.5m.  One of these was later used to dig a storm water sewer in Brighton, but once its sister had finished her task, she had to dig her own grave.  The machines were supplied in kit form and had to be welded together on site, but when work was complete, it wasn’t practical to dismantle them, so the TBM which dug the seaward part of the service tunnel was steered into a 60 metre radius curve away from the alignment, bored into rock, then entombed in concrete.  It still holds the record for the longest single TBM drive, of 22,000 metres, which was achieved between December 1987 and October 1990.  The one which survived intact was on display for a while, and then auctioned on Ebay a few years ago. 

Howdens later supplied TBM’s for the Storebaelt tunnel in Denmark in the mid-90’s, and also built tunneling machines under licence from Wirth of Germany in the late-’90’s, but the TBM’s were amongst the last orders completed at Scotland Street before the factory closed in 1988, and everything transferred to Howden Group’s newer factory at Craigton … and then began the search for a new use for this massive factory.  Even with the demolition of the post-war assembly shops, the buildings left still cover 1.5 hectares.  Scotland Street Works has been bought and sold several times since Howdens moved out, and is owned at the minute by Tiger Developments, who reportedly bought it for £10m.  It’s passed through the hands of other developers who pondered uses for it, and at one point there were proposals to convert it into a museum of industry and technology.  Can you hear the alarm bells ringing?

Anyone with a good Scots education knows that the industrial revolution owes its success to mass production, which relied on two phenomena: the harnessing of steam by James Watt, and the world’s greatest ironworks which belonged to the Carron Company outside Falkirk, whose blast furnaces inspired awe in Robert Burns.  On that basis alone, and in addition to the increasingly notorious new Museum of Transport, plus the recently-refurbished Kelvingrove, Glasgow’s claim to yet another facility is rather greedy.  To play devil’s advocate for a moment, the global explosives industry grew up in south-western Scotland; the UK’s papermaking machinery centre was Edinburgh, and Dundee was the capital of the world’s jute textile and jute machine trade.  A Scottish industrial museum could be sited in any one of these areas, couldn’t it? 

Also, if Scotland decided to create it, here, on the south bank of the Clyde, perhaps the museum should concentrate on what the area is best known for – shipbuilding.  As far as I know, there are no plans to preserve a recent, say 1960’s or 1970’s naval or merchant ship on Clydeside.  You could berth a large hull in the derelict graving docks in nearby Govan, and make it both the exhibit and exhibition space.  However, the QE2 sailed off to Dubai the other week, the Britannia is proof of the trappings of royalty more than shipbuilding skills, and both the preserved PS Waverley and SS Shieldhall are pre-modern steam ships.  Why not repatriate another Clydebuilt vessel?  It would make a much more impressive display than a crumbling old building, and restoring and maintaining her would keep men in work.

Yes, Howdens should be saved, in some form; yes, Scotland probably does need a museum devoted to science, industry and technology too … but the two issues are independent of each other.  With the current downturn, it might make sense to use the buildings as a museum meantime (or artists’ studios, or industrial units, or a nightclub …), but you can bet the developers will try to recover their investment by demolishing it and building flats or supermarkets on the site instead, unless the museum offers a sound business case.  Now that the machinery of the economy been thrown into reverse, the owners of 195 Scotland Street will need all the ingenuity of James Howden to make a success of things.

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