During a violent thunder in faraway South America many years ago a cow sheltered under a tree. Unfortunately a thunder bolt struck the tree and the cow was killed. A few days later a group of farmhands found the dead cow. Amazingly what they discovered would eventually lead to the economic fortunes of Widnes. Part of the cow’s body was lying in a pool of thick, brown liquid, the sap from the fallen tree. That liquid had turned the cow hide into leather. It was the start of a remarkable transformation in the tanning industry, which in turn led to the building of a huge factory at Ditton by the Calder and Mersey Extract Co Ltd. The company would in 1920 be taken over by one of the world’s biggest suppliers to the tanning industry, the Forestal Land, Timber and Railways Company. They owned vast acres of forests in Argentina, and their interest was the remarkable quebracho tree (oictured on here). Not only did the sap provide a vital ingredient to the tanning industry, the wood of the tree is among the heaviest in the world, so heavy its logs won’t float in water. So hard it made the strongest railway sleepers imaginable. Calder was to become a key player in the Forestal family, with a fleet of tankers based at Ditton supplying the tanning substances and other materials to customers across the country and beyond. Forestal itself was an amazing company, established in the days when bandits roamed the South American countryside. A number of its employees were ambushed and killed. It was typical Butch Cassidy country, with the company having to employ armed guards to look out for gangs of bandits. From South America the company spread to Africa where another important ingredient was found in the bark of the wattle tree. Even until the 1950s, Calder and Mersey Extract was attending global trade fairs, selling its products. One thing that kept Calder and its parent Forestal busy, with demand for their products was war! They supplied the main tanning ingredient to transform hide into leather to make millions of pairs of army boots. In the latter half of the 20 century the leather industry went into decline, mainly because of the arrival of synthetic materials. Many of us will remember the huge tannery at Penketh, that from memory resembled a huge oriental-style fortress, the tanneries in Runcorn – at Astmoor and in Halton Road and a tannery in Garston. All marched, no doubt in their leather booths, into the history books. Much of the materilal for this article was extract (sapped even!) from a book The Story of the Forestal by Agnes H Hicks OBE. It traces the ups and downs of the company starting in the early 1900s when the ‘father’ of what would become Forestal was started in Buenos Aires by Baron Emile Beaumont d’Erlanger (you can guess with a name like that he didnt come from Moss Bank). The company was registered in London and in 1920 brought the Widnes business of Calder and Mersey into its family. To be honest the book, which was written in the 1950s, is a hard read (hence the time it has taken me to write this) and has left me with a load of questions, particularly about the huge plant at Ditton. Widnes is linked closely with the chemical industry, but I guess few people will realise hundreds of our townsfolk owed their weekly wage packets to a tree, a cow and a thunderstorm in a faraway forest.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 13:09:38 +0000
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