An ironworks for the farming Vale
Nineteenth-century Wantage lived from the land, and its biggest industry served farmers. The Museum of English Rural Life, which holds the firm’s archive, dates the business to 28 July 1847. In its early years it was run by Charles Hart, remembered as one of the pioneers of the steam threshing machine, under the name of the Vale of White Horse Iron Works.
The Gibbons years
In 1857 the brothers Henry Philip Gibbons and J. V. Gibbons joined Hart, and the firm became Hart, Gibbons and Gibbons. Hart retired, and a year later J. V. Gibbons left and another brother, Philip, joined, so the business was renamed P. and H. P. Gibbons. The brothers made threshing machines their speciality. In 1860 one won first prize at the Royal Agricultural Society’s show at Canterbury, and in the same year they began building portable steam engines, which could be drawn from farm to farm to drive threshing tackle. At the society’s Leeds show in 1861 they exhibited a seven-horsepower portable engine alongside their threshers.
The works had to be enlarged, and the Gibbonses began selling abroad, entering shows across Europe. They won prizes and medals in Germany, Belgium, Denmark and Sweden, and a gold medal at the Melbourne Exhibition of 1881. A local newspaper looking back in 1896 said the works had become the chief industry of the town, employing a large number of people.
Robinson and Auden, and Lord Wantage
After Henry Philip Gibbons died in 1881, Arthur S. P. Robinson bought into the business, which became Gibbons and Robinson. When the surviving brother retired in 1891, Robinson carried on with a new partner, Arthur Charles Auden, and the firm was incorporated as Robinson and Auden Ltd in 1894. It exhibited a vertical engine at the Smithfield Club show that year, and in 1898 supplied a steam engine and dynamo for the London headquarters of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade in Southwark.
In 1900 both partners sold their shares to Lord Wantage, the owner of the Lockinge estate, who reorganised the company as the Wantage Engineering Company. By then its steam engines and threshing machines were known worldwide. From 1903 it also built steam wagons, early motor lorries powered by steam.
Later years and the archive
The company’s records at the Museum of English Rural Life run to 1980, but a reliable date for the closure of the works was not found for this article. The archive, which includes drawings, photographs, accounts and show records, is the best source for anyone researching the firm or the people who worked there.