Bag seals from Packards Fertiliser – ex Coprolite

PACKARD & Co IPSWICH Bag Seal, Image & Found by StuE.

PURE BONE AND ACID. Found in Langham near Colchester.

Company No: 113833; Packard and Company Ltd. Incorporated in 1911. Sorce The National Archives, Kew – Wrong company – Piece reference BT 31/13504/113833 Company No: 113833; Packard and Company Ltd. Incorporated in 1911. Liquidated 1914. Business of Sanitary and Ventilating Engineers and ware.

“In 1840 Von Liebig published his work on the value of chemical fertilizers, and within two years Sir John Lawes was treating bones with sulphuric acid to produce superphosphate at Deptford. A Suffolk chemist, Edward Packard, was only just behind, for in 1843 he made a bone-based superphosphate at Snape, and shortly after tried using the locally available coprolites, ground in a mill, as a base. In 1847 he took over an old flourmill on the quay at Ipswich, first grinding coprolites, later treating them with acid, but the fumes were unpopular, so in 1851 he moved to a site between the navigation and the railway at Brantham. By 1854 he was producing his own sulphuric acid on site by the lead-chamber process, thus creating the first complete superphosphate works.

Packard was quickly followed by others, most notably James Fison who, after a start at Ipswich in 1856, built a factory beside Packard at Brantham, and Thomas Prentice, whos Stowmarket works were founded in 1856. In 1919 Prentice took over the Burwell factory of Thomas Ball, built in 1864. In Kings Lynn a farmers’ co-operative established West Norfolk Fertilizers. In 1978, only Thetford, of all these sites, had been completley cleared.

In 1934, after a series of amalgamations had linked all these companies, a new factory was built at Cliff Quay, Ipswich, and the old sites were phased out. Cliff Quay possessed the first plant for producing granular fertilizers, and the firm had also moved into the manufacture of nitrates.”

From ‘The Batsford Guide to the Industrial Archaeology of East Anglia,’ David Alderton & John Booker, 1980.

Date: 09/11/11

Size:

Full size: 974×581