British Ropes


British Ropes was a company established on 6 June 1924 through the merger of eight companies.
The companies were:
Gateshead
Liverpool:
  • R. S. Newall and Son
London:
  • Bullivant and Co
Newcastle upon Tyne:
Sunderland:
  • Craven and Speeding and Co,
  • D. H. and G. Haggie
Wakefield:
All but one of these companies were wire rope manufacturers. Over the next two years seventeen more companies were acquired, including wire drawers as well as manufacturers of wire rope and fibre rope; and the company began to invest in other ropemaking companies and associated industries, both at home and overseas.
By the mid-1940s, the company had rationalised its manufacturing business by reducing wire rope manufacture to seven sites:
  • Cardiff
  • Doncaster North Ropery
  • Doncaster South Ropery
  • Gateshead
  • Retford
  • Rutherglen
  • Wakefield
and fibre rope making to four sites:
Over a dozen more companies were acquired subsequently. By the late 1960s British Ropes owned or part-owned rope manufacturers and distributors across five continents. In 1972 the name of the parent company was changed to Bridon Ropes, with 'British Ropes' being retained as the name of a UK subsidiary.