The Eagle Ironworks was an

ironworks An ironworks or iron works is an industrial plant where iron is smelted and where heavy iron and steel products are made. The term is both singular and plural, i.e. the singular of ''ironworks'' is ''ironworks''. Ironworks succeeded bloomeri ...

owned by W. Lucy & Co. on the

Oxford Canal The Oxford Canal is a narrowboat canal in central England linking the City of Oxford with the Coventry Canal at Hawkesbury (just north of Coventry and south of Bedworth) via Banbury and Rugby. Completed in 1790, it connects to the River Thame ...

in Jericho, Oxford, England. William Carter founded the works in 1812 with a shop in the High Street and moved it to its site beside the canal in 1825. It was on Walton Well Road at the northern end of Walton Street and backed onto

St Sepulchre's Cemetery __NOTOC__ St Sepulchre's Cemetery is a cemetery located on Walton Street, Jericho, central Oxford, England. The cemetery was opened in 1848 as a cemetery for the Oxford parishes of St Giles, St Paul, St Michael, and St Mary Magdalen. It was ...

. The works ceased production in 2005, was demolished in 2007 and has since been redeveloped, mainly with apartments.

History

William Carter had an ironmongery shop in

High Street, Oxford The High Street in Oxford, England, known locally as the High, runs between Carfax, generally seen as the centre of the city, and Magdalen Bridge to the east. Overview The street has been described by Nikolaus Pevsner as "''one of the world' ...

by 1812, when he founded an iron

foundry A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal into a mold, and removing the mold material after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals pr ...

in Summertown which was then a rural location north of Oxford. He moved the foundry to the banks of the Oxford Canal in 1825, one of the first developments in what is now the district of Jericho in central Oxford. The company specialised in iron castings including lamp-posts, manhole covers, ornamental ironwork and

agricultural machinery Agricultural machinery relates to the mechanical structures and devices used in farming or other agriculture. There are many types of such equipment, from hand tools and power tools to tractors and the countless kinds of farm implements that the ...

. William Grafton became a partner and in 1830 Carter moved to the Eagle Foundry in Leamington Hastings, Warwickshire. Grafton continued to manage the foundry in Oxford, which became called the Eagle Ironworks. In 1854 the company bought the freehold for the site from St John's College, which owned much of north Oxford. When Grafton died in 1861, William Lucy, his partner, took over the running of the foundry. When he in turn died in 1873, the name of the ironworks became "Lucy's". The growth of North Oxford and the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

colleges in the

Victorian era In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardia ...

expanded Lucy's market. The company responded by adding a new smith shop and foundry to the Eagle Ironworks, designed by local architect William Wilkinson and completed in 1879. Lucy's became a

limited company In a limited company, the liability of members or subscribers of the company is limited to what they have invested or guaranteed to the company. Limited companies may be limited by Share (finance), shares or by guarantee. In a company limited by ...

in 1897. It expanded both its product range and its market, including shelving and storage equipment that it sold throughout the country. In the decade after becoming a limited company, Lucy's accordingly increased and diversified the Eagle Ironworks buildings, including a north-lit factory extension designed by George Gardiner and completed in 1901. Production changed to

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

and

stainless steel Stainless steel is an alloy of iron that is resistant to rusting and corrosion. It contains at least 11% chromium and may contain elements such as carbon, other nonmetals and metals to obtain other desired properties. Stainless steel's corros ...

, including

arc lamp An arc lamp or arc light is a lamp that produces light by an electric arc (also called a voltaic arc). The carbon arc light, which consists of an arc between carbon electrodes in air, invented by Humphry Davy in the first decade of the 1800s, ...

electric lamp An electric light, lamp, or light bulb is an electrical component that produces light. It is the most common form of artificial lighting. Lamps usually have a base made of ceramic, metal, glass, or plastic, which secures the lamp in the soc ...

fittings, steam roller castings and, appropriately for Oxford, library stacking. In both

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

and

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Lucy's made munitions. Between the wars it concentrated on electrical engineering and making switchgear. After World War II it also made machine tools.

Closure and redevelopment

The Oxford Canal by Walton Well Road - geograph

In the 1960s the company built two large blocks on its wharves by the canal. In 2005 the company's new US owners moved manufacturing overseas from the United Kingdom and in 2007 it demolished the Eagle Ironworks and redeveloped the site with apartment blocks, which it lets out directly to tenants, trading as Lucy Properties. This has been controversial for town planning reasons. In 2006, the site's archaeology was evaluated prior to redevelopment. During the archaeological excavations a 17th-century pit and a possible 19th-century well were found. A new residential road, William Lucy Way, was developed at this time, on the other side of the Canal from the original Lucy's site.

Literature

Early in the 20th century the poet and short story writer

A. E. Coppard Alfred Edgar Coppard (4 January 187813 January 1957) was an English author, noted for his poetry and short stories. Life Coppard was born the son of a tailor and a housemaid in Folkestone, and had little formal education. Coppard grew up in ...

(1878–1957) worked at the Eagle Ironworks, as recounted in his autobiography ''It's Me, O Lord!'' Oxford-based author Philip Pullman featured the Eagle Ironworks in his 2003 novel ''

Lyra's Oxford ''Lyra's Oxford'' is a 2003 novella by Philip Pullman depicting an episode involving the heroine of ''His Dark Materials'', Pullman's best-selling trilogy. ''Lyra's Oxford'' is set when Lyra Belacqua is 15, two years after the end of the trilog ...

''. The story includes a fictitious "Randolph Lucy", a 17th-century

alchemist Alchemy (from Arabic: ''al-kīmiyā''; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, ''khumeía'') is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscience, protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in Chinese alchemy, C ...

with an

eagle Eagle is the common name for many large birds of prey of the family Accipitridae. Eagles belong to several groups of genera, some of which are closely related. Most of the 68 species of eagle are from Eurasia and Africa. Outside this area, just ...

demon A demon is a malevolent supernatural entity. Historically, belief in demons, or stories about demons, occurs in religion, occultism, literature, fiction, mythology, and folklore; as well as in media such as comics, video games, movies, ani ...

who had his laboratory on nearby Juxon Street. An entry for the Eagle Ironworks is included in an extract from a fictitious version of the Baedeker guide.

References

Sources and further reading

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External links