Crittall Windows Ltd is a notable English manufacturer of steel-framed windows, today based in

Witham Witham () is a town in the county of Essex in the East of England, with a population ( 2011 census) of 25,353. It is part of the District of Braintree and is twinned with the town of Waldbröl, Germany. Witham stands between the city of Che ...

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and Grea ...

, close to its historic roots in the county. Its products have been used in thousands of buildings across the United Kingdom, including the

Houses of Parliament The Palace of Westminster serves as the meeting place for both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Informally known as the Houses of Parliament, the Palace lies on the north ban ...

and

Tower of London The Tower of London, officially His Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress of the Tower of London, is a historic castle on the north bank of the River Thames in central London. It lies within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, which is sep ...

, and are features particularly associated with the

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

and

Modernist Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

movements in early 20th-century

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

. The company's windows are also used in numerous buildings in North America and other parts of Europe, and were a feature of the .

Early history

The origins of the company date back to 1849, when Francis Berrington Crittall bought the Bank Street

ironmongery Ironmongery originally referred, first, to the manufacture of iron goods and, second, to the place of sale of such items for domestic rather than industrial use. In both contexts, the term has expanded to include items made of steel, aluminium ...

Braintree, Essex Braintree is a town and former civil parish in Essex, England. The principal settlement of Braintree District, it is located northeast of Chelmsford and west of Colchester. According to the 2011 Census, the town had a population of 41,634, ...

. However, it was not until 1884 that the company – by this time run by the founder's son Francis Henry Crittall (1860–1935) – began to manufacture metal windows. Five years later (1889), the Crittall Manufacturing Company Ltd was incorporated. At this time the firm's output in a two-year period was 20 tonnes. In 1880 the company employed 11 men, by the 1890s this figure was 34, by 1918 500. In 1907, Crittall bought the so-called Fenestra joint patent from the German company Fenestra in

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian language, Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second- ...

. In the same year, Crittall began to operate the

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...

Steel Product Co, the first steel window factory in the United States. During the

First World War 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 ...

, Crittall's factories were used in munitions production, but postwar the company returned to steel window manufacture. It formed a manufacturing agreement with

Belgian Belgian may refer to: * Something of, or related to, Belgium * Belgians, people from Belgium or of Belgian descent * Languages of Belgium, languages spoken in Belgium, such as Dutch, French, and German *Ancient Belgian language, an extinct languag ...

firm Braat in 1918 and opened a works in Witham, Essex in 1919, partly to supply standard metal windows for the UK government's housing scheme. The 1920s saw operations established in South Africa, India, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and in Washington, D.C. in the USA, followed by a company in

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flowin ...

, China in 1931. The company also had a factory at Foots Cray, Kent, on a junction still known as "Crittall's Corner". Amid this corporate expansion, the company started a model village at Silver End in Essex in 1926. The name most associated with the company at this time is that of W F Crittall, known as Mr Pink, who as both director and designer was responsible for the development of the steel windows and who was closely associated with the modern architectural movement that such windows are associated with.Carpenter, Robin (2007) ''Mr Pink, the architectural legacy of WF Crittall'', Essex County Council, Chelmsford In 1939, Crittall built its first galvanising plant at Witham, shortly before it once again became engaged in munitions production during the

Second World War 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 opposi ...

Postwar history

During the 1950s, Crittall began to manufacture

aluminium Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. I ...

windows and curtain walling, and in the 1960s was instrumental in the development of pressure chamber weather performance testing standards that are still used in the UK today. The postwar period has seen Crittall undergo several major corporate changes. In 1965, it merged with Henry Hope & Sons Ltd to form Crittall Hope – a firm that was then taken over in 1968 by Slater Walker Securities. Six years later, in 1974, Crittall-Hope was acquired by Norcros Ltd, and Crittall Windows Limited Braintree and Witham was formed. In 1990, Crittall moved to new premises in Braintree. Five years later, it was acquired by Apax Venture Capital, and then sold two years later (1997) to Marmon Corporation of

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. In 2002, the company was acquired by Laurel Holdings, and was then the subject of a management buy-out in 2004. In 2007, the company opened a new factory and head office in Witham.

Notable buildings worldwide using Crittall windows

* Mercat Cross, Glasgow *

Tower Bridge Tower Bridge is a Grade I listed combined bascule and suspension bridge in London, built between 1886 and 1894, designed by Horace Jones and engineered by John Wolfe Barry with the help of Henry Marc Brunel. It crosses the River Thames clos ...

, London *

Public Record Office The Public Record Office (abbreviated as PRO, pronounced as three letters and referred to as ''the'' PRO), Chancery Lane in the City of London, was the guardian of the national archives of the United Kingdom from 1838 until 2003, when it was ...

, London *

* Coventry Cathedral – the Great West Wall window *

Asia Insurance Building The former Asia Insurance Building (Chinese: 亚洲保险大厦; pinyin: Yàzhōu Bǎoxiǎn dàshà), now named Ascott Raffles Place, lies in the heart of the Central Business District of Singapore, at the corner of Finlayson Green and Raffles Qua ...

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...

* Capitol Theatre,

* St. John's College, Hong Kong *

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

, USA *MCC building, Lord's Cricket Ground, London * Temperate House,

Kew Gardens Kew Gardens is a botanic garden in southwest London that houses the "largest and most diverse botanical and mycological collections in the world". Founded in 1840, from the exotic garden at Kew Park, its living collections include some of the ...

Royal Shakespeare Theatre The Royal Shakespeare Theatre (RST) (originally called the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre) is a grade II* listed 1,040+ seat thrust stage theatre owned by the Royal Shakespeare Company dedicated to the English playwright and poet William Shakespea ...

, Stratford-upon-Avon * Ravelston Garden –

Edinburgh residential flats *

300 Central Park West The El Dorado (also spelled the Eldorado) is a Housing cooperative, cooperative apartment building at 300 Central Park West, between 90th and 91st Streets adjacent to Central Park, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. It was c ...

, USA *400 Sansome Street, San Francisco, USA *

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

, USA *Crosby Street Hotel, USA * New York Botanical Gardens, USA * Ford River Rouge Complex, USA *'' Astoria'', a houseboat built in 1911 for impresario Fred Karno, and used since the 1980s as a recording studio by David Gilmour of Pink Floyd *

Harvey Mudd Estate Harvey, Harveys or Harvey's may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * Harvey (play), ''Harvey'' (play), a 1944 play by Mary Chase about a man befriended by an invisible anthropomorphic rabbit * Harvey Awards ("Harveys"), one of the most imp ...

, USA * Elterwater Hostel, Cumbria, UK * Snowdon summit building (1935-2006), designed by

Clough Williams-Ellis Sir Bertram Clough Williams-Ellis, CBE, MC (28 May 1883 – 9 April 1978) was a Welsh architect known chiefly as the creator of the Italianate village of Portmeirion in North Wales. He became a major figure in the development of Welsh architec ...

* Southampton Civic Centre Clock Tower, Southampton, UK *R.M.S. Queen Mary, California, USA

Association with Braintree Town

The company had a long historical association with Braintree Town F.C. The club was originally formed in 1898 and accepted into the

North Essex League The North Essex League was a association football, football league that was held in Essex, founded in 1895. History On 20 March 1895, following a meeting at the George Hotel, Colchester, the North Essex League was voted into existence in order to ...

as Manor Works FC, the company's works team. The club's nickname "The Iron" also comes from this source, reflecting the company's metal window frames. The club's crest reflects its origins and shows the factory of the old Crittall Garage which overlooked the club's Cressing Road ground before being demolished in 2005. In 1921 the club changed its name to Crittall Athletic FC and soon afterwards moved to a new stadium which has been their home since. Around 1968 the club changed name once again, this time to Braintree & Crittall Athletic FC, but when links with Crittall ended in 1981 they became Braintree Town FC.

References

Company website timeline

External links

Crittall Company website

Introduction to the history and conservation of wrought iron and steel windows including advice on repair versus replacement * {{PM20, FID=co/065610, TEXT=Documents and clippings about, NAME= *A German article about the Düsseldorf company branch "Fenestra Crittall"
Daniel Lohmann, Stahlfenster von Fenestra-Crittall in den Bauten der Verseidag Krefeld. Bedeutung und Erhalt.
Window manufacturers Manufacturing companies established in 1889 Companies based in Essex Manufacturing companies of England 1889 establishments in England English brands Witham Braintree, Essex