Sir John Gay Newton Alleyne, 3rd Baronet (8 September 1820 – 20 February 1912) was a British businessman and engineer.

Biography

Alleyne was born in Alleynedale Hall in

Barbados Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the Caribbean region of the Americas, and the most easterly of the Caribbean Islands. It occupies an area of and has a population of about 287,000 (2019 estimate). ...

, the son of Sir Reynold Abel Alleyne, 2nd Baronet, and his wife Rebecca, daughter of John Alton. He was educated at

Harrow School (The Faithful Dispensation of the Gifts of God) , established = (Royal Charter) , closed = , type = Public schoolIndependent schoolBoarding school , religion = Church of E ...

and in

Bonn University The Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (german: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn) is a public research university located in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the ( en, Rhine ...

. His first work was in the sugar industry in his home in Barbados, on his family slave plantation. His father received compensation for the slaves he owned after abolition, and John inherited some of this money. He was Warden of

Dulwich College Dulwich College is a 2–19 independent, day and boarding school for boys in Dulwich, London, England. As a public school, it began as the College of God's Gift, founded in 1619 by Elizabethan actor Edward Alleyn, with the original purpose of ...

between 1845 and 1851,ALLEYNE, Sir John Gay Newton’, Who Was Who, A & C Black, 1920–2007; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 200
accessed 2 Sept 2008
/ref> president of the Steel and Iron Institute. Alleyne had joined the

Butterley Company The Butterley Company was an English manufacturing firm founded as Benjamin Outram and Company in 1790. Its subsidiaries existed until 2009. Origins This area of Derbyshire had been known for its outcrops of iron ore which had been exploited ...

in 1852 as its first manager at a time when highly professional and highly paid managers were being brought into the industry. He served as manager and chief engineer of the iron works for 28 years. It was he who designed the roof of

St Pancras station St Pancras railway station (), also known as London St Pancras or St Pancras International and officially since 2007 as London St Pancras International, is a central London railway terminus on Euston Road in the London Borough of Camden. It is ...

which has a span of 240 feet (73 m) and forged the girders at

Butterley Butterley is a village in the English county of Derbyshire near to Ripley. It is the site of the Midland Railway – Butterley, as well as the old Butterley Brickworks. Notable residents *Sir James Outram, hero of the Indian Mutiny, was born ...

. He also carried out the project of a two-track railway bridge over the Maas at

Dordrecht Dordrecht (), historically known in English as Dordt (still colloquially used in Dutch, ) or Dort, is a city and municipality in the Western Netherlands, located in the province of South Holland. It is the province's fifth-largest city after R ...

in the Netherlands. His addresses were given as

Belper Belper is a town and civil parish in the local government district of Amber Valley in Derbyshire, England, located about north of Derby on the River Derwent. As well as Belper itself, the parish also includes the village of Milford and the ha ...

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southern end of the Pennine range of hills and part of the National Forest. It borders Greater Manchester to the nor ...

and Falmouth. Alleyne patented a method in 1861 which allowed hot ingots to be moved around a roller after it had passed by just one person. During the production of steel sections the bar has to be repeatedly put through rollers. Allowing this to happen using just one person provided a substantial increase in productivity. However his most notable invention was probably the two high reversing steel mill patented in 1870, which used two steam engines to allow metal ingots to be repeatedly rolled in order to get the correct size and section.Biographical Dictionary of the History of Technology
Lance Day, Ian McNeil, p.14, , accessed 1 September 2008 With this technique the steel did not have to be moved to re-enter the rolling process but merely had to be moved back into the rolling machine once it had passed through. He also devised a method of determining the percentages of

phosphorus Phosphorus is a chemical element with the symbol P and atomic number 15. Elemental phosphorus exists in two major forms, white phosphorus and red phosphorus, but because it is highly reactive, phosphorus is never found as a free element on Ear ...

in steel using a spectroscope. In his spare time he was an amateur astronomer and metalworker in his workshop at home. Alleyne married Augusta Isabella, daughter of Sir Henry FitzHerbert, 3rd Baronet, in 1851. Alleyne died 20 February 1912, aged 91.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Alleyne, John 1820 births 1912 deaths Baronets in the Baronetage of Great Britain People from Belper People educated at Harrow School British people of Barbadian descent