The Derby Years. 1898 - 1948

The London Crane Works at Slack Lane, Derby, was sited on an old brick- field adjacent to the Great Northern Railway. A rail track was laid through the centre of the main workshop, connecting with a private siding to the GNR, and making transportation easier.

One of the advantages of Henry Coles' abilities as a general engineer was that he could develop many of his own machine tools. Thus the factory at Slack Lane was fully self contained, with its own steam engine and belt driven generator which had been built by Coles before he left Sumner Street. The factory itself was on two levels, with the main machine shops about 20 ft below road level and the pattern shops at gallery level with the general office. Above the general office were the drawing office and director's office.

Compared with Sumner Street, the new factory must have seemed huge. There was room to work efficiently and to expand. Moreover with 20 years experience already under their belts the Coles workforce could face the new century with confidence.

In 1902, the promise of electrically powered cranes foreseen in earlier catalogues came to fruition with a 2-ton rail-mounted machine which took its power from overhead cables. It was apparently a one off and it seems unlikely that more were supplied.

In 1907, two years after the death of the founder, tangible benefits from the larger premises were beginning to be seen. In that year, a 40-ton rail crane was developed for use in steelworks, shipbuilding yards and so on. It was quite the biggest machine the company had ever built and it is doubtful whether such cranes could have been built at Sumner Street; three were supplied during 1907 to various customers.

In March of the same year, the Limited Company, Henry J. Coles Limited, was formed `to carry on the business of. . . crane manufacturer lately carried on by Henry James Coles, deceased'. The company, with a capital of /J25,000, was owned by Henry J. Coles' relations with 29-year- old Harry Coles elected as chairman and the founder's widow and brother Walter as the other two directors.

With the founder's heirs in charge, they did in fact carry on the business exactly as Henry James Coles had done. Innovations continued to be made. Notable among these was a rail crane developed in 1913, which was powered by the newfangled internal combustion engine driving the crane motions through a chain system.

From the recollections of people who knew him at the time, Walter Coles seems to have been the driving force. He was a more formally trained engineer than his brother (he had attended University College, London, in 1879 80) and he travelled quite widely in Western Europe in search of orders.

During the First World War the company, like most engineering firms, gave over its spare capacity to munitions manufacture. There were still plenty of cranes required, however, and towards the end of the war an enquiry was issued by General Pershing's US Expeditionary Force for a fully mobile crane. Hitherto, all cranes had been rail mounted so the military request represented a considerable departure from existing practices.

The war ended before the matter could be taken further but the concept had sown seeds of interest in the Coles organisation. In fact, the Coles' family were not enthusiastic about the idea, believing that rail mounting was essential for stability and the job of developing the mobile crane was given to Arnold Hallsworth, then a pupil apprentice who had joined the company in 1918, and who went on to become managing director in later years.

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