Boltons Copper Works

History

The factory was located midway between supplies of cheap waterborne coal from the North Staffordshire Coalfield and copper from the mines of His Grace The Duke of Devonshire at Ecton near Hartington. (These mines, once the largest copper mines in the World, financed the building of the spa town of Buxton). Waterpower from the River Churnet and a local tradition of iron mining and smelting facilitated early industrialism.

The origins of the Bolton firm are obscure but by 1783 the Walsall coppersmithing family had moved their business to nearby Birmingham. In 1852 they acquired the premises of The Cheadle Brass Company at Oakamoor, about two miles downstream of Froghall, and also beside the River Churnet.

This they converted to copper wire production, using the World’s first continuous wire drawing machinery to spin the first Transatlantic Telegraph Cable of 1858 and the two succeeding cables.

The first cable was destroyed by a combination of electrical overload and apparent shark attack.

Throughout its life the Churnet Valley copper wire industry has specialised in spinning ultra high-quality, oxygen-free copper wire for critical applications in the telecommunications and power industries, and supplied the cabling for the Channel Tunnel and the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur.

During World War Two the Nazis attempted to bomb the workings to stop production for the war effort apparently they did not succeed and hit the woods adjacent to the factory.

After World War Two the Oakamoor works were closed and demolished and production concentrated at Froghall. The Bolton family sold-out in 1961 and Thomas Bolton and Sons merged with the MacKechnie Group of Walsall.

The site now has totally been demolished apart from the listed Chimney and the relatively new section of the factory where production is still in progress.

Explore

Visited May 2010

After parking the cars up in the nearby car park and regretting not to bring coats because it was thrashing it down but hey it’s well worth it. Walked straight past the security gate which we found out was a big mistake, will explain later.... Got into the site via a hole in the fence and photographed the outer buildings. Then we saw the Churnet valley train going past so we waved to the passengers which must have thought what the heck they are doing in there.

Ran over the line and into the main part of the site, what a place it was loads of old machinery and scrap metal,  it’s a huge place as well and takes a few hours to see it all old science labs full of chemicals and huge cranes to climb up. When We were coming to the end of the explore and on the last section of the factory a Police car was spotted so as fool We decided to run and hide which didn’t work because We were chased by a huge Alsatian dog and a Police man saying stay where you are or He`ll let it go, so We decided to stop running and give ourselves up. It was a good move as there were armed units from Manchester dog units from Stafford, Police from Leek and finally a helicopter so there was no escape. They had checked out our cars did a stop and search on all of us but luckily they didn’t delete the pictures and they let us go without charges, we then went to the pub to calm down.

A lesson to learn is not to run from the Police as they told us because it just makes it worse and it cost them a lot of money just a few minutes searching and chasing us cost the Police nearly £10.000.