Thomas Allan & Sons

Thomas Allan & Sons, Springbank Iron Works, Springbank.—

    This old and important factor in the great iron-founding industry of Glasgow was established in 1840, by the late Thomas Allan, senior, who commenced operations at Maryhill. In 1848 Mr. Allan purchased a fine property of eight acres of ground at Springbank, and, transferring his business to that location, named it the Springbank and North Woodside Iron Works. On the retirement of the late Mr. George Glennie he assumed his son as partner, and the style of the firm then became Thomas Allan & Sons. Mr. Allan, senior, died in 1877, and his decease was followed by that of his son in 1884. At the beginning of 1883 the late Mr. Allan, junior, assumed as partners Mr. James White and Mr. J. S. McEwen, by whom the business is still carried on under the title Thomas Allan & Sons.

    The Springbank Works are situate just within the Glasgow municipal boundary, and are of very large dimensions, extending from the western junction of the New City Road with Garscube Road to the bank of the Forth and Clyde Canal at Firhill Bridge, and the area covered is one of fully eight acres. The buildings incidental to the works occupy a very large portion of the property, and are for the most part one and two storeys in height. Their mechanical equipment and general facilities attain to a high degree of perfection, and everything connected with the industry, down even to the minutest operative detail, has been arranged with a view to rapid and economical execution of work. The moulding shops constitute a feature of great interest and importance here, and are among the most extensive in Glasgow, covering not less than two acres of ground. When the works are in full operation the force of hands employed numbers from four hundred and fifty to five hundred men, as occasion necessitates. Messrs. Allan have an auxiliary foundry at South Stockton-on-Tees, known as the Bon Lea Foundry, covering an area of six acres, doing portions of the same class of work as the Springbank establishment, and employing from a hundred and seventy-five to two hundred men.

    The productions of the house include a very comprehensive range of castings, and comprise the following principal items: gas and water underground pipes, valves, close and open-fire ranges, register grates and shams, rain-water goods, hot-water goods, stable and cowhouse fittings, garden chairs and rollers, shop and cabin stoves, mantel registers and shams, mantelpieces, all kinds of hollow ware, air bricks, sink traps, cattle troughs, coil cases, columns, com stack pillars, skeleton grates, gate and fence posts, scrapers, furnace bars, gratings, jaw boxes, pig troughs, pumps, skylights, desk and seat stands, drain-pipes, cisterns, staircases, street gutters, &c., &c. For all these classes of goods Messrs. Thomas Allan & Sons maintain a very high reputation, and, in addition to supplying the trade in the leading towns of the United Kingdom with castings of the above descriptions for all sanitary, heating, and building and furnishing purposes, the firm do a most extensive home and foreign trade in cast-iron gas and water-pipes, of which they make a speciality, producing all sizes, from a 12-inch bore downwards.

    The counting-house and private offices of the concern are situate within the confines of the works.

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