Men who made chain by the mile

CHAINMAKING has been featuring much in our columns of late, with this month marking as it does the centenary of the Women Chainmakers’ Strike.

The photograph here is another which highlights this old Black Country industry, though this image moves us on a few decades, to the 1940s or thereabouts, when chainmaking was still king in these parts, especially in the ‘chaintowns’ of Cradley, Cradley Heath and Old Hill.

This shows two men who worked for Jones & Lloyd Co.

Ltd., at the Scotia Works, Cradley, Century This chainmaking company had been around since the early years of the 19th century. Bugle reader Thomas Jones has supplied this photograph. He is the son of the man on the left (Thomas Jones Senior), standing on a pile of chain with an un-named colleague.

Plenty of effort must have been exerted by Thomas and his fellow chaimakers in producing these links, for his son tells us the chain on view measured an amazing one and a half miles long and was made for the London Brick Company.