Boyd & Hadaway : Steventon Iron Works

Chris Brickwood, Steventon History Society, April 2025

Around 1908-9 James Clerk Boyd, a marine & mechanical engineer born in on Merseyside in 1879 – who had married bankers daughter Ellen Jordan in 1906 in Manchester – moved to Steventon. Within a year Charles Hadaway, an electrician born in Otham in Kent in 1880 but living in Hammersmith where he had married Emily Rushmer in 1904, also moved to the village.

Boyd’s first venture in Steventon was Boyd & Wood or Woods, iron & brass founders, listed in the Vale directory in 1909. Who his partner was is unclear: there was a blacksmith John Spencer Wood in Ock Street, Abingdon (later a motor engineer, living in Spring Road Abingdon) but this may be unconnected. As may be Frank Woods, an engineer’s moulder from Wantage living in Steventon.

In 1911, both Boyd and Hadaway were living on The Green: Boyd with Ellen and children James Alexander, 3, born on Merseyside, and Douglas Jordan, 1, born Steventon with Kathleen Nobes, 14, general domestic servant; Hadaway, now listed as general engineer at an iron foundry, with Emily and children Vera, 5, born Newport, and Charles, 1, born Steventon. They had gone into business together as Boyd & Hadaway, engineers, iron & brass founders and polishers at the Steventon Iron Works. This seems to have been another rather short-lived venture. They did however leave some traces:

“Another local firm, Boyd and Hadaway, iron founders of Steventon, also supplied drain covers to Abingdon – one can be seen in Bridge Street outside the Crown and Thistle (Fig.147), and another, almost identical to the Ballard design, in St Edmunds Lane.”

From: Gazetteer of Historic Ironwork in Abingdon, Oxfordshire Buildings Record

https://obr.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Gazetteer-of-Historic-Ironwork-in-Abingdon.pdf