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
Left: The inspection plate in the pavement in St Edmunds Lane, Wantage.
Right: The cover in the parking layby outside the Crown & Thistle. (There’s often a car parked over it.)
On a visit to the Vale & Downland Museum in Wantage, I did find a Boyd & Hadaway lamppost outside the Parish Church of SS Peter & Paul. There was another similar lamppost on the other side of the church, but it was slightly different and the makers name had been eroded. A man working in the church said it was hoped that the lampposts
would be refurbished in due course (author photographs).
But what happened to Boyd and Hadaway during and after the war?
Charles Hadaway and his family emigrated to Canada in July 1913 – sailing on the ‘Empress of Ireland’ from Liverpool to Quebec – settling in Vancouver where Beatrice was born in March 1914. They were all living in Vancouver in 1921, with Charles senior described as a machinist at a dye maker. He and his son Charles visited England in April 1924, travelling on the Canadian Pacific ship ‘Montrose’ from New Brunswick to Liverpool to stay in Hammersmith less than a mile from his brother George’s home. returning to Canada on the ‘Montcalm’ to Montreal in May. By this stage, Charles senior is listed as a car dealer/mechanic. Charles remained in Vancouver until his death in 1945.
By the end of the war James Clerk Boyd with Ellen and the boys had moved to Hendon, with Boyd joining the Neasden freemasons’ lodge: at the time of the 1921 Census he was a maintenance engineer for the London General Omnibus Company in Westminster. Boyd was listed as an engineer on the electoral register for Hendon 1920-8. In 1939 the England & Wales Register lists him as a retired engineer & poultry farmer, living with Ellen and son Douglas, a poultry farmer, near Sevenoaks in Kent. He died in January 1957 in a nursing home in Sevenoaks, leaving £10,381 on probate to Douglas Jordan Boyd, farmer.
For an earlier article on Steventon ironworks click here
