The Window Glass Makers of St. Helens

This is a record of window glass making by the Company of Pilkington Brothers, at Grove Street, St. Helens from 1826 to 1952.

St. Helens is in England in the South of Lancashire at what was in the old days the junction of the roads from Liverpool to Bolton and from Warrington to Ormskirk. It grew up from 1700 onwards, as a product of the industrial revolution when it was found to have coal and sand in its immediate vicinity with salt nearby. The construction of a canal and then a railway helped to found glass and chemical industries, copper works and foundries, all of which grew steadily through the 1800s.

There are three periods in history of glass making at Grove Street, the first being what I will call the "Manual Age" from about the 17th. Century to 1930, the second being the "Mechanical Age" from 1930 to 1958 and then from 1958 the "Technological Age", epitomised by the making of glass by the float process.

The record is wholly about the sheet and rolled glass making factory known as Sheet Works, located in St. Helens at Grove Street only a short distance from the town centre. It was the birth place of the Company of Pilkington Brothers when it was originally founded as the St. Helens Glass Company in 1826 who started glass making under the Old Cone or No. 1 House, near to the banks of the St. Helens canal.