Rubber Town: Bradford on Avon's Unique Industrial History

Whilst working as a broker in New York, Stephen Moulton met the man who discovered the rubber vulcanisation process – Charles Goodyear.  Moulton brought samples of Goodyear’s ‘Improved Rubber’ to Europe, and, having failed to interest the existing rubber companies he decided to enter the business himself.  He purchased a derelict mill and the grand, but decaying, house that overlooked it and founded his own rubber manufacturing enterprise.

 This is the unlikely story of how Bradford on Avon became a rubber town – a tale of courage and conviction, of legal wrangles, financial juggling, technical innovation and industrial progress.  Moulton’s factory, the Kingston Mills, became the world’s centre of production for ‘railway rubber’; including all manner of springs, hoses, glands, seals and gaskets. It employed almost all of the working-age population of Bradford for nearly 150 years.  Its customers included Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Sir Nigel Gresley; and its reputation was built upon unstinting quality and the maxim that “Nothing but the best must leave the factory.”