Ordnance Survey Map 1876



The Totley Chemical Works is marked on the 2500 Ordnance Survey map of 1876. It occupied a site within the premises which were until recently the Cross Scythes Motor Company Stores. The earliest reference to a Chemical Works in the area is in 1847 when Tinker and Siddall are listed in the Trades Directory as Manufacturing Chemists. In 1852 the site of their premises is given as Mickley Lane End. In 1856 the company was trading as Tinker, Tedbar and Co. and as Tinker and Co. in 1862. In 1872 it was in the hands of Thomas Kilner, Manufacturing Chemist, who in 1889 was said to manufacture pyroligneous acid, naphtha and charcoal at the Totley Chemical Works. The works closed down soon after 1900.

The manufacture of pyroligneous acid involved the destructive, or enclosed distillation of wood. The naphtha, an inflammable gas, and charcoal were both bi-products of this process. The pyroligneous acid could be further refined by distillation into several constituents, acetic acid, methanol (wood alcohol), acetone, acetaldehyde and others. The extent of the Chemical Works as shown on the Ordnance Survey maps suggests that some further distillation did take place on the site but the range of products produced there is not known for certain. A number of small glass bottles recovered recently from the Totley Brook in the ford by the Chemical Works suggests that the small scale production of some bi-products was likely to have taken place.

The basic raw material used at the works was, of course, wood, either purchased locally or possibly from the 1880s, brought in by rail. A battery of steel retorts, each one 4 feet 2 inches in diameter and 9 feet long was probably used, each one capable of holding one cord of wood. The charcoal would have been collected in an iron box beneath each retort, and the gases collected in a copper condenser attached to each retort, the condensers being water cooled possibly with water from Totley Brook. The inflammable gases leaving the condensers could be used to supply some of the heat for the process.

N. Lawrie

Extract form an essay "Two Chemical Works" in "Essays in the history of Dore in the 19th Century" edited by Vanessa S. Doe, published by Sheffield University Extramural Department in 1977