B. Hick and Sons, subsequently Hick, Hargreaves & Co, was a British engineering company based at the Soho Ironworks in Bolton, England. Benjamin Hick, a partner in Rothwell, Hick and Rothwell, later Rothwell, Hick & Co., set up the company in partnership with two of his sons, John (1815–1894) and Benjamin Jr (1818–1845) in 1833.
Locomotives
The company's first steam locomotive Soho, named after the works was a goods type, built in 1833 for carrier John Hargreaves. In 1834 an unconventional, gear-driven four-wheeled rail carriage was conceived for Bolton solicitor and banker, Thomas Lever Rushton (1810–1883). The engine was the first 3-cylinder locomotive and its design incorporated aerodynamic turned iron wheel rims with plate discs as an alternative to conventional spokes. The 3-cylinder concept evolved into Hick's experimental horizontal boiler A 2-2-2 locomotive about 1840, adopting the principle features of the vertical boiler engine. The A design appears not to have been put into production.
More locomotives were built over the 1830s, some for export to the United
States including a Fulton for the Pontchartrain Railroad in 1834, New Orleans and Carrollton for the St. Charles Streetcar Line in New Orleans in 1835 and a second New Orleans for the same line in 1837. A 10 hp stationary engine was supplied to the Carrollton Railroad Company in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, for ironworking purposes, but damaged by fire in 1838. Two tender locomotives Potomak and Louisa were delivered to the Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad and a third, Virginia to the Raleigh and Gaston Railroad in North Carolina during 1836.
Between 1837 and 1840 the company subcontracted for Edward Bury and Company, supplying engines to the Midland Counties Railway, London and Birmingham Railway, North Union Railway, Manchester and Leeds Railway and indirectly to the Grand Crimean Central Railway via the London and North Western Railway in 1855. Engines were built for the Taff Vale Railway, Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway, Cheshire, Lancashire and Birkenhead Railway, Chester and Birkenhead Railway, Eastern Counties Railway, Liverpool and Manchester Railway, North Midland Railway, Paris and Versailles Railway and Bordeaux Railway.
In 1841 the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway successfully used American Norris locomotives on the notorious Lickey Incline and Hick built three similar locomotives for the line. Between 1844 and 1846 the firm built a number of "long boiler" locomotives with haystack fireboxes and in 1848, four s for the North Staffordshire Railway. In the same year, the company built Chester, probably the earliest known prototype of a 6-wheel coupled } goods locomotive.
Aerodynamic Disc Wheel
Benjamin Hick's wheel design was used on a number of Great Western Railway engines including what may have been the world's first streamlined locomotive; an experimental prototype, nicknamed Grasshoper, driven by Brunel at , c.1847. The 10 ft disc wheels from GWR locomotives Ajax and Hurricane were lent to convey the statue of the Duke of Wellington to Hyde Park Corner in London.
Examples using wood paneling as streamlining are applied to the 16 ft flywheel and rope races of a Hick Hargreaves and Co. 120hp non-condensing Corliss engine, Caroline installed new at Gurteen's textile manufactorary, Haverhill, Suffolk in 1879.
Disc wheels and wheel fairings have been used for armoured cars, aviation, drag racing, Land speed record attempts, Land speed racing, motor racing, motorcycle speedway, wheelchair racing, icetrack cycling, velomobiles and bicycle racing, particularly track cycling, track bikes and time trials.
Engineering drawings
Hick Hargreaves collection of early locomotive and steam engine drawings represents one of the finest of its kind in the world. The majority were produced by Benjamin Hick senior and John Hick between 1833-1855, they are of significant interest for their technical detail, fine draughtsmanship and artistic merit. The elaborate finish and harmonious colouring extends from the largest drawings for prospective customers to ordinary working drawings and records for the engineer.
Works like this influenced the contemporary illustrators of popular science and technology of the time like John Emslie (1813-1875), their aesthetic quality stems from a romantic outlook in which science and poetry were partners.
The drawings are held by Bolton Metropolitan Borough Archives and the Transport Trust, University of Surrey.