Long before Manchester became better known for buses, railways and heavy engineering, the city was also home to a significant motor industry. Among its most important manufacturers was Belsize Motors Ltd, based at the Belsize Works in Clayton. At its height, Belsize was Manchester’s largest home-grown car manufacturer and employed well over a thousand people (Science Museum Group, n.d.; Science and Industry Museum, 2018).
The company’s origins can be traced to Marshall & Company, established in 1896. Its first motor car is believed to have been completed at Clayton in 1897 and has been described as the earliest known car manufactured in Manchester. The firm initially sold its cars under the Marshall name, but in 1901 introduced the name Belsize, taken from the Belsize Works in which it operated. As the business expanded, Marshall & Company became the Belsize Motor and Engineering Company in 1903 and, following another reorganisation, Belsize Motors Ltd in 1906 (Oxford Archaeology North, 2011; Science Museum Group, n.d.).
Belsize was by no means a tiny specialist concern. Before the First World War the Clayton factory was producing cars, taxis, commercial vehicles and even fire engines. Archaeological research into the site records a workforce of around 1,200 people and production of as many as 50 vehicles a week, while other contemporary figures place employment at around 1,500 by 1914 (Oxford Archaeology North, 2011; Science Museum Group, n.d.). In an era when Manchester supported several motor manufacturers, including Crossley, Belsize was regarded as the city’s largest indigenous car maker (Science and Industry Museum, 2018).
The First World War transformed the work undertaken at factories across Manchester, and Belsize was no exception. A remarkable photograph held by Manchester Libraries shows a group of women munitions workers at Belsize Works in 1918. Like thousands of women elsewhere, these workers entered industries previously dominated by men as production was redirected towards the national war effort (Manchester Libraries, 1918).
The photograph also puts human faces to a period of enormous social change. Women’s wartime employment in engineering and munitions became essential as men joined the armed forces, although this did not necessarily bring equal wages or permanent equality in the workplace.
After the war, Belsize returned to civilian vehicle production. A contemporary advertisement in the 9 November 1921 edition of The Motor promoted the company at that year’s Olympia Motor Show. It advertised its 15–20 hp four-seater and two-seater cars alongside the smaller Belsize “Nine”, and proudly gave the manufacturer’s address simply as “Belsize Motors, Ltd., Clayton, Manchester” (The Motor, 1921). A trade report from the previous year provides the more precise address of Clayton Lane, Manchester (The Commercial Motor, 1920).
The 1921 advert captures Belsize at an interesting moment. The company was attempting to broaden its range with the Belsize-Bradshaw, or “Nine”, a relatively small light car with an unusual engine which used both air and oil cooling. It was innovative, but proved troublesome and was withdrawn in 1924 (Science Museum Group, n.d.).
Behind this commercial activity lay a factory which had grown enormously. Comparison of Ordnance Survey mapping shows that the Belsize Works had expanded to approximately three times its 1908 size by 1922 (Oxford Archaeology North, 2011). The works stood on the north-western side of Clayton Lane, on land which was later absorbed into the enormous Clayton Aniline industrial complex. Today, the former Belsize site lies within the area redeveloped as part of Manchester City’s football academy campus, meaning there is little on the modern landscape to suggest that motor cars were once being produced there in considerable numbers.
The expansion was not enough to secure the company’s long-term future. British motor manufacture was changing rapidly during the 1920s, with increasingly efficient mass-production methods favouring larger manufacturers. Belsize entered receivership in 1923 and finally ceased trading in 1925. The former works subsequently passed to other engineering concerns and were eventually incorporated into Clayton Aniline Works (Science Museum Group, n.d.; Oxford Archaeology North, 2011).
Belsize Motors survived for less than three decades, but its history is a fascinating piece of Clayton’s industrial heritage. From one of the city’s earliest motor cars in 1897, through mass employment and wartime munitions work, to the elegant cars advertised at Olympia in 1921, Belsize demonstrates just how diverse Manchester’s manufacturing economy once was.