DavyMarkham - The Davy Company
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DavyMarkham DavyMarkham traces its origins back to the Sheffield firm of Davy Brothers and the Chesterfield based company of Markham & Co Ltd.
David and Dennis Davy started their business in 1830 in the Lady's Bridge area of the city. Their early engineering successes included the building of the first Sheffield-London railway locomotive, but the company operated on a modest scale until 1851. It was then that they acquired the Park Iron Works at Norfolk Bridge, and with it a foundry capable of making castings as large as any attempted in those days.
Perhaps unwittingly, David and Dennis had embarked on a meteoric business path. In that third quarter of the nineteenth century, three-quarters of Europe's steelmaking capacity lay within ten miles of their doorstep. Davy's was soon the machine-builder of choice for the great firms that surrounded it. Every year brought technical challenges beyond anything that had been tried before, and the brothers' destiny had become to build the biggest machines they dared.
At that time, Davy's reputation was built primarily on steam-driven equipment, particularly forging presses, and on steam engines themselves. Europe's largest working engine, the 12000HP River Don Engine, was supplied by Davy in 1905, along with the plate mill it drove for Cammell's at Grimesthorpe - a mill wider than any operating in Britain today.
The business soon outgrew the confined workshops at Park, and the Darnall shops (DavyMarkham’s home) were built in 1921. The modern name of Davy, centred on its rolling mill business, thrived in the years that followed. The engineering sectors served became more diverse, including manufacturing for prestige projects such as the Jodrell Bank radio telescope and the Thames Barrier, as well as mills of every type on every continent.
The design and project management legacy of Davy is today spread worldwide. In an age of global contracting, many important firms can claim a slice of it. Here at DavyMarkham, though, we like to remember that David and Dennis thought of themselves as machine-builders first and foremost. They also prided themselves on an ability to take on anything.
That's what DavyMarkham still do, and we're the unique inheritors of the manufacturing assets that Davy built. It's a proud history, and it preserves the spirit of one of Sheffield's most famous firms.
Davy's History Information reproduced with the kind permission of Mick Steeper of Siemens VAI (UK)
David and Dennis Davy started their business in 1830 in the Lady's Bridge area of the city. Their early engineering successes included the building of the first Sheffield-London railway locomotive, but the company operated on a modest scale until 1851. It was then that they acquired the Park Iron Works at Norfolk Bridge, and with it a foundry capable of making castings as large as any attempted in those days.
Perhaps unwittingly, David and Dennis had embarked on a meteoric business path. In that third quarter of the nineteenth century, three-quarters of Europe's steelmaking capacity lay within ten miles of their doorstep. Davy's was soon the machine-builder of choice for the great firms that surrounded it. Every year brought technical challenges beyond anything that had been tried before, and the brothers' destiny had become to build the biggest machines they dared.
At that time, Davy's reputation was built primarily on steam-driven equipment, particularly forging presses, and on steam engines themselves. Europe's largest working engine, the 12000HP River Don Engine, was supplied by Davy in 1905, along with the plate mill it drove for Cammell's at Grimesthorpe - a mill wider than any operating in Britain today.
The business soon outgrew the confined workshops at Park, and the Darnall shops (DavyMarkham’s home) were built in 1921. The modern name of Davy, centred on its rolling mill business, thrived in the years that followed. The engineering sectors served became more diverse, including manufacturing for prestige projects such as the Jodrell Bank radio telescope and the Thames Barrier, as well as mills of every type on every continent.
The design and project management legacy of Davy is today spread worldwide. In an age of global contracting, many important firms can claim a slice of it. Here at DavyMarkham, though, we like to remember that David and Dennis thought of themselves as machine-builders first and foremost. They also prided themselves on an ability to take on anything.
That's what DavyMarkham still do, and we're the unique inheritors of the manufacturing assets that Davy built. It's a proud history, and it preserves the spirit of one of Sheffield's most famous firms.
Davy's History Information reproduced with the kind permission of Mick Steeper of Siemens VAI (UK)
