Thirty-three of us gathered to hear Sue Hayton of the Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society (www.glias.orgk) lecture on the life of Robert Mann Lowne. The Lowne Instruments works in Lee were closed and demolished in 2002, but long-standing GLIAS member George Arthur, who had worked at Lowne's for nearly thirty years, alerted the Society, which was therefore able to make drawings, a video and many photographs of the works, and also to assist in arranging the sale of the contents.
Robert Mann Lowne was born in 1844, the son of Benjamin Thompson Lowne, a doctor at Barts. With an elder brother in medicine, Robert moved into the field of scientific instrument making, taking out his first patent, for a spirometer, in 1865. From 1872, he and his family moved to East End, Finchley, where he taught piano. Two of the four children, Robert James Mann Lowne and Benjamin Thompson Lowne, followed him into business.
By 1894, they had moved to Lewisham, where they lived at Ravenscroft, 108 Bromley Road. The Lowne Electric Clock and Appliance Company was formed in 1904, and occupied a workshop built in the garden in 1905, and a contemporary insurance policy notes the two heating stoves, five treadle- lathes, wheel-cutting engine, circular saw for case-making and a gas powered engine. The house came to embody all things electric, and Sue showed us interior photographs from the period, highlighting electric fires and lamps. From these workshops the firm carried out the installation of a 46-dial master/slave installation at the Arsenal, involving 6.5 miles of cabling, driven by Leclanché cells. A further system went into the South Metropolitan Gas Works in the Old Kent Road.
After the Great War, the firm failed to make sales, and was acquired by the Magneta Company in the 1920s, who disposed of the Ravenscroft site. The firm passed back to the family in 1926, and it moved to Boones Street off Lee High Road, its final home. Robert Mann Lowne died in 1928, but the family maintained the business, which continued in instrument making and repair, as well as clock production, moving into synchronous clocks with the advent of the National Grid.
During the Second World War, numbers at the firm expanded to their peak, at perhaps forty, and production ranged as wide as compasses hidden in buttons for an airman's tunic, to the differential gearing linking the visual and electronic parts of a Lancaster's bomb-aiming equipment. Numbers of employees tailed off after the war, but the firm continued to do precision work, and we saw illustrations of the point-counter stages made for microscopes, as well as polarising stages.Although this continued until late on, master clock manufacture ceased by the early 1950s, ending a half-century run. In 1903 The Times had recorded the fact that one of the 'most satisfactory' of electric clock systems recently to have been tested was that of RM Lowne, demonstrated at his factory. The firm claimed that it had had a seconds pendulum clock operating satisfactorily and uninterrupted for five years.
Lowne was prolific in securing patents, for in addition to those for clocks he also patented many devices, including air meters, a sympiesometer, an atmospheric engine, an electric vane for measuring airspeed, an orguinette, together with improvements to all these. A constant thread throughout production was the air-meter, used in collieries and elsewhere, examples of which were on show at the meeting.
One of the marvellous results of the GLIAS survey of the old works was the discovery of many photographs, catalogues from other firms, a lot of old documents, and many glass photographic slides, which GLIAS have now printed up. Sue displayed some of these, including amusing pictures of two 5ft dials, which may have been installed at Victoria Station, but which were captured on film at the works (including a pair of feet poking out underneath, belonging perhaps to a Lowne standing behind).
In an example of the power of the Internet, we were delighted to welcome as guests at the meeting three members of Lowne's family, who had found us as part of their genealogical research. Pleasingly this provided a further source of information for Sue Hayton. We are also extremely grateful to George Arthur for bringing along a number of examples of Lowne clocks, all working, together with part-assembled clocks. Members were able to observe the 'works master' in action, which George had rescued.
In proposing a vote of thanks, the Secretary noted the happy discovery by many of those present that GLIAS is operating and doing such marvellous work to preserve a record of such industrial history. The Group would again like to thank Sue, Daniel, George and Chris from GLIAS for an excellent lecture and exhibits, and to wish them every luck in any further Lowne research and in their admirable work.