{"id":15137,"date":"2025-02-07T12:15:16","date_gmt":"2025-02-07T11:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?p=15137"},"modified":"2025-02-07T17:59:36","modified_gmt":"2025-02-07T16:59:36","slug":"15137","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?p=15137","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating Three Engineers At Berwyn"},"content":{"rendered":"
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CELEBRATING THREE ENGINEERS AT BERWYN NEAR LLANGOLLEN
\nRichard Roberts, Charles Bayer and Henry Robertson
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On the 18 November 2024 a celebration of a Welsh, German and Scottish engineering circle, with local connections, took place with the unveiling of a plaque. The setting was Berwyn station (opened 1865) on the Llangollen Railway where Station Master Ben Jackson welcomed the special train from Llangollen station. The audience were warned that the handover address could potentially be three times as long as normal as this was about three engineers celebrated on ICE Wales Cymru\u2019s first trilingual plaque!<\/p>\n

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Three engineers \u00a0a Welshman Richard Roberts (1789-1864), a Scotsman Henry Robertson (1816\u20131888) and a German Charles Beyer (1813-1876) who would become partners at some point in their careers, were connected to the locality and railways and locomotives. Richard Roberts was born at Llanymynech, Powys, close to the English border, some twenty miles away from Berwyn. During his early working life, he worked as a patternmaker and is remembered today as an engineer in the field of high precision machine tools who made a major contribution to production engineering and mass production. A prolific inventor, his automatic spinning mule of 1824 was mass produced by his company; Sharp, Roberts & Co., which would later build locomotives designed by Charles Frederick Beyer or Carl Friedrich Beyer, as he was christened. Beyer was a celebrated German-British locomotive designer and builder who is buried just a stone\u2019s throw away, in Llantysilio churchyard. His house; Llantysilio Hall, was completed a few years before his death in 1874. He cofounded and was head designer and engineer of Beyer, Peacock & Co., the famous locomotive works at Gorton in Manchester established in 1854. Locomotive manufacturing continued up to the late 1950s. In 1966, after 112 years of operation, all production ceased with the company building nearly 8,000 locomotives. One built in 1856 for the Royal Swedish Railways, \u2018Prins August\u2019 is claimed to be the oldest working steam locomotive in original condition in the world.<\/p>\n

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Initially this partnership, with Richard Peacock, ran into funding problems bringing the famous contractor Thomas Brassey into the picture. Brassey persuaded Henry Robertson to become a sleeping partner in the venture. Henry Robertson was born at Banff, Scotland, he went to Aberdeen University taking up mining engineering but later concentrating on railway engineering. Sent in 1842 to report on mineral properties at Brymbo, he revived the Brymbo Ironworks and promoted the North Wales Mineral Railway which he would engineer with Thomas Brassey as contractor. Then the Chester to Shrewsbury line, with the Dee and Ceiriog viaducts, followed by the line from Ruabon to Llangollen, Corwen and Bala. At Brymbo he oversaw the changeover to steel production in 1884 as well as being an MP. In 1871, he built Pal\u00e9 Hall, a grand house eighteen miles away, where he passed away in 1888. The Llangollen Railway has a function room named in his honour at Llangollen Station.<\/p>\n

Just a few years before the 1860 Act for this railway was obtained, the poet laureate; Alfred Lord Tennyson, was staying at Llangollen. It therefore seemed appropriate to incorporate part of a line from Locksley Hall as a railway motif and to acknowledge Richard Robert\u2019s automatic spinning mule; \u2018Let the great world spin for ever \u2026\u2019<\/p>\n

Stephen K. Jones<\/p>\n

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CELEBRATING THREE ENGINEERS AT BERWYN NEAR LLANGOLLEN Richard Roberts, Charles Bayer and Henry Robertson On the 18 November 2024 a celebration of a Welsh, German and Scottish engineering circle, with local connections, took place with the unveiling of a plaque. The setting was Berwyn station (opened 1865) on the Llangollen Railway where Station Master Ben Jackson welcomed the special train […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[334],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6cWjO-15137","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":16581,"url":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?p=16581","url_meta":{"origin":15137,"position":0},"title":"The Shepherd and the Songbird","author":"Alan Williams","date":"29th January 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"ARTICLES of GENERAL INTEREST THE SHEPHERD AND THE SONGBIRD Synopsis This story unfolds across two timelines. The present day is set in New York, where one of the protagonists - a world\u2011famous opera diva - hosts a dinner party. The past takes place in mid\u2011rural Wales, near Lake Vyrnwy, where\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General Interest Articles"","block_context":{"text":"General Interest Articles","link":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?cat=334"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12857,"url":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?p=12857","url_meta":{"origin":15137,"position":1},"title":"Place-Names Derivation – LLAN","author":"Alan Williams","date":"1st February 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"THE DERIVATION AND MEANING OF PLACE-NAMES We\u2019ll now look at some common elements in Welsh Place-names. LLAN The most common element by far in Welsh place-names is the word \u2018llan\u2019. If you were to look at a book of place-names, you would see that there are over 400 places in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General Interest Articles"","block_context":{"text":"General Interest Articles","link":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?cat=334"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1413,"url":"http:\/\/wenvoe.org.uk\/?p=1413","url_meta":{"origin":15137,"position":2},"title":"Offa’s Dyke","author":"Alan Williams","date":"1st November 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"WHO WAS KING OFFA AND WHAT WAS HIS DYKE FOR? You have probably heard about Offa\u2019s Dyke \u2013 but do you know who King Offa was and why he had a dyke built? 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