Photo: Copyright by Julia Clegg. Reproduced with Permission of Artist
wool spinner. He started his own business at the age of twenty-one, buying waste liquors from the local gas works. He distilled
ammonia at Tanfield Road, off Leeds Road, Huddersfield and sold it to textile mills for wool scouring. An early sign of his
ingenuity was blending unwanted coal tar with cinders to use as fuel for the ammonia stills.
The growth of the business, along with fume complaints from neighbors, caused Holliday to move the works to Turnbridge,
adjacent to the Canal, in 1839. Lacking formal training in chemistry, he read technical publications and applied what he learned
to expand the product range. He produced ammonia salts, washing powder, soda ash, Epsom salts and dye products including
Prussian blue. In 1845 he commenced distilling coal tar, becoming the biggest distiller in the north of England by 1860. He
received a patent for an improved naphtha lamp and the “Holliday Peerless Lamp” became widely used. Sales of naphtha for
lamps and creosote and pitch for coal-brick (briquette) makers were highly successful. He now had plants at six other northern
sites as well as one in Bromley-By-Bow in London and a warehouse at Holburn Hill in London.
The Holliday family was also expanding; Read and his wife Emma had five sons (Thomas, Charles, John, Edgar and Robert) and
three daughters (Eliza, Edith and Betsy). When Eliza died at the age of nine, Holliday became concerned about the environmental
conditions of the Turnbridge area and built a new home in the countryside of Edgerton in 1853-54. The palatial family residence,
with 34 rooms, was known as Lunn Clough Hall.
Holliday was fined on several occasions by Huddersfield authorities because of neighborhood complaints about fumes and
smoke from the coal tar distillery. The most offensive operations were moved further from residences, nearer to the River Colne
on the boundary of Dalton, but still within the Turnbridge site. The stills were redesigned and fume controls implemented. These
steps allowed Holliday to stay in business. But the dangers of handling flammable products continued, as evidenced by a fire in
1859 which severely damaged the plant.
William H. Perkin had prepared mauve, the first synthetic dye, from coal tar chemicals in 1856. Perkin built a dye factory near
London in 1857. This must have inspired Holliday to become involved in the new industry of aniline dyes and he began the
manufacture of the purple-red dye magenta in 1860. Already by 1861 he was offering violet, red, and blue dyes for sale. Patents
were granted in 1863 for blue colours obtained by heating aniline, rosaniline and benzoic acid together; in 1865 for violet and blue
colours obtained by treating a salt of aniline with nitro benzole; and in 1866 for purifying green and blue colours obtained from
rosaniline by the iodides of alcohol radicals. In one of the first legal cases involving infringement of a dye patent, Read Holliday
was vindicated in 1865 of a charge that he violated the patent of a competitor to produce magenta by the arsenic acid process.
However the cost of litigation was very high for the fledgling dye manufacturer.
The Holliday family had become the first producers of aniline and aniline dyes in the U.S.A. when sons Charles and Thomas
Holliday set up a factory in Brooklyn in 1864 (click here for details). The decision to start a branch in America reflects the bold
vision Read Holliday had for the growth of the dye business.
Thomas Holliday was particularly inventive in the dye field; his name was on twenty-nine British patents during 1863-1898.
Charles Holliday had seven patents during 1867-1884 dealing with textile dyeing methods and the design of dyeing equipment.
Read Holliday continued his own experiments and received his fifth patent in 1867, for a process to remove grease and tar from
wool with the solvent naphtha. He retired in 1868 when his firm was England’s leading chemical manufacturer and the first
international manufacturer of synthetic dyes. He turned the business over to his very capable sons Thomas, Charles and Edgar.
The firm was now called Read Holliday & Sons. By 1881 Read had moved from Edgerton to Harrogate, with Thomas and his wife
living in Lunn Clough Hall. Read became interested in home construction and he built most of Queen’s Road in Harrogate.
These houses today sell for about £250,000 each. Read Holliday died in 1889 at the age of eighty.
In 1880 Robert Holliday patented a new dyeing process, known as azoic, which laid the foundation of the 20th century
dyeing/printing industry (British Patent no. 2,757). This process formed the dye directly in the fiber, resulting in good wash-
fastness properties. For example a bluish-red dye was formed when diazotised beta-naphthylamine was coupled to beta-
naphthol, which was impregnated in the cotton fiber by an alkaline solution. Robert Holliday was vacationing in France when
news of the patent arrived, so the new dye was named Vacanceine Red, after the French word “vacance” for holiday. But the firm
failed to develop this product range and leadership in the fast growing azoic field eventually went to the Germans.
The firm employed 145 men and 6 boys in 1881. In 1890 Read Holliday & Sons was converted into a private limited company with
Thomas Holliday as Chairman and Managing Director. The American business was also incorporated in the same year with
Edgar Holliday as President. Edgar died in 1891 and Thomas died in 1897. Robert Holliday became Chairman in 1897. The firm
was near bankruptcy by 1899 because of competition from lower priced German dye manufacturers. Profits in the New York
branch were also falling. However in the same year the Boer War started and the War Office granted a large contract to the firm in
order to make picric acid for explosives. The picric acid plant was built on the far side of the River Colne away from the rest of the
Turnbridge works. In 1900 there was a huge explosion and fire at the new plant.
The Chairman of the firm in 1901 was Joseph Turner, who began working at the Turnbridge works at the age of twelve. In that
same year, Lionel Brook Holliday, son of Thomas Holliday, joined the Board of Directors. In 1904-05 sales of dyes for Japanese
Army blankets were very profitable. Sodium thiosulphate was sold to German customers under the trade name “Fastogene” for
making certain direct dyes retain light-fastness when the cotton fabric was washed.
The onset of World War I in August 1914 forced Read Holliday & Sons to concentrate on explosives manufacture. By 1915 the
shortage of explosives in Britain was a matter of grave concern. Lionel B. Holliday was recalled from France, where he was a
Major in the Army (West Riding Regiment). He was one of the few British technical men with knowledge of picric acid
manufacture. On his return, he became responsible for a Government plant producing picric acid at Bradley. By the end of 1915
the plant was producing 100 tons of picric acid a week.
Meanwhile British Dyes Ltd. was formed by the takeover by the Government in 1915 of Read Holliday & Sons. The Turnbridge
works also produced TNT (11 million pounds), detonator compounds and picric acid during World War I. Major Lionel B. Holliday
was not asked to join British Dyes. But he received a £10,000 share of the money from the takeover and bought some land in
Deighton, next door to the picric acid works he was running at Bradley. On this 30-acre site in Deighton, which was the former
Huddersfield racecourse, he setup in 1916 the manufacture of dyes under the name of L. B. Holliday and Co. Ltd.
In 1917 Major Holliday acquired a large number of German-owned British dye patents which were under Government control. By
1918 L. B. Holliday and Co. had 20 dyes in the line and was producing 50 tons of dye a month with a workforce of 20 men. Major
Holliday recruited many of the workers, customers and processes which had previously been at Read Holliday & Sons, and this
caused lasting friction between his company and British Dyes.
British Dyes acquired a site at Dalton and so became neighbours of Major Holliday's Deighton works. The new dye works built at
Dalton had severe startup problems. In 1919 British Dyes of Huddersfield merged with Levenstein Ltd. in Blackley to form the
British Dyestuffs Corporation, which later became ICI. The Dalton Works’ problems were gradually resolved and the site became
an important part of the ICI dye business.
L. B. Holliday and Co. prospered under the leadership of Major Holliday. A Canadian branch office and warehouse were
established in Montreal in 1920.
Following World War II, the Major took advantage of import barriers to expand the business. In the late 1950s there were between
800-900 employees on the Leeds Road site.
Major Holliday was well known as an owner and breeder of racehorses. He had his first winner in 1918 but his greatest success
as a breeder came after World War II. His horse “Narrator” won the Champion Stakes in 1954 and “Hethersett” won the St. Leger
in 1962. He chalked up over 800 winners. He was not a betting man and never put any money on his horses. He died in 1966 at
the age of 85.
A team of shire horses was used for internal transport at the plant and their handlers proudly decked them out each May Day. The
shires were stabled at Colne Bridge and were used at the company until 1967.
Over the years the company built a reputation for the quality of their dyes and chemical intermediates. Some of these were based
on anthraquinone and naphthalene. The varied molecular structures required many types of batch reactions such as chlorination,
sulphonation, nitration, cyanation, amination and diazotization.
In 1970 a new azo plant was built at a cost of £2 million. By the late 1970s, the firm had grown to become the largest privately-
owned dye manufacturer in the world. The firm was an innovator in the production of fluorescent colourings (optical brighteners)
for safety wear and dyes for emergency flares and smoke colouration. The company pursued high technology products with more
profitable niche markets than commodity dyes. There was a broad range of specialty dyes for the ink industry, including high
purity direct dyes for fountain pen inks, acid and basic dye complexes for ballpoint pen inks and disperse dyes for transfer printing
inks. The research director at this time was Dr. C. E. Vellins.
Heat transfer dyes were introduced for printing applications in the fast growing polyester, nylon and acrylic markets. The product
line was known as SUBLAPRINT which refers to the sublimation process for transferring the color to the substrate. Holliday had
the largest range of uncut disperse dyes for the printing ink market, including letterpress, lithography, flexography, gravure and
serigraphy (screen printing). They were a fierce competitor of the larger dye makers such as ICI and Bayer.
A new manufacturing unit was built for basic dyes such as rhodamines. After laking with tannic acid, these dye complexes were
used in making flexographic inks for comics and paper wrappers where good light-fastness was not a concern. The dyes also
had applications in glycol based ballpoint pen inks, coloured drawing inks and stamp pad inks. Water soluble dyes, made for
textile application, were adapted for aqueous based printing and stationery inks. Certain acid and direct dyes, with low salt
content, were developed for felt-tipped and roller ball pen inks, as well as for security printing inks for cheques.
But Holliday was still very dependent upon dyes for the textile market. The boom in synthetic fibres in the late 1970s resulted in
many dye companies expanding capacity, lowering prices and profits. The company was sold to Terry Brain, a Jersey-based
businessman, in 1982 when the name was changed to Holliday Dyes and Chemicals Ltd. (HDC). In 1987 the company was
bought out by a management team led by chairman Dr. Mike Peagram. He expanded the business, now known as Holliday
Chemical Holdings (HCH), to make specialty chemicals in the UK, France and Spain before placing the company on the stock
market in 1993.
A violent explosion rocked the plant and the surrounding neighborhood in June 1996. A diazo was being produced in a glass-
lined vessel in order to form a phenol. The reaction had been conducted hundreds of times before without incident. But this time
a runaway reaction, the violent decomposition of the diazo, resulted in over pressurisation of the vessel. The vessel lid and head
gear were blown off, with the lid travelling 150 meters before smashing into an office wall. By sheer chance the incident
happened 9:30 AM on a Sunday morning when site activities were at a minimum and no one was injured. A thorough
investigation was conducted and the unit was rebuilt with added safety features including computerised control of the process.
The total cost of the accident and the new construction was estimated at £2.7 million.
Yule Catto, the Essex-based chemicals group, purchased the company in 1997 for £225 million when it employed 500 people in
Huddersfield and 1,500 worldwide.
Dye production in both Europe and the United States gradually shifted to lower cost producers in India and China. Textile
production also shifted to the Far East. The Holliday Dyes and Chemicals Works was closed in early 2001 with the loss of 162
jobs.
Artist Julia Clegg, of Milnsbridge, has documented the demise of this historic site with her own photographs, testimonies of
former employees, and by a series of 17 screenprints. Her interest was peaked by driving by the site and noticing how striking the
idle buildings and machinery looked in the evening sunlight. She researched the history of the firm and got permission to
photograph the mix of old and new buildings on the site.
Clegg has captured the complex nature of the plant throughout its occupancy on Leeds Road and the consequent transformation
of the site through demolition and the commencement of new building “for another boring business park”. She used images
form the photographs and company documents to create the screenprints, colouring them with shades she noticed on site.
The images are a stirring reminder of the loss to the area of this landmark and the end of an era for the locality and former
employees. An exhibition of Clegg’s work, titled “Bismarck Brown” and supported by an Arts Council England Lottery Grant, was
held in February 2005 at the West Yorkshire Print Workshop on Huddersfield Road.
with permission of the artist. Click on images to enlarge.
to be there until I was 65. If you kept your nose clean in those days, you could; but management styles changed and so did the
work. I took my redundancy in ‘99.
I really enjoyed it under the Holliday regime but in 1982 the firm went into receivership and that was the end of an era”.
David Pollard, Electrician.
“I began work there in 1957, my first job. There were about 800-900 employees then. It seemed a dirty and hazardous place when I
started - the mind boggles at some of the things we did at the time in the labs! But if you had initiative and push you could get on.
There was encouragement to experiment and try new things.
I spent all my working life there. Even though I secured other posts, I never took them up. Many others were the same. The most
exciting times were when we bought out new products - in fluorescents and smoke dyes we were world leaders. Now all that has
gone to India. When we made Bismarck Brown in the ‘80’s, it was for cardboard colouring.” John Walker, Labs and Production
Manager.
“I was 18 when I started there in l956 in the labs. I became a production chemist. Product Manager, and finally Audit Manager for
Health and Safety. I left in ‘99.
I enjoyed working there, and made many friends over the years. In 1976 I got involved with the production of acrylic dyestuffs. They
started with a deep vivid purpley red; eventually they were making over a dozen such dyes.” Tony Wilcox.
“I started as a lab assistant in 1964 and progressed to chemist by ‘76. I ran three production units in the ‘70’s and became a
project chemist, helping install new plant. Eventually I became Production Planning manager. In the early ‘90’s the
computerisation was updated to include all stock, all dye recipes, sales, export, finances, costings and production plant. We
started looking at systems in ‘91 and by ‘95 we were actually implementing after trialing, so that be the end of that year the entire
site was on line. So that was the end of the specialist holding his own knowledge as an isolated expert. By the late ‘90’s all the
“knowledge” was networked throughout the plant." Dennis Lowery.
"I actually worked as an apprentice electrician at L B Hollidays for a year in (approx) 1972. It put me off electricity for life. Apart from
the new Azo plant the rest of the site was on its way to being derelict, especially Z Block where they made the Picric Acid. Whole
buildings could become "live" and I had plenty of shocks whilst working on the site. There were also explosions and I saw one
man carried out of there, dead (heart attack I think).
After working in some of the colour sheds you would take a shower after work and then go to sleep in your bed at night and in the
morning your bed linen was multi coloured!
I have vague recollections of electrician David Pollard and, if my memory is correct, the electricians foreman was called Maurice.
Memories, memories." Peter Piwowarski
"When I left Hillhouse Central School in early July 1946, aged 14 years 8 months, I did not really know what sort of a career I wished
to undertake apart from possibly a career involving chemistry. With my birthday falling on November 4th, the day before Guy Fawkes
day, I became interested in pyrotechnics, more so when I had a chemistry set bought for my birthday the previous year. I played with
the set in the cellar of our home on Woodhouse Grove, Fartown, on one occasion my experiments produced hydrogen sulphide
(bad egg gas ), this quickly broke up the game of cards my mother was enjoying upstairs with her friends !. Back to 1946, my
parents suggested that I should apply to one of the nearby local firms for a job. Holliday’s or ICI. It was decided that LBs would be
the better option as two former Air Raid Warden colleagues of my father who lived across the field on Red Doles Road, suggested
that I would receive a wider all round training at the firm where they worked. The ex wardens were Mr. West -Jones the foreman
plumber and Fred Belbin the foreman fitter. An interview was soon arranged with Mr. Benjamin Oliver Schofield and took place at
his home on Bradley Road. Ben Schofield was the works manager, and previously an intermediates chemist, and in his youth had
attended my old school, which I believe was then Hillhouse Higher Elementary School, then a mixed school which my mother, then
Dorothy Hoyle had attended about the same time. I was duly accepted and it was arranged that I would start fairly soon.
I started in fact, still in July, the week before the Huddersfield Engineers holiday week. I reported to the Police hut on Leeds Road to
see my first boss, Mr. Fred Montgomery, on the same day as another youngster, Harold Blackburn was arriving to work for Mr.
George Keir, an Azo chemist. It turned out that both of them were already on holiday so I was taken to number 10 Laboratory to be
greeted by Mr. Montgomery’s assistant, Donald Cutts. Harold was also started in the same lab which was shared by the two
departments. At that time Ben Schofield still had his office in the lab and adjacently, up the stairs, were the laundry and lab stores.
Mr. Keir’s predecessor was James Herbert Wilson, known as “Azo Wilson”, who parted company with Hollidays in 1930. He was
the father of future Prime Minister Harold Wilson. German prisoners of war were still working in the Azo plant over a year after the
war had ended.
My starting pay was 17/6d plus a half crown bonus, the bonus was liable to be docked for bad timekeeping or for breaking too
much apparatus. The lab boys started work at 8.30 when they had to collect a bucket of ice and begin testing the samples from the
works before the chemists and senior staff arrived at 9.00. We soon learned from the other lads how to make a simple compound
which was liable to explode on contact, when small traces of the unexploded crystals were left on the shelves we were soon in
bother when the cleaners were greeted with a bang when putting things on the shelf.
As the weeks went on I began to do simple experiments, at this time it was customary for each department to carry out their own.
One particular day I was carrying out a reaction involving sodium sulphide when some of the contents were ejected and into my
face and one of my eyes. Fortunately for me Mr. Montgomery immediately got me under a tap and flushed it off before any serious
damage was caused by the caustic solution. After medical treatment I had to wear an eye patch for a few days. (The following
Saturday I played as usual for Huddersfield Chess Club and made a point of quickly aiming for a draw.)
On one side of the shed was a long row of wooden tubs with agitators driven by a long line shaft, each tub was connected to the
line by a leather belt onto a pair of pulleys, one fixed and one loose,. To stop the stirring the belt was moved by a device onto the
loose pulley and vice versa. When the process had been completed in that particular unit and the product precipitated, it would be
filtered out usually through a press or sometimes a box filter. The material in the press would be freed of most of the liquid content
by means of compressed air whereas box filters were operated by vacuum with the filtrate being drawn into a receiver. The filter
was then emptied by shovels into wooden casks before being taken to the next stage. For some products the filter cake still
contained too much liquor and to remove this the casks were taken by horse and cart to the hydraulic presses in no. 2 shed. Here
the cake was shoveled into filter cloths and wrapped up into a series of small parcels then laid on top of one another on a series of
metal plates up to about 6 feet high. The hydraulic press would then be closed and a ram driven by compressed air pressed down
onto the pile to squeeze out further liquor.
Other processes were carried out in cast iron jacketed pans, with the internal temperature being controlled, by passing either water
or steam through the jacket. These vessels were mainly used for sulphonation, where a high temperature was needed and
nitrations where low temperatures were usual. (In the forties LBs still had there own railway siding where the bulk of liquid
chemicals such as acids and caustic liquor arrived in rail tankers. Adjacent to the sidings was the acid store where the chemicals
were run off into smaller vessels such as 40 gallon drums or glass carboys holding 10 gallons. The carboys were located in metal
frames and held in place by straw.)
Reverting to the processing, where the contents of carboys could be added fairly quickly two (usually) men would simply lift it and
pour it in. Where a more controlled addition was required the carboy was placed on a table adjacent to the vessel and siphoned in.
For Nitric Acid a lead siphon was employed, as for instance was the case when carrying out a nitration in no. 59 or 60 pan.
Occasionly the labourer would be given a hand by the assistant chemist who happened to be supervising the process. On one
memorable occasion I was helping to lift a carboy of nitric acid up the stairs to 59 & 60 pans when the carboy broke and splashed
down my trousers, a quick dash to the nearest tap and a drenching with water saved me from serious injury. Equally dangerous
could be transferring the contents of drums into vessels. A piece of equipment, the blow boss, was screwed into the bung hole of
the drum and compressed air applied to deliver the liquid, usually acid through a pipe into the vessel. If the threads became worn
and the boss was not properly sealed acid could be sprayed about around the drum with consequent risk of burning or worse to
the operative.
Early in my career I invested in a bicycle. I think it was from Wileys on Trinity St. paid for on the “never never”. Although we only had
45 minutes for lunch I was able to slip home to Fartown along the canal bank. At this time there were very few cars and a lot of
people came to work by bike. Where the car park was situated in later years there was a cycle shed which probably held about a
100 bikes.
One memory of my teenage years at Hollidays was going by train to Blackpool with the rest of the factory where Major Holliday
entertained us all to a meal at the Winter Gardens to celebrate the 21st birthday of his son Lionel Brook Holliday. (A photograph of
the occasion , together with other memorabilia of my early years was unfortunately lost when my scrap book was loaned out and
never recovered.)"
1) Jim Appleby, "Bradford men who lived and dyed for the fashion world", Telegraph & Argus News,
http://www.thisisbradford.co.uk/bradford__district/bradford/news/jim28.html, accessed February 17, 2006
2) "Special dyes for inks", Ink & Print, Autumn 1990
3) Henry Zientek, "Well-known company to shut with the loss of 162 jobs", Huddersfield Daily Examiner, November 10, 2000,
http://www.ichuddersfield.icnetwork.co.uk
4) "The dye is cast for sad closure", Huddersfield Daily Examiner, Feb. 9, 2001
5) Jenny Parkin, "Colour of dye firm inspires artist", Huddersfield Daily Examiner, Mar. 13, 2004
6) "Exhibition in a very appropriate place", Huddersfield Daily Examiner, Feb. 11, 2005
7) "Chemistry links?", Huddersfield Daily Examiner, Nov. 14, 2005
8) "Huddersfield: Industrial heartland", Huddersfield Daily Examiner, Nov. 14, 2005
9) "Yorkshire Racing People-Lionel & Brook Holliday", www.yorkshire-racing.co.uk
10) http://www.huddersfield1.co.uk/huddersfield/huddstrivia3.htm
11) S. P. Waldram and S. Pardington, "Runaway Reaction During Production of an Azo Dye Intermediate", 2001;
http://www.safetynet.de/Seiten/2ndSymposium/waldram.pdf
12) "L. B. Holliday & Co. Establish Branch In Canada", American Dyestuff Reporter, Vol. 6, No. 8, February 23, 1920, p. 13
13) Maurice R. Fox, Dye-Makers of Great Britain 1856-1976, Imperial Chemical Industries PLC, Manchester, 1987
14) Thomas Jackson, personal communication, March 1, 2006
15) Robert Swan, personal communication, March 6, 2006
16) "No bet", The Gleaner (Kingston, Jamaica), January 6, 1966
ColorantsHistory.Org thanks Julia Clegg for supplying key information, photographs and artwork used in this history. We are
grateful to Robert Swan for sharing his work experiences at Holliday and to Thomas Jackson for researching the company
history.
Read Holliday Site in Far Left Background Amongst Smokestacks. Click to Enlarge
 |  |  |  |  |  |
