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On the 153rd anniversary of her passing, our local Victorian pioneer correspondent Angus Young takes a look at the remarkable life of engineer Christiana Rose.
It’s 1833, the industrial revolution is in full swing in Britain and a ground-breaking Hull woman you have probably never heard of is running her own heavy engineering business. Christiana Rose doesn’t feature in many histories of an era when hand production methods were replaced by machines yet her legacy still lives on. Not only does the factory site where she was based still exist but it also remains home to the manufacturing company which bears her name – RoseDowns.

The story starts in 1777 when John Todd establishes a foundry on what became known as Cannon Street. The street’s name was a nod to the iron cannons being cast in the foundry, initially for privateers in their adventures during the French Revolution and then for the British military during the Napoleonic Wars, including at the pivotal Battle of Waterloo. With the nearest major foundry in York, Todd’s business flourished thanks to its proximity to the port. Along with cannons, it also supplied other fittings as a ship chandlery and mechanical parts for windmills.
In 1803 an engineer Duncan Campbell became a partner in the company. He was a former pupil of the famous civil engineer John Smeaton, who designed lighthouses, canals and bridges. Campbell would bring his own flair for innovation to the business by developing the manufacture of specialist iron presses for Hull’s booming seed-crushing industry. The hydraulic presses were used to extract oil from seeds with the process creating lubricant for industrial mechanisation as well as an ingredient for animal foodstuffs.

On John Todd’s retirement in 1824 he became sole proprietor and was still alone in charge of the firm when he died nine years later. In his will, ownership of the company was passed to his daughter Christiana who had married local seafarer Captain John Rose in 1818. There is no evidence to suggest Christiana had any active dealings with the business before her father’s death. However we do know the couple had a daughter who would have been just ten-years-old when her mother took control of the foundry.
Now in charge of a male workforce and operating in a new industrial world dominated by men, Christiana must have been almost unique in her time. In fact, she continued her late father’s progressive approach by not only overseeing the design of more specialist products but also the development of exports around the world including overseeing an order for equipment to be used in the first hydraulic oil mill in China.
By 1841 Christiana was a widow but remained at the helm of the company as it combined iron and brass foundry work with the manufacture of steam engines and boilers. Her hands-on nature was underlined by the fact that every hydraulic press which left the factory bore the name “C. Rose” in its cast while each indenture certificate issued to a new apprentice also carried her name and described her as “iron founder and engineer.”
Records show the company expanded under ownership. In 1851 it employed 50 men and by 1861 the workforce had grown to 88 men and 13 boys. At its peak under her leadership, the company was manufacturing and installing a new double press every week.

In the late 1860s she commissioned the construction of a large two-storey brick workshop which was used for over a century. It still stands today, a rare example of a surviving industrial building from that era. In 1871 she ended her long sole ownership of the company by offering a partnership to James Downs, who she had employed as foundry manager in 1859. As a result, the name “Rose & Downs” was officially adopted. It was to be her last significant decision involving the business which she had overseen for just nearly 40 years as she died shortly afterwards.
Having inherited the company from her father, Christiana was succeeded by her grandson, John Campbell Thompson, who became a partner in the firm three years after her death under the new name Rose Downs and Thompson. Today, having reverted back to being called RoseDowns, the company occupies a small part of its once vast footprint with the now derelict workshop Christiana built awaiting re-development.
If she was still around, you can somehow imagine her rolling up her sleeves and just cracking on with that particular challenge.
Angus Young