Benjamin Hick (1790–1842) was a mechanical engineer. He was born at Leeds in 1790 and trained at Fenton, Murray and Wood, the well known makers of steam engines, textile machines and other machinery. In 1810 Hick moved to Bolton as manager of Rothwell's Union Foundry. It later became known as Rothwell, Hick and Rothwell.
The firm made stationary steam engines, (a number of which were featured by John Farey, Jr. in the second volume of his Treatise on the Steam Engine, 1827) as well as general engineering products such as cranes. In 1830 they made the locomotive Union for the Bolton and Leigh Railway.
Hick had married in 1814 and with his wife had two sons who he trained as engineers. In 1833 they set up their own manufactory, Benjamin Hick and Sons, at the Soho Foundry, Bolton. They made the locomotive Soho for the Bolton and Leigh Railway, and soon became well-known as suppliers to British and foreign railway companies. (See Marshall, below, for a list of them.)
Benjamim Hick died at Bolton 9 September 1842. A photograph of a bust of Ben Hick is shown below.
The firm continued under the management of his son, John (1815-1894). In 1845 he took into partnership William Hargreaves and the firm was renamed Hick, Hargeaves & Co.. Locomotive building continued until 1855, and afterwards production was concentrated on marine engines of which they made a large number. At the end of the nineteenth century they began the manufacture of steam engines for electricity generating power stations, and from 1911 began the manufacture of diesel engines. In World War I the firm did much war work, and began making high vacuum condensing plant, used in power generation. This was greatly expanded in later years as centralised power generation was adopted in Great Britain.
In 1933 they acquired the records, drawings and patterns of three defunct steam engine manufacturers and did a lucrative business in making repairs and supplying spare parts. Large stationary steam engines were still used by many textile manufacturers in the Bolton area until the collapse of the industry after World War II.
After World War II the firm expanded its work in electricity generation, and branched out into food processing, oil refining, petrochemicals and offshore oil equipment production. In 1968 the firm was sold to Electrical & Industrial Securities Ltd.. By 2002 the firm was part of the BOC group, and the historic records were deposited with Bolton library.
Later The BOC Group plc was taken over by Linde A.G. of Germany who intended to return the combined group to a 'pure gas' business and so sold off [1] the "BOC Edwards" engineering division into which Hick Hargreaves of Bolton had been placed where it had been combined with the Edwards High Vacuum business of BOC Edwards based at Crawley, West Sussex. The business of the vacuum company was sold to private shareholders[2] and on 1st June 2007 was re-established as an independent UK private limited company "Edwards Limited".
The old Bolton site was sold and became the site of a Sainsburys supermarket[3] in centre of Bolton.[4]
The Bolton site of Edwards Limited[5] is now a design shop with outsourced UK and foreign manufacture and has moved to new office premises in Lostock, where it continues to sell some steam ejector, feed heater and de-aeration technology of the old Hick Hargreaves business as a Process Vacuum[6] part of Edwards Limited.