Rowland Brotherhood
Rowland Brotherhood (or sometimes Roland Brotherhood) was a British engineer. He was born in Middlesex in 1812 and died in Bristol in 1883. He married Priscilla Penton in 1835 and they had 14 children, one also called Rowland who played cricket for Gloucestershire, another called Peter. Most were engineers.
Career
From 1835 he took on a number of contracts for building parts of the Great Western Railway (GWR). By 1838 he was resident in Reading, Berkshire, and continued to do contract work for the GWR.
In 1841 he moved to Chippenham, Wiltshire, bought Orwell House, and opened a blacksmiths business. Contract work for the GWR continued until 1861 when there was a dispute with the GWR. From 1861 to 1869 Brotherhood built components for railways and bridges across the British Empire.
Brotherhood left Chippenham in 1868 and was appointed General Manager of the Bute Ironworks in Cardiff. In 1874 he moved to Bristol and in 1875 he took a contract to build a goods shed for the GWR.
From 1877 to 1879 Brotherhood assisted his son, also called Rowland, in sinking shafts for the Severn Tunnel.
Rowland Brotherhood (senior) died at his home in Bristol on 4 March 1883, and is buried there in Arnos Vale Cemetery.
Peter Brotherhood Limited
Peter Brotherhood
Rowland Brotherhood's second son, Peter (1838-1902), became in 1867 a partner in the engineers and millwrights business of Brotherhood and Kittoe in Clerkenwell when their main product was brewing machinery. After Kittoe's retirement in 1871 this firm mainly produced machines of Brotherhood's own invention, in particular the Brotherhood engine which could be powered by steam, water or compressed air. Put to many uses it drove the Navy's Whitehead torpedoes and was used in the torpedoes of other navies as well.
Stanley Brotherhood
In 1903 Peter's only surviving son, Stanley (1880-1938), moved the works from the Lambeth premises taken in 1881 to Peterborough where it continues as Peter Brotherhood Limited manufacturing "From steam turbines to gas compressors, from wind turbines to combined heat and power".
Sources
- Anita McConnell, ‘Brotherhood, Peter (1838–1902)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004
- "A Centenary Note - R. Brotherhood". www.irsociety.co.uk. Retrieved 2009-03-06.
- "Chippenham Town Council - Rowland Brotherhood". www.chippenham.gov.uk. Retrieved 2009-03-06.