History of Ritherdon & Co Ltd

1895

Ritherdon & Co was founded in Great Moor St, Bolton by the current Managing Director’s grandfather, Percy Ritherdon.  The company moved to North Bridge Mill, White Lion Brow shortly after that and remained there until just after the Second World War.

Early Products

Percy’s interest in chemistry and magic led to a unusual range of Ritherdon products:  intially concentrating on electroplating and enamelling for the Edwardian bicycle boom, but also on making tricks for magicians.  Percy worked closely with the magician Chung Ling Soo for several years in the early 20^th Century and there was a locked workshop at North Bridge Mill where a select group of Ritherdon employees worked on the very precise fabrication of these magical tricks.

More details on Percy Ritherdon’s collaboration with Soo and some of the tricks that Ritherdons made, are given in Jim Steinmeyer’s book The Glorious Deception: The Double Life of William Robinson, aka Chung Ling Soo, the "Marvelous Chinese Conjurer".

1913

Ritherdon & Co became Ritherdon & Co Limited by registering as company number 126330.

1914-1918

Ritherdon & Co plated many millions of parts for the War Office during the First World War.

1920s and 30s

We began to produce more sheet metalwork with “The renowned “Ritho” Steel and Non-Ferrous Products” being advertised in 1929 (see the advertisement on the right).

1939-1945

Our first enclosures may have been made during the Second World War when Ritherdons manufactured electrical enclosures for the Navy’s warships.

1947

Shortly after the War we moved to our present factory in Lorne St, Darwen and our expertise in manufacturing cabinets, control panels and other specialist sheet metalwork took off through the mid 20th century.

1950s and 60s

Ritherdons made sheet metalwork for the early nuclear industry, such as control panels for Calder Hall - the world’s first commercial nuclear power station - and UKAEA's DFR reactor up at Dounreay.  Other big customers included the GPO.

1970s

This is when we began to work closely with the electricity boards and several of our current products have sprung from this association.  For example, it was in response to an enquiry from one of the electricity boards, over 30 years ago, that we designed the first of our door and frame units for meter box repair.

1980s

Electro-plating was gradually phased out through the 1980s and 90s as part of ongoing efforts to reduce our environmental impact.

1992

Ritherdons gained BS5750 accreditation, which later became ISO9001.

1997

Ritherdon & Co's first Investors in People award.

Late 1990s

Following enquiries from some of our customers for street-level enclosures, we produced our first feeder pillars specialising in providing higher-quality, stainless-steel enclosures as an alternative for the highways market.

21^st Century

We are still at our factory in Lorne Street, with recent invesment in state of the art machinery, producing our housing maintenance products, industrial metering panels and meter boxes – all derived from our work with the electricity companies – along with our newer range of enclosures for the highways and street lighting sectors (the feeder pillars and cabinets).

We also undertake a significant amount of bespoke sheet metalwork and we have some very new product ranges in the pipeline, which should appear on the website soon.

If you are interested in finding out more about the history of our company, please get in touch with Ben Ritherdon.  Information on other old Lancashire companies can be found at this site.