William Cockerill, Sr.

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William (Guillaume) Cockerill

William Cockerill (born March 27, 1759 in Haslingden, Lancashire , † January 23, 1832 in Aachen ) was a British entrepreneur who brought the industrial revolution from England to mainland Europe and built a major steel and mechanical engineering company in what is now Belgium with British inventions .

Life

The son of a Steimetz and bricklayer tried his hand at the production of weaving machines in his hometown as a young man, but this did not bring any great success at first. Just married to Elisabet (Betty) Charles, he then moved to Radcliff, where he worked as a Schmid. He left his family in Haslingden, where his six sons and two daughters were born. In 1794 he tried to establish himself as a spinning machine manufacturer in St. Petersburg , but here too he had to give up unsuccessfully after three years. The same thing happened to him in Sweden from 1797, because the industry there was not that well developed. A year later he also left this country and made a stopover in Hamburg , where he met the authorized signatory of the company Simonis & Biolley from Verviers . He recognized Cockerill's abilities and hired him as a textile machine builder for the local plant in Verviers.

There, Cockerill renewed the textile machines of the textile manufacturers François Biolley and Iwan Simonis with the capital of his client and a few years later they achieved market leadership in this sector. Now William Cockerill brought his family from Haslingden as well as the young English machinist James Hudson (1773-1833). This first worked for William Cockerill, also married his daughter Nancy (1782-1817), but soon moved to the company of William Cockerill, Junior (1784-1847), the eldest son of William Senior, who is also in Verviers with his own Factory had set up on its own.

In 1807, during the continental blockade , William Cockerill senior moved to Liège , where he first set up a textile factory and then went on to manufacture textile machines and iron processing. In 1811, William Cockerill and his sons, John and James , who held senior positions in his factory, were granted French citizenship in recognition of their achievements. Two years later, William transferred his company to these sons and gradually withdrew from the operational business. Now that John, for his part , acquired the castle of Seraing near Liège from King Wilhelm I of the Netherlands in 1817 and converted it into the main central iron-making factory, this, together with the parts of the factory in Liège, laid the foundation for the development of Europe's largest iron foundry and machine factory and a widely branched one Company that later developed into the Cockerill-Sambre , whose main market was to be France. The Cockerills made the area of ​​the former Austrian Netherlands and later Belgium annexed by the French the first industrialized country after England.

Residence Hotel de Ville of the William Cockerill family, today Spa town hall

After leaving the company, William and his wife moved to Spa , where they bought the Hotel de Ville , which is now the town hall. His wife died there in 1823. Later, and also to avoid the unrest in the course of the Belgian Revolution , William spent a large part of his evenings at Berensberg Castle near Aachen, which his son James had acquired in 1820 and ran as a successful stud. William died in 1832 at Berensberg Castle and was buried in the family crypt next to his wife in the Spa cemetery.

William Cockerill owned several estates and properties in England, most of which he bequeathed to his sons. In addition, he has shown himself to be a great horse expert and has built a successful stud farm in Spa. This passion was passed on through his sons to William Cockerill's great-grandsons Henry Suermondt and Otto Suermondt , who were also successful as stud owners and internationally as gentlemen's riders .

Williams eldest son William Cockerill, Junior, married into the Monschauer clothier family Scheibler and shifted 1816 its activities after Guben , where he set up the first wool spinning machines and the monastery mill to the factory and mill rebuilt, in the almost a steam engine was operated. The sons John and James were married in the business family Pastor and initially set out in space Liege independently . The latter then drove the industrialization of Stolberg forward from 1825 . Williams' granddaughter, Friederike Cockerill, married the Duisburg industrialist Max Haniel in 1839 . Through this marriage, the unpleasant Belgian competition in steamship construction could be kept away from the Rhine.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cockerill property in England
  2. ↑ The Cockerills and the Horses
personal data
SURNAME Cockerill, William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British-French entrepreneur and industrial pioneer
DATE OF BIRTH March 27, 1759
PLACE OF BIRTH Lancashire
DATE OF DEATH January 23, 1832
Place of death Aachen