R. & W. Hawthorn, Leslie and Company, Limited, usually referred to as Hawthorn Leslie, was a shipbuilder and locomotive manufacturer. The company was founded on Tyneside in 1886 and ceased building ships in 1982.
Perhaps the most famous ship built by the Company was HMS Kelly, launched in 1938 and commanded by Lord Louis Mountbatten. In 1954, the shipbuilding and marine engine activities were put into separate subsidiaries, Hawthorn Leslie (Shipbuilders) Ltd. and Hawthorn Leslie (Engineers) Ltd. In 1968 the Company's shipbuilding interests were merged with that of Swan Hunter and the Vickers Naval Yard to create Swan Hunter & Tyne Shipbuilders.
The company's shipbuilding and marine engineering interests were both nationalised and subsumed with British Shipbuilders in 1977; in 1979 its engine business was merged with George Clark & NEM, which had also been nationalised, to form Clark Hawthorn.
The company's main shipbuilding yard at Hebburn closed in 1982, was sold to Cammell Laird and then acquired by A&P Group in 2001 but has been acquired by developers in 2018 who have secured a planning consent for 446 new homes and construction of Phase 1 has now commenced. The Company itself, deprived of its main activity, diversified into telephones. In March 1993, Vodafone made a bid for the Company which by then had become a mobile phone air time reseller.
The Hawthorn Leslie building still standing in Hebburn has been the target of numerous arson attacks in recent years. This, combined with the presence of asbestos in the brickwork and the ease of access to children, has led to repeated calls from Hebburn residents and councillors for the building to be demolished. Developers Hebburn Riverside Development Limited have fully demolished and remediated the site and commenced construction of the first phase of housing.
Locomotives
After the merger the locomotive side continued manufacturing for main line, light and industrial railways, including a large number built for export, usually to the designs of the Crown Agents.
In addition it built locomotives to its own designs such as a 4-2-2-0 with four cylinders - two inside and two outside - connected separately to the two pairs of driving wheels. It was produced for the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 but could not produce sufficient steam to compete effectively with the American products.
Two 2-4-0 locomotives were supplied to the Kent and East Sussex Railway in 1899. Owned by the Rother Valley Railway and/or the Kent & East Sussex Light Railway.
Hawthorn Leslie 0-8-0T Built 1906, and became K&ESR, No. 4 and named "Hecate," The locomotive was an outside cylindered 0-8-0 side tank engine with a short wheelbase and flangeless driven wheels to cope with the sharp curves expected on the new line. With 16 in by 24 in cylinders and 4ft 3 in diameter driving wheels, its tractive effort was 16,385lb, more than twice that of the line's other locomotives and sufficient to take trains over the 1 in 40 gradients of the North Downs crossing. The engine was painted dark blue and lined in red, with a copper cap to the chimney and a polished brass dome. Eventually, in 1932 they exchanged "Hecate" for an older LSWR "Saddleback" and two spare boilers from the Southern Railway (SR). This was a good bargain on the SR's part, as they repainted "Hecate" (keeping the name), numbered it 949, and sent it to Nine Elms, where it worked almost daily on shunting duties until eventual scrapping in 1950.
Two Hawthorn Leslie 0-6-2T locomotives were supplied to the Shropshire and Montgomeryshire Railway in 1911. Named Pyramus and Thisbe, these seem not to have been a success, and soon departed, one of them to the Longmoor Military Railway in Hampshire.
Hawthorn Leslie built 27, A class 0-6-2T steam tank locomotives designed by J. Cameron and introduced to the Taff Vale Railway in 1914.
Hawthorn Leslie, and its successor Robert Stephenson and Hawthorns, built four electric locomotives for Kearsley power station between 1928 and 1946 and three of these still exist. No. 2 has been converted to battery operation and is in use at Heysham nuclear power station. Nos. 1 and 3 are preserved, see below.
Preserved locomotives
Burra (short for Kookaburra) was ordered by Corrimal Colliery on 1 May 1923
Steam
28 Hawthorn Leslie Tank Engines are in preservation today:
This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by editing the page to add missing items, with references to reliable sources.
↑Flowers, Anna; Histon, Vanessa (1999). Water Under the Bridges, Newcastle's Twentieth Century. Newcastle upon Tyne: Tyne Bridge Publishing. p.34. ISBN1-85795-140-9.
Clarke, JF (1979). Power on Land and Sea: 160 Years of Industrial Enterprise on Tyneside: A History of R. & W. Hawthorn Leslie & Co., Ltd., Engineers and Shipbuilders. Clark Hawthorn. ISBN978-0950642109.
Johnston, Ian; Buxton, Ian (2013). The Battleship Builders – Constructing and Arming British Capital Ships. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press. ISBN978-1-59114-027-6.
