Offices for the Hydraulic Engineering Company, Charles Street, Chester

THE HYDRAULIC ENGINEERING COMPANY - This company have now completed and opened their new offices, facing to Charles-street, and running some way back, giving a large amount of accommodation for the several departments. The building, together with a pattern shed and workmen's mess house, which have just been erected on the opposite side of the same street have been built from designs by Mr. Harold Hignett, architect, of this city. [Cheshire Observer - Saturday 27 May 1876 page 6]

Reference     Cheshire Observer - Saturday 27 May 1876 page 6]

The Hydraulic Engineering Company grew out of the Flookersbrook Foundry, established about 1805 on the site of the works in Charles Street, Chester. The company specialised in the application of high-pressure water to machinery as a source of power and hydraulic lifts, cranes, dock machinery, pumps and presses became its principal products. The Hydraulic Engineering Company undertook construction of hydraulic installations for the Great Western Railway Company, the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board and the Port of London Authority. The Hull Docks System, Tyne Docks and the naval dockyards of Chatham, Devonport and Portsmouth, all utilizing hydraulic machinery built in Chester. The company also built port installations for use in places as far afield as Gibraltar, Malta, Hong Kong, Bombay, Calcutta, Karachi, Melbourne, and Barcelona.