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  • Title
    Messenger and Co. Ltd
  • Reference
    TR MES
  • Production date
    1887-1953
  • Creator
  • Creator History
    Thomas Goode Messenger is recorded as having a plumber's, glazier's and glassfitter's business in High Street, Loughborough as early as 1855. In 1858 he formed his own company of Messenger and Co. and by 1863 is listed as a plumber and hydraulic engineer. By 1877 the firm is described as "horticultural builders and hot water apparatus manufacturers". In 1874, Walter Chapman Burder purchased the company and in 1884 the business was moved from the High Street premises to Cumberland Road, off Ashby Road. A foundry was then built and further extensions in 1895 led to the complete closure of the High Street Branch. The firm was famous, particularly in the Victorian and Edwardian period, for making greenhouses, verandahs, summer houses, cucumber frames, melon pits, mushroom beds, orchid stages, vineries and peach houses. As the demand declined from the 1930s, the company began to concentrate more on the manufacture of heating equipment and became an engineering firm. It was also known by the name Midland Horticultural Company.
  • Scope and Content
    The Collection contains contract files for buildings erected in Great Britain and overseas.
  • Extent
    30 linear metres
  • Level of description
    fonds
  • Content person
  • Content Subject
  • System of arrangment
    The catalogue is arranged by the following counties: Bedfordshire Berkshire Buckinghamshire Cambridgeshire Cheshire Cornwall Cumbria Derbyshire Devon Dorset Essex Gloucestershire Hampshire Herefordshire Hertfordshire Isles of Wight and Man Kent Lancashire Leicestershire Lincolnshire London Merseyside Middlesex Norfolk Northamptonshire Northumberland and Co. Durham Nottinghamshire Oxfordshire Rutland Shropshire Somerset Staffordshire Suffolk Surrey Sussex Warwickshire West Midlands Wiltshire Worcestershire Yorkshire Scotland Ireland Wales Overseas NB: Where counties were not specifically mentioned in the records, current counties have been given.