Bullivant & Co., Ltd

Bullivant & Co., Ltd were based in Millwall, London and specialised in the manufacture of wire ropes. Ropeways were a natural development of their business when in 1868 Charles Hodgson set up Hodgson’s Patent Wire Tramway Company with William Mumford Bullivant as the company chairman and Mr William Thomas Henney Carrington as their engineer. The firm eventually evolved into Bullivant & Co., when Bullivant and Carrington bought the patents and good will from Hodgson. Ropeway construction was undertaken by the company all over the world and it developed an excellent reputation for its products. Bullivant’s was sold to British Ropes Ltd in 1926.

This advert from Page's Magazine, Feb 1905, shows the ropeway that was erected for the Newcastle and Gateshead Waterworks to bring construction materials to the Wylam Waterworks from railway sidings on the other side of the River Tyne. The project was the construction of the pipeline to the Wylam pumping station from the Whittle Dean Reservoirs. The ropeway was 1800ft long and powered by an undertype portable steam engine. It carried coal and coke for the pumping station and also cement and bricks for the new works at Whittle Dean and the Ryal-Matfen tunnel which formed part of the water line from the reservoirs.