page_title: Benjamin Hick
section_title: Rothwell, Hick and Rothwell
hierarchical_section_title: Benjamin Hick / Rothwell, Hick and Rothwell
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of an engraving by Watkins of Rothwell Hick &amp; Co. Steam engine manufactory and Iron-Works, Bolton.
context_page_description: Benjamin Hick was an English civil and mechanical engineer, art collector and patron; his improvements to the steam engine and invention of scientific tools were held in high esteem by the engineering profession, some of Hick's improvements became public property without claiming the patent rights he was entitled to.
  He was born at Huddersfield, and christened in the Independent, dissenter's chapel at Highfield, his parents moving shortly afterwards to Leeds where he was educated. Henry Venn was vicar of Huddersfield parish until 1771.
  Hick's aptitude for mechanics and passion for drawing led to an apprentiship in 1804 as a draughtsman with Fenton, Murray and Wood at the Round Foundry in Holbeck. The company made steam engines, textile and other machinery; here he was entrusted with the installation of several large steam engines and offered a partnership when his apprenticeship expired. The offer was declined and Hick moved instead to Bolton in 1810 to work for Smalley, Thwaites and Company as manager of Rothwell's Union Foundry on Blackhorse Street.
context_section_description: By 1821 Hick was managing partner of the Union Foundry, that later became Rothwell, Hick and Rothwell; the company listed in Baines' directory as supplying steam engines, hydraulic presses, weighing machines, gas light apparatus, mill machinery, sugar mills and constructors of fire proof buildings. After Peter Rothwell's death 2 August 1824, the firm continued with Peter Rothwell Jr (1792–1849) as Rothwell, Hick & Co. They made stationary steam engines, (a number of which were featured by John Farey in the second volume of his Treatise on the Steam Engine, 1827) as well as general engineering products including cast iron dockyard cranes. 
  In 1824 when the prodigious and forward looking Swiss engineer Johann Georg Bodmer (anglicised to John George Bodmer) developed his patterns and textile machinery near Bolton he made use of the Rothwell, Hick and Rothwell workshops. Here in the late 1820s with the co-operation of an Italian merchant, Philip Novelli and H. & E. Ashworth, (Henry (1794–1880) and Edmund (1800–1881) Ashworth), they began a project of advanced concept at Egerton Mill to include a spectacular waterwheel of 62 feet diameter by 12 feet wide and 110–140 horsepower, completed by Fairbairn and Lillie when Bodmer returned to Europe as a result of ill-health. To aid in the construction it is claimed that Bodmer devised the travelling crane; the Egerton wheel became a tourist destination during the 1830s and 1840s, it was one of the largest in the United Kingdom attracting visits from industrialists and politicians. Benjamin Disraeli was a visitor to the Ashworth mills in 1843. By the 1830s Hick had become a highly valued friend of Bodmer, on one occasion arbitrating a patent dispute.
  Hick also formed a close friendship with engineer and artist James Nasmyth, in his autobiography Nasmyth refers to Hick as a "most admirable man... whose judgment in all matters connected with engineering and mechanical construction was held in the very highest regard... ingenious", he "contrived and constructed... one of the most powerful hydraulic presses" in existence. Hick was inventor of the self tightening collar, used universally in hydraulic pressess.
  According to Nasmyth, Hick and William Fairbairn were among the most "intelligent and cultivated persons in Lancashire". Hick was an accomplished draughtsman and it is stated that he introduced almost a new era of elegance and design for the exterior forms of steam engines and larger works.
  Hick and Rothwell built their first locomotive Union in 1830 for the Bolton and Leigh Railway, they also built Pioneer for the Petersburg Railroad in America and a 2-2-0, the Pontchartrain for the Pontchartrain Railroad, New Orleans in 1832.
caption: "Steam-Engine Manufactory and Iron-Works, Bolton. To Messrs. Rothwell, Hick & Co. This plate is respectfully inscribed by the publishers. Fisher, Son and Co. of London 1832." Engraving by William Watkins after a drawing by John Harwood. Originally published in William Henry Pyne's partwork Lancashire Illustrated, from Original Drawings (1828–1831).[37]
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