Online Catalogue last updated 15th of September 2008
By Clive Carter. There is little doubt that Clive Carter is the ideal person to write a history of Holman Brothers, the great Camborne firm of engineers. He worked there, mostly in PT, for several years, and members of his family were also 'Holman Men'. Clive details the early history of the family, who moved into the expanding mining-engineering locality of Camborne-Illogan in the first half of the eighteenth century. William Holman, father of the firm's founder, Nicholas, became a mine blacksmith, and in 1772 the family moved to Pool, in Illogan Parish. A year earlier, Richard Trevithick had been born 100 yards away at Penhellick Vean. Nicholas, born in 1777, was to become a firm friend and colleague of Trevithick. In 1801, Nicholas followed in his father's footsteps and set up his own foundry and smithshop at Pool, and before long was making great boilers for mine engines.
Thus, was the international company of Holman Brothers established, and within decades there were boiler works, foundries and ancillary business all over Camborne. The details the astonishing success of generations of Holman boys, who worked hard, treated their men well, were amazingly creative and innovative, international in their exporting outlook, and trend-setters with respect to new technology. By the end of the nineteenth century Holman rock drills were world-beaters. This continued to be so until the last decades of the twentieth century. Holman development of compressed air machinery, and eventually to the most advanced compressors - machines which can still be seen throughout the earth in the remotest corners - was due to their foresight and business acumen. It was also due to the array of skills their work force has at its disposal.
The enormous expansion of the factory space and work force during the twentieth century, coping with war conditions between 1914-18 and 1939-45, the large numbers of women employed to replace the fighting men, the involvement of the firm in inventing and making such innovative weapons as the Holman Projector, and a score of other fascinating parts of the Holman story are all dealt with by the author with skill and humour. He has a genuine feel for the atmosphere and crack of the place. As a Camborne man who followed so many of his relatives into the foundry he obviously misses the great time.
Finally, Clive deals with the crucial part played by Holman's and its former apprentices, in the construction of the 2001 replica of Trevithick's original road loco-the first motorcar. The story of the replica is also an inspiring one, which, like the Holman story, covers two hundred years of Camborne history
Code No. 009677, 110 pages, ISBN 0904040534, $35.00