The Springfield Mill Collection covers roughly 200 years of the history of that place, though sadly, because of an act of corporate vandalism in the 1990’s, the collection is in large part fragmentary. There is also the preconception of many people even today, that Springfield Mill was part of the James Whatman ‘empire’ —a situation not helped by the Local Authority giving the ‘new’ approach road to the Mill, the name of ‘James Whatman Way’—whereas Springfield Mill, apart from financial support by the Widow Whatman in its early history, had nothing to do with the paper-making Whatmans, the last of whom—James Whatman the Younger— had died seven years before William Balston (the founder of Springfield Mill) bought his first piece of land there in 1805.
William Balston had been the protégé of James Whatman the Younger, who in 1774 lost his wife (Sarah Stanley) shortly after the birth of their third daughter. As a consequence of no male heir for Whatman to pass on his paper-making businesses and run his household affairs after his death, the fifteen year old William Balston came to Maidstone, to be trained in the art of paper-making, and business, household, and financial management, for the three daughters after Whatman’s demise.
A year after Balston’s arrival and the commencement of his training, Whatman married a second time (Susanna Bosanquet) and a year after that, Susanna presented James Whatman with a son and heir (who, in the family tradition, they named James). The whole story is well documented, with much material residing in the County Archives in the Whatman Collection, and need not concern us here, other than the knowledge that Balston’s services and training continued, and that he was accepted more as a member of the Whatman family than as an employee.
For various reasons Whatman sold his paper-making activities in 1794, to a consortium composed of William Balston, Thomas Robert Hollingworth, and his brother Finch Hollingworth. The partnership did well for several years, based on the outstanding reputation Whatman papers held both in this country and abroad, and the good standing of William Balston in the paper community at large. However, by 1803 Balston felt that his own name and reputation were being taken advantage of by the Hollingworth brothers, who by then had added another brother to the business, which diluted Balston’s position in the company even further.
Balston removed himself from the partnership in 1804 and started to make paper on his own part, at a small (leased) mill at Eyhorne Street near Hollingbourne just outside Maidstone. This was but a stop-gap for Balston, who felt that the way to beat the established business of the Hollingworth brotherhood in the manufacture and sale of J Whatman papers, was to make more paper than them, and sell it to (principally) London Stationers (todays paper merchants) based on his own reputation. In short, he was to build a new paper-making mill (Springfield) that would be the largest in the land at that time, with ten hand-making vats on one site, the biggest in the land.
Springfield Mill would be powered by steam, the first mill in the country to successfully do so (there had been other mills that had attempted that act before him, but all had failed). It was this spirit of overzealousness, (which even James Whatman had concerns over during his lifetime) that was to be the undoing of Balston’s scheme. The dissolution of the Partnership and the turmoil over the J Whatman trademark, are not part of the Springfield Collection. Suffice to say that it was hotly contested in every particular, but from the Springfield Mill point of view, it will be sufficient to state that both the Hollingworths and William Balston were to continue to brand their papers with the famous J Whatman name and watermarks, though the Hollingworths would add the words ‘Turkey Mill’ to differentiate their papers from those made by the usurper Balston! It is from this point in history that the Springfield Mill collection really begins.
In 1805, Balston leased and then purchased his first pieces of land at Springfield, known then as Lord’s Hopground and Little Meadow, which included a house, into which he and his wife moved, and started their family. Adjacent land was purchased in 1806, and the building of Springfield Mill began. Heavily financed by the widowed Susanna Whatman, Springfield Mill was officially ‘opened’ on the first of January, 1807.
The mill and business were under-funded from the outset, and the whole affair came to the edge of bankruptcy, before, aided by Susanna Whatman, in 1814 William Balston succeeded in persuading Susanna’s brother, Jacob Bosanquet, a respected financial genius, to put together a restructuring plan, including a family consortium to re-finance the business and save the mill. Though the terms were extremely draconian and would humble and hobble William Balston for many years to come, he had little choice than to acquiesce. The business would from now on be known as ‘Balston and Co.’ and would be owned by William Balston, Jacob Bosanquet’s son, Richard, and his cousin William Gaussen, the latter gentleman would run the London affairs of the firm, and keep a very tight rein on the finances. Thus, as history is apt to repeat itself, William Balston once again found himself a mere partner in his own business.
In 1822 Richard Bosanquet and William Gaussen realised what a tremendous toll the ‘bad times’ had taken on William Balston’s health and stamina, and they persuaded Balston’s eldest son, also called William, at the age of fifteen, to cease his schooling and come to the Mill to assist his father. A year later the same plea went out to Balston’s second son Richard, and needless to say, both requests were complied with. These two young men, William and Richard, were a few decades later—after the death of their father—to take-over the whole enterprise from the two surviving partners, and buy-out the shares of their mother, and their brothers and sisters, which was all done very amicably but at high cost. The vast sums expended on these actions show how profitable the once failing business had become. The brothers were even able to buy the exclusivity of the J Whatman brand name, and surprisingly that of ‘J Whatman Turkey Mill’, as well as have the Hollingworths agree to not make any paper by hand, nor yet the famous Antiquarian size of paper, for the next ten years. William and Richard ran the business with huge success until their deaths in 1882 and 1888 respectively.
The Springfield Mill Collection is fortunate in containing ALL of the business agreements touched-on above, as well as the property deeds for Springfield Mill (and some of their precursors), along with transcriptions and commentaries, until (and including) the eldest son of Richard Balston (also called Richard) becoming a junior partner in the firm.
The mill and business continued in the name of W & R Balston (the initials of the Founder’s two eldest sons) through several generations until a company merger with their sole sales agents Reeve Angel in 1974, when it at last took on the name of Whatman, and from whence comes the confusion over identity. At that time it also ceased to be a Balston family business.
Along with the full collection of title deeds and business agreements mentioned above, there is a huge quantity of technical drawings, in large part on tracing paper, all categorised and catalogued. With but a few exceptions, these deal with the ‘machine age’ at Springfield Mill, which started in the late 1920’s (though some machine drawings do go back further). Prior to this Springfield Mill had been an entirely hand-made paper mill (rising to twenty vats from William Balston’s original over optimistic dream of ten!), and continued to make paper by hand as well as by machine until 1964. The technical drawings collection offers a positive wealth of twentieth-century paper-machine history and development, as well as land and property surveys largely relating to the installation of the various paper machines, and some very ambitious attempts at expansion during one of the several, more recent, incarnations of the Company.
There are several parts of the collection treating of staff at major occasions (the Centenary of the Mill, those who survived the First World War, and of more recent date, a complete and continuing lists of staff including a four-drawer record card index from the second half of the twentieth century. To become a ‘carded’ (hand)paper-maker, one had to complete a seven year apprenticeship, and the collection holds a small number of bound Apprentice Agreements from the first years of the 1900’s and some of slightly earlier date. Sad to say, for years these three volumes would have been dozens, from 1807 to the 1950’s. There is much here in these spasmodic items for the family genealogist to find rewarding., and a very large photographic archive, including a great many of the various owners and executives, staff, activities at the mill, and special occasions.
In the last two decades of the last century the Company grew out all proportion to its paper-making roots, and became a multi-faceted Plc, and like the supernova that it became, it imploded in on itself. Though it has to be recognised that many of the products created during that frenetic period of the Company’s history were ground-breaking, and of huge importance to the scientific, pharmaceutical, criminal forensic, and health industries, they were very far removed from paper, on which the Company was built.
At one point, things were so dire that the staff did not think that the Company (and Mill) would be around to celebrate its second centennial, and so in 2005 the staff marked 200 years since William Balston purchased his first property where Springfield Mill now stands.
The company did however survive, first with a take-over by their largest German competitor, and then soon after and much more successfully, by the Healthcare division of the U.S. General Electric Corporation (G.E.). Eventually even G.E. had to admit that even pared-down, the mill was non-viable, and moved paper production to their mill in China. Springfield Mill finally closed in November 2015.
As G.E. Healthcare is still an active company, it has retained all documentation regarding its years of ownership, and for many years of the Whatman Plc period. Again, I must refer back to that act of corporate vandalism in the 1990’s when one particular Chairman stated that as a dynamic, forward looking, science orientated business there was no place for “…all this paper history nonsense” and ordered the destruction of the extensive archive, papers collection and library. This demand was only partly successful in eradicating the past due to the heroic actions of many members of staff who intercepted whatever they could and hid it away in their homes or in various corners of the mill until it was safe to bring the disparate parts together again, and it is this ‘lucky dip’ that forms the Springfield Mill Collection at the Kent History and Library Centre, Maidstone, Kent, today.
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