In today’s modern society our children and grandchildren enjoy a lifestyle that our own great grandparents would not dare dream about. The presentation held at the Marple Local history Society on the 18th of November on the History of Mather & Platt transported the audience on a remarkable journey back in ti
Entrance to Park Worksme to the dark and dismal past of the Victorian era. The presentation clearly demonstrated how this local engineering company not only significantly improved the dreadful lifestyle of our great grandparents but created a legacy of social, economic and welfare reform that dramatically changed everything we automatically take for granted in our lives today.
Where there was a ‘thirst for water’ they quenched it, and where it was in abundance and a threat to life, their pumps cleared it away. Where there was darkness, they created light. As a result, they stimulated an electrical infrastructure within UK homes, commerce and industry that in its day became the envy of the world. Mather & Platt safeguarded our places of work from the threat of fire and destruction. During the Second World War, their exploits on and off the battlefield played a pivotal role in some of the best kept secrets of the war, some of which remain a closely guarded secret even to this day. During the post war years when food rationing was in place and food was expensive, the company founded and developed a food processing division that heralded the introduction of affordable labour-saving convenience food.
