- Home
- Our history
Our history
Founded 2001. Engineering since 1803.
Millbrook was founded in 2001, when the machine shop of Bryan Donkin Co. Limited of Chesterfield and its machinists moved across to form a new company. That team brought with it a way of working whose roots run back to 1803, when Bryan Donkin opened his engineering works in Bermondsey, London: more than 220 years of continuous engineering expertise, and more than 120 of them in Chesterfield.
Timeline
From Bermondsey to Clay Cross
- 1803
An engineering works in Bermondsey
Bryan Donkin, a millwright and engineer from Northumberland, establishes his works in Bermondsey, London. His first great project is perfecting the Fourdrinier continuous paper-making machine; by 1851 the firm has built nearly 200 of them.
- 1812–13
Food in tins
Donkin and his partners Hall and Gamble set up one of the first canneries to use tinned-iron containers, an early step in preserving food in tins.
- 1818–28
A founder of the profession
Bryan Donkin is one of the originators of the Institution of Civil Engineers and later its vice-president, helping it secure its Royal Charter in 1828.
- 1851–58
Precision on the world stage
The company wins an award at the Great Exhibition of 1851 and, in 1858, builds a second Scheutz difference engine, an early calculating machine, for the General Register Office.
- 1900–03
To Chesterfield
Bryan Donkin and Co amalgamates with Clench and Co of Chesterfield in 1900 and moves its works from Bermondsey to Chesterfield in 1902–03.
- 1910 onwards
Gas engineering
A licence to build Rateau turbo exhausters and blowers in 1910 sets the direction for the next century. The Chesterfield works becomes known for gas valves, compressors and blowers, made and machined to exacting standards.
- 2001
Millbrook is founded
Millbrook Precision Engineering Limited is incorporated on 19 September 2001. The Bryan Donkin machine shop and its machinists move across to form the new company, carrying the same skills, standards and customers into an independent subcontract business.
- 2011
ISO 9001 certified
Millbrook achieves BSI certification to ISO 9001, certificate FS 569306, for machining medium to large castings, fabrications, components and assemblies up to 10 tonnes.
- Today
Clay Cross, Derbyshire
From Derby Road, Clay Cross, Millbrook machines, fabricates, assembles and repairs large parts for defence, nuclear, energy and heavy industry, with a five-axis Doosan horizontal borer, four CNC vertical lathes and cranes to 10 tonnes.
What carries on
What 220 years leaves behind
The machines have changed many times since 1803. What carries on is a way of working: read the drawing properly, set the part up right, machine it once, check it before it leaves. That habit passed from one generation of Chesterfield machinists to the next, and it is what the Bryan Donkin machine shop brought with it when it became Millbrook.
It is also why Millbrook takes on apprentices and trains them on the shop floor alongside experienced machinists. The next generation learns the same habits, on the same kind of work.
Sources
Bryan Donkin and Co history from Grace's Guide to British Industrial History and published biographies of Bryan Donkin. Millbrook incorporation from Companies House, company 04290200.
A long record of getting large parts right
Send the drawing for your next job. Quotes are free.