LAWES CHEMICAL COMPANY LTD

Records of Lawes Chemical Company Ltd.

TR LAW/AC1/1 Customer Ledger

TR LAW/AD1/1 Agenda

TR LAW/AD2/1-2 General Administrative and Commercial Records

TR LAW/AD4/1-2 Premises Records

TR LAW/AD7/1 Commercial Records

TR LAW/DO1/1 Drawings

TR LAW/ET1/1-3 Experiment and Trials Records

TR LAW/ET2/1-8 Reference Records to Products

TR LAW/ET3/1-2 General Technical Reference Records

TR LAW/P1/A1-4 Guardbooks containing Lawes' advertising publications

TR LAW/P1/B1-2 Guardbooks containing other firms' advertising publications

TR LAW/P2/A1-41 Individual Advertising Publications for Lawes Products

TR LAW/P4/1-10 House Journals

TR LAW/P5/1-2 Press Releases

TR LAW/P7/1-3 Records of Advertising Campaigns and Events

TR LAW/P8/1-5 Printing Proofs and Artworks

TR LAW/PH3/1-103 Photographic Prints

TR LAW/SP1/1-33 File of miscellaneous material relating to the company's history

<span class="wrapper"><p>Other business records of Lawes Chemical Co are deposited with the Libraries Department of the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, Valence House, Dagenham, Essex.</p> <p>Personal and working papers of Sir John Bennet Lawes are at Rothamsted Experimental Station. See Catalogue of Records in the Station Library (1987), ref. RHC H1454 or Main Library 630.16-ROT.</p></span>

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Lawes Chemical Co Ltd was founded by John Bennet Lawes at Deptford Creek, London for the manufacture of superphosphate, later moving to Barking Creek. In 1872 it was incorporated as Lawes Chemical Manure Co Ltd, and went into liquidation in 1969.

J.B. Lawes (1814-1900) succeeded to the Rothamsted estate, Hertfordshire in 1822, taking possession in 1834, and began to experiment in agricultural chemistry, testing the action of fertiliser on various crops in field and plot tests through the 1830s and early 1840s. From his experiments he discovered that bone meal treated with sulphuric acid gave better results than untreated bone meal, and it was realised that this was the effect of the phosphoric acid content of the treated meal, the phosphoric acid in mineral phosphates being converted by means of sulphuric acid into a form available to plants. Lawes took out a patent for this means of production of superphosphate, and is responsible for founding the mineral superphosphate industry.

As well as founding the Lawes Chemical Co for the production of superphosphate, in 1843 Lawes founded the Rothamsted Experimental Station, continuing to make a large contribution to agricultural research.