History of Nairobi through Manholes
They say a road is as good as its drainage — and with the drainage comes manholes whose builders placed indelible signatures of their workmanship that has withstood weather and shoe traction. Here is a photo essay of manhole builders that dot the Central Business District of Nairobi.
John Needham & Sons
The Needham Foundry was established by John Needham in 1834 and located at 60, Millgate, Stockport England. They specialized in manufacture of cast iron boxes, sundry iron and manhole covers. When John passed on in 1898, his sons Oswald, Wilson and Walter took over the business and renamed it John Needham & Sons.
It is in this period that the company supplied British overseas territorries with manhole covers and now their name is etched on the Nairobi side walks. Of further interest is of Wallace Cyrill Needham-Clark who was an advocate in Nairobi and later a councillor for European Central ward (now Kilimani) in 1961. There is direct evidence of relation with the UK Needhams but a good guess would be his ascension to council office and contracts to Needham might not have been a coincidence.
J. Stone and Co
The company J. Stone and Co was established by Josiah Stone, George Preston, and John Prestone in 1842 as a marine, railway, and general engineers in Deptford, England. In 1905, the company went public on the London Stock Exchange and gained valuable customers including being the principal supplier of British railway companies.
With their patent, the company become the sole manufacturer for the UK and colonies of the Stone-Lloyd system of hydralically operated watertight ship doors. The same technology was used to make airtight manhole covers that are visible along Moi Avenue (then known as Government Road).
Pinetown Engineering Foundry
If you walk along The Sarova Sanley hotel on Standard Street, you’ll notice manholes with the insignia PEFCO — an acronym for Pinetown Enginering Foundry. This foundry is based in Pinetown, a small city next to Durban in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The South African connection goes back to the origin of the Hotel.
The Stanley Hotel was established in 1902 by English businesswoman Mayence Bent. In 1903, he met a man who would later own the hotel 40 years later. Abraham Lazarus Block, a Jewish Lithuanian had fled Europe due to religious persecution to South Africa with his father. Convinced Kenya was the “New Zion” for Jews, he travelled to Nairobi and set up to supply mattresses to The Stanley Hotel.
In 1947, Mayence Bent sold the hotel to Abraham Block. In 1958, the current building was put and the PEFCO manholes installed from his connections in South Africa. Since its registration in 1952, PEFCO become a recognized supplier of engineering parts in mining, railways, smelting and general purpose engineering.
Dudley & Dowell Ltd Cradley Heath Staffs
At the end of World War One, two brothers Percy Dowell, W.E. Dowell formed a partnership in an engineering company in 1920. They rented a pair of cottages in Olive Lane, Blackheath, installed the necessary shafting and a gas engine, with a second-hand lathe creating the nucleus of an engineering shop. Work became scarce and Percy decided to branch out into castings, and the business became a foundry rather than an engineering company.
When the building trade began to pick up after the war, business increased and Percy and WED turned their hands to producing grid iron castings, gutters, toilet cisterns, et cetera. In 1933, the company acquired Cradley Heath to cover nine acres and with two new foundries. With the possibility of a second war developing, an increased demand for draining castings on RAF runways led to this upsurge in their business with the Ministry of Works and the Air Ministry hence supplying manhole covers in Nairobi.
After the Second World War, the company was split into two groups Dudley & Dowell Ltd (the manufacturing group) and Dowley Investments Ltd. (a financial investment and banking group). The companies name is ingrained on Nairobi footpath at the Tom Mboya statue next to Standard Chartered Bank.
Siemens and General Electric Railway Signal Co
In 1926, a company was formed by amalgamation of the railway signalling departments of Siemens Brothers and Co and General Electric Company in Middlesex, England. This company was riding on a new invention that managed traffic electronically. In the system, vehicles approachmg a road junction pass over pneumatic detector mats, installed in the paths of the various traffic streams, and so notify their movements to an electrically operated controller.
At the junction of Moi Avenue and Mama Ngina Street, there’s a relic of this fantastic traffic system inscribed on a manhole with the initials SGE.
There are other manholes cover companies within the CBD but these did setup Nairobi’s road and drainage system.
This is part of write-up for #whatisaroad — a project that seeks to map potholes in Nairobi.
