Fenton, Murray and Jackson

Fenton, Murray and Jackson was an engineering firm based at the Round Foundry off Water Lane in Holbeck, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It began in the 1790s as Fenton, Murray and Wood, a partnership formed by the ironfounder Matthew Murray and the textile machine engineer David Wood to build machine tools, chiefly for the textile industry, and stationary steam engines. The colliery owner James Fenton supplied most of the capital, and the millwright William Lister was a sleeping partner. The partnership was asked to design a locomotive that would use the rack-and-pinion patent granted to Blenkinsop in 1811, and its 1812 engine Salamanca worked well; six engines were built before Murray died in 1826. After Wood died in 1820 the firm took the name Fenton, Murray and Jackson. From 1831 it built engines to Robert Stephenson designs, including the Planet and Patentee types, many of them under subcontract and many exported, along with twenty Firefly class engines designed by Daniel Gooch for the Great Western Railway. By 1840 it was turning out up to twenty engines a year, but the boom ended and the company closed in 1843.