FOR four generations, Cleveland Bridge was led by members of the Dixon family: they founded the company, they saved the company, they made it a family firm and a global concern, and one of them owned one of the very first motor cars in Darlington.
Cleveland Bridge is now, sadly, in liquidation, and we told in Thursday’s paper how it had been formed in 1877 by ten employees of the defunct Skerne Ironworks, which had collapsed on Albert Hill in Darlington.
They had started their new business on Polam Hall’s strawberry field on Smithfield Road, off Neasham Road, backed with finance from Henry Isaac Dixon, of Stumperlowe Hall, in Sheffield – he was the youngest son of James Dixon & Son, a “Britannia metal” (or pewter) maker which had started in 1802 and had grown into one of the steel city’s leading manufacturers.