LOUIS GUSTAVE MOUCHEL (1852-1908) - Malcolm J. Hill
Louis Gustave Mouchel was a citizen of France, a resident of the United Kingdom, but a "Ferryite" at heart. He came to Briton Ferry in 1876 at the age of 24 and lived in the town for nearly thirty years until the expansion of his consultancy work necessitated his moving to London.
His short, but full and varied, life involved him in work as a businessman, a civil and mining engineer, a commercial broker, an industrialist, a shipping agent and a French consular agent.
He was born in Cherbourg in January 1852, his father being a wig-maker in the town, In the latter part of the nineteenth century Cherbourg was an important naval station and consequently, after leaving school, Mouchel entered the Naval College at Cherbourg with the intention of becoming a naval officer. However, after completion of his college education he joined the engineering staff of the Roads and Bridges Department at Cherbourg and was involved in coastal engineering works at Barfleur-Catteville and Dielette. He later took a course in mining engineering at the Government School of Mines, Paris.
Although trained as an engineer, Mouchel was already displaying clear signs of business acumen. This brought him to Briton Ferry in August 1876 to act as a mercantile agent for English Coal and Iron. He became the South Wales manager of the Commercial Society of Rental and Delivery.
Before 1876 Briton Ferry was a small but rapidly growing industrial town, which, being ideally situated at the mouth of the River Neath, served as a focal point for the export of coal which was transported by canal and railway from the many coal mines in the area.
In 1850 Isambard Kingdom Brunel constructed the South Wales Railway (later to become part of the Great Western Railway) through Briton Ferry. He was also commissioned to design and build the South Wales Mineral Railway to connect the Glyncorrwg collieries to Briton Ferry dock, which he was also engaged to design and construct. Briton Ferry dock, opened in 1861 and the extent and growth of coal trade in the area meant that by 1870 it annually served over 2,300 ships.
With this flourishing trade, the area around the harbour became an ideal location for new industries. The first major industrial development was the Briton Ferry Ironworks which was put into operation in 1846. These works were followed in 1850 by the Vernon Tinplate Works and in 1870 by the Pipe and Brick Works. Works constructed after 1888 were Villiers Tinplate (1888), Briton Ferry. Steelworks (1889), Baglan Bay Tinplate ( 1891 ), Gwalia Tinplate ( 1892 ), Albion Steelworks (1894), and the Navigation Patent Fuel Works (1896).
It was in this cauldron of industrial activity that Mouchel was enveloped in the years following his arrival in Briton Ferry. As an astute and keen businessman he was financially involved in the construction of many of the new industries as he became firmly established in the commercial, manufacturing and industrial life of the town.
On his arrival in Briton Ferry in 1876 he established a small office at 5 Charles Street (now Bethel Street), where he traded as a general broker, shipbroker, a~d coal and metal merchant. One of the first members of his staff in the Charles Street office was Robert Hughes, Lilac Cottage, Baglan, then 15 years old.
Mouchel, with two other directors, set up the Cardiff Coke and Wash Coal Company on a site near the River Neath between the Briton Ferry Ironworks and Warren Hill and developed an extensive trade in patent fuel. The name of the firm was later changed to the Cambrian Coke Company. It was during this period that Mouchel set up an office in Bute Street, Cardiff, operating as a coal exporter. Mouchel was one of the first to use washed coal in the process of making patent fuel and, after satisfactory trials, the product was extensively used in the ships of the Royal Navy.
In 1887 he was involved in the formation of the Briton Ferry Reconstruction Company which was set up by local industrialists to build new works in the area. He was also involved in the re-opening of the Eaglesbush Colliery and the forming of a new company to construct the Gwalia Tinplate Works in 1892. He contributed £ 1,000 towards the cost of construction of the Albion Steelworks in 1894.
His residence in Briton Ferry. was a house in the woods at the rear of the Harp Hotel, Off Neath Road. The dwelling, named 'Mount Pleasant', is still in existence today although much altered since Mouchel's days.
Mouchel's involvement with coal and ore exporting brought him into contact with shipping firms and with the French vice-consulate at Swansea for whom he acted as a consular agent, collecting navigation taxes. The rapid development and expansion of trade in the south Wales ports caused the French Foreign Ministry to establish a new vice-consulate at Briton Ferry to cover the ports of Port Talbot, Briton Ferry and Neath Abbey. Mouchel was the obvious choice for the post of French vice-consul and he was appointed as such in 1879. He retained the post until his death in 1908.
Mouchel's first contact with reinforced concrete, or armoured concrete as it was originally called, was when Francois Hennebique, the inventor of reinforced concrete, attempted to introduce and establish the new material in the United Kingdom. Mouchel, as Hennebique's main link with industrialism in south Wales, persuaded Messrs William Weaver & Co to construct Weaver's flour mill in reinforced concrete on land adjacent to the North Dock in Swansea. Prior to this contract in Swansea Mouchel had given an estimate to H.F. Clarke, architect to the Briton Ferry Urban District Council, for the construction of a public hall at Briton Ferry. The estimate, however, for a reinforced concrete building was slightly in excess of the cost of a building built with traditional materials and was accordingly not accepted. It is quite a thought that Briton Ferry Public Hall could have been the first reinforced concrete building in Great Britain. That honour fell to
Weaver's flour mills.
Hennebique was so impressed with Mouchel's technical and managerial abilities that he persuaded him, in 1898, to enter into an agreement to act as his agent in the United Kingdom for reinforced concrete work throughout the country. The use of reinforced concrete proved such a success, especially for harbour, coastal, railway and bridge works that the Herm.ebique/Mouchel partnership expanded exceptionally fast.
The firm opened a new engineering design office on the first floor of 20 Wind Street, Swansea, but retained the smaller Briton Ferry office for Mouchel's continuing coal and ore exporting business and consular work.
The use of reinforced concrete had now developed to such a degree that Mouchel opened design offices in Newcastle and Liverpool and in 1900 decided to set up a main office in the heart of the commercial and business district of London in Victoria Street. Thanks to Mouchel, in a very short period of time the firm had become a major engineering consultancy.
There is no doubt that Louis Mouchel was a workaholic. His innumerable interests, business and professional work meant that his daily routine was strenuous, to say the least. Never having married, in the absence of domestic ties he over-taxed his strength with constant hard work, occupying himself every moment of the day from early morning to very late at night.
At some unknown date he developed cancer of the stomach. In October 1907, only seven months before his death, he registered the new firm of L.G. Mouchel & Partners Ltd in order to make sure that his senior staff could participate and have a financial interest in the business after his death. In this new company six of his senior staff were made shareholders, including Robert Hughes of Baglan who had first joined him in the Briton Ferry office over thirty years before.
Mouchel's health deteriorated rapidly and despite having two operations in a clinic at Auteuil, a suburb of Paris, he died in Cherbourg on 27 May 1908 aged 56. Obituaries were published in national engineering journals and in South Wales newspapers. They referred to "... his business ability, straightforwardness and bonhomie ..." and added that "... his unvarying courtesy had endeared him to a numerous circle of friends."
Details of Mouchel's will were published in The Times in July 1908. He left an estate of £68,384 net (equivalent to perhaps £4m in today's money). His holdings in the company were offered at par to his staff and the residue was distributed to Dr Barnardo's homes, the Salvation Army, Cherbourg Hospital, St Marie Orphanage at Cherbourg, and the Society for the Relief of Shipwrecked Mariners of France.
Louis Gustave Mouchel would be amazed and proud if he could be aware that the small business he started in 1876 in Briton Ferry had, over the following 120 years, led to the existence today of an internationally known firm, employing over 800 staff, with offices in seven locations in the United Kingdom and overseas in fourteen different countries
APPENDIX
L.G. Mouchel projects in south Wales between 1898 and 1907
Grain silos, Swansea William Weaver & Co
Skew road bridge, Blaina
Grain warehouse, CardiffN. Rees & Son
Jetty, Newport Alexandra Dock & Railway Co
Building and foundations, Cardiff Bute Dock Co
New store, Carmarthen W.C.A. Co-operative
Warehouse and offices, Cardiff Great Western Railway
New docks, Swansea Great Western Railway
Jetty, Talbot Wharf, Port Talbot Railway & Docks Co
New tip jetty, Port Talbot Railway & Docks Co
Premises, Queen Street, Cardiff J. Williams
Berw Bridge, Pontypridd Pontypridd U.D.C.
Goods shed, Newton Yard, Cardiff Great Western Railway
Library and offices, Cardiff S.W.E. Coal Owners
Coaling pits, South Dock, Cardiff
Coal hoist foundations, Cardiff Bute Dock Co
Bridge, Gwyddgrug U.D.C.
Groynes, River Avon, Port Talbot R.D.C.
Floors, Welsh Harp Hotel, Pontypridd Brewery Co
Cefn Bridge, Cefn U.D.C.
Staircase, Infirmary, Cardiff
Coaling wharf, South Dock, Swansea Great Western Railway
[Abridged by the author from his original paper. A full version has been deposited in West Glareorgan Record Office, County Hall, Swansea, where it is available for consultation.]