Ransome Hoffmann Pollard Ltd

The United Kingdom's first ball bearing factory was established at New Street and Rectory Lane in Chelmsford in 1898 by cousins Geoffrey and Charles Barrett and bankrolled by American ball bearing machine manufacturer Ernst Gustav Hoffmann from whom the Company took its name. The Hoffmann Manufacturing Company rapidly expanded and soon achieved worldwide fame for their precision-made bearings boasting an accuracy better than 1/10,000 of an inch (2.5 micrometres) for all their products. Hoffmann bearings were later used in the first transatlantic flights and extensively on machinery during World War I. For many years it was Chelmsford's main employer with more employees than the nearby Marconi Company.

The firm became Ransome Hoffmann and Pollard (RHP) after the amalgamation with the Ransome and Marles Bearing Company together with the Pollard Ball and Roller Bearing Company in 1969.^[1] The factory that once employed 7500 employees over 50 acres (20 ha) in its heyday^[2] was wound down during the 1980s and finally closed for good on 23 December 1989.^[2]

The RHP brand, intellectual property rights and company assets were absorbed into the Japanese NSK Ltd bearing company in early 1990 trading as NSK-RHP Ltd.^[3] at its UK base in Newark on Trent with the historic R.H.P. name finally disappearing in 2001.^[3]

Most of the factory was demolished during the summer of 1990 and the site is now occupied by the sprawling Rivermead Campus of the Anglia Ruskin University.

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