Chemical Manure Company, image & Found by Dave8472.
Found in Kent,19 x 4mm.
Annulus with inscription reading (C)H(E)MICAL MANURE Co. curving downward and ...EED curving upward with (LON)DON straight across the centre. The other side appears to have a smaller annulus or possibly three concentric rings. No lettering can be made out on this side. There is probably a word before CHEMICAL and EED might be the ending of GUARANTEED.
Could well be Lawes Chemical Manure Co. Ltd. "Lawes Chemical Company was founded by Sir John Bennet Lawes (knighted in 1882 for general services to agriculture). He set up a factory for manufacture of super-phosphates at Deptford Creek, London, in 1843, and bought in 1857 100 acres at Barking Creek, Essex, on which the main factory and workmen's cottages were built. The business was purchased from Lawes by a group of businessmen in 1872 and incorporated with limited liability as Lawes Chemical Manure Co. Ltd, to manufacture artificial fertilisers, sulphuric acid and other chemical fertilisers. Branches were established in Scotland, Wales and the Channel Islands, and the company traded overseas in North and South America, India, New Zealand, Australia South Africa and the Middle East. Lawes also established several subsidiary companies as artificial fertiliser merchants. The company became Lawes Chemical Co. Ltd. in 1935 and went into liquidation in 1969, the business continuing to trade under the name of Seabright Chemicals Ltd."
The Stevens Chemical Manure Co. Ltd., registered at Companies House on 29 March, 1883, is another possibility supported by the Kent find-spot but the company probably stopped having anything to do with chemical manure in the 20th century and the current address is probably as far from the company's origins as its current management consultancy activities are from fertilizer! See Price list for Stevens Chemical Manure Co. Ltd
