Scottish shale Scottish shale

Rowatt & Yooll

Company number:
Not known
Share capital:
£?
Started:
1866 or earlier
Finished:
1879
Registered office:

No known

Oil works:
Kilrenny Oil Works

Thomas Rowatt was James Young's Edinburgh agent, working as his representative in negotiating mineral leases and, from 26th January 1858 managing Young's Edinburgh sales office. James Young's diaries (quoted by John Butt) reveal that Young became unhappy with Rowatt's organisational abilities and eventually replaced him.

The firm of Thomas Rowatt & Son was first listed in the Edinburgh Post office directory in 1862 as paraffin lamp and mineral oil manufacturers with premises in Lothian Road. From 1873, the premises were listed as 126 Fountainbridge, and from 1875, the firm was listed as Thomas Rowatt & Sons. From 1879 the firm was listed only as paraffin lamp manufactures, dropping all reference to mineral oil manufacture.

Rowatt's patent "Anucpnic lamp" featured in press advertisments throughout Britain and Ireland as "giving the whitest flame and most brilliant light of any lamp known; no chimney, smoke, nor smell." The firm had a London sales office. Some adverts in the Scottish press also made reference to White non-explosive oil manufactured by ROWATTS & YOOLL, Kilrenny Oil Works.

Thomas Rowatt senior died in 1880, but the firm of Thomas Rowatt & Sons continued into the mid 1890's.

Valuation rolls list the proprietors of Kinrenny Oil Works as Rowatt & Yooll with partners as listed below. Newspaper accounts name A.G. Yooll as Managing Partner of the works. The 1878 Slater's directory list the firm of Graham-Yooll & Sons, Pittenweem as brick and tile manufacturers, A. Graham-Yooll masters of Kellie and Balcormo colliery, and William Graham-Yooll as a manure agent.

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  • Newspaper references

      • New patents: 2871. To Thomas Rowatt the younger, of the firm of Thomas Rowatt and Son, of Edinburgh and London, Lamp Manufacturers, for the invention of "improvements in lamps for burning paraffin, belmontine, petroleum, and other like hydro-carbon fluids."

      Edinburgh Gazette, 9th December 1864

      .......

      THE trustees of tbe late Thomas Rowatt, Esquire, of Palmerston-road, Edinburgh, one of the Partners of the firm of Messrs. Thomas Rowatt and Sons, Paraffin Lamp Manufacturers, Edinburgh and London, hereby (in consequence of the death of the said Thomas Rowatt) give intimation to all interested that they, the said trustees, and tbe representatives and estates of the said Thomas Rowatt, are not responsible or liable for any of the obligation of the said firm of Messrs. Thomas Rowatt and Sons, incurred since the date of Mr. Rowatt's death on 9th October last, or that may hereafter be incurred.

      Witness at our hands at Edinburgh, this 12th day of November 1880 years.
      J. Clapperton
      Robert Younger
      J. M'M. Rowatt,
      Joseph Rowatt,
      A. Kirk Mackie,
      Quorum of Trustees.

      Edinburgh Gazette, 16th November 1880

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