Rollins Bulldog Tools is a British manufacturer of gardening

Gardening

Gardening is the practice of growing and cultivating plants. Ornamental plants are normally grown for their flowers, foliage, or overall appearance; useful plants are grown for consumption , for their dyes, or for medicinal or cosmetic use...

 and agricultural tools based in Wigan

Wigan

Wigan is a town in Greater Manchester, England. It stands on the River Douglas, south-west of Bolton, north of Warrington and west-northwest of Manchester. Wigan is the largest settlement in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan and is its administrative centre. The town of Wigan had a total...

, Greater Manchester

Greater Manchester

Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county in North West England, with a population of 2.6 million. It encompasses one of the largest metropolitan areas in the United Kingdom and comprises ten metropolitan boroughs: Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford, Wigan, and the...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

.

History

Bulldog tools was founded by William & Henry Parkes, established in 1780 at the Clarington Forge site in Wigan. Bulldog Tools is one of the oldest businesses still existing in the Wigan area today, still producing products on the same factory site as originally intended. Today it is owned by the Rollins Group based in Harlow

Harlow

Harlow is a new town and local government district in Essex, England. It is located in the west of the county and on the border with Hertfordshire, on the Stort Valley, The town is near the M11 motorway and forms part of the London commuter belt.The district has a current population of 78,889...

 in Essex

Essex

Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...

 who acquired Bulldog Tools in 2004.

Garden tools

Tools produced at the factory include spade

Spade

A spade is a tool designed primarily for the purpose of digging or removing earth. Early spades were made of riven wood. After the art of metalworking was discovered, spades were made with sharper tips of metal. Before the advent of metal spades manual labor was less efficient at moving earth,...

s, shovels, fork

Garden fork

A garden fork, spading fork, digging fork or graip is a gardening implement, with a handle and several short, sturdy tines. It is used for loosening, lifting and turning over soil in gardening and farming...

s, rake

Rake

Rake may refer to:* Rake , a horticultural implement, a long-handled tool with tines* Rake or hay rake, a farm implement* Rake or castor angle – various fork offset angles in bicycle and motorcycle geometry...

s, hoe

Hoe (tool)

A hoe is an ancient and versatile agricultural tool used to move small amounts of soil. Common goals include weed control by agitating the surface of the soil around plants, piling soil around the base of plants , creating narrow furrows and shallow trenches for planting seeds and bulbs, to chop...

s and various gardening

Gardening

Gardening is the practice of growing and cultivating plants. Ornamental plants are normally grown for their flowers, foliage, or overall appearance; useful plants are grown for consumption , for their dyes, or for medicinal or cosmetic use...

 hand tools. These products are made for agricultural and domestic use. The spade and fork heads are solid forged

Forged

Forged is a book written by biblical scholar, Bart D. Ehrman which attempts to analyze the historical accuracy of the Christian Bible. The book posits that 11 or more books out of the 27 books of the Christian New Testament canon were written as certain types of forgeries related to the politics...

 using a single piece of steel

Steel

Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...

 and were up until recently made using carbon

Carbon

Carbon is the chemical element with symbol C and atomic number 6. As a member of group 14 on the periodic table, it is nonmetallic and tetravalent—making four electrons available to form covalent chemical bonds...

 steel, today a boron

Boron

Boron is the chemical element with atomic number 5 and the chemical symbol B. Boron is a metalloid. Because boron is not produced by stellar nucleosynthesis, it is a low-abundance element in both the solar system and the Earth's crust. However, boron is concentrated on Earth by the...

 steel compound is preferred. The company is one of the last remaining manufacturers of traditional solid forged garden tools in the UK.

The world's largest spade

In 2010, as part of its 230th anniversary celebrations, Bulldog Tools manufactured the world's largest spade at its forge in Wigan. The spade is 3.61 metres high, weighs 180kg and took 160 hours to make. It currently holds the Guinness World Record.