Francis Henry Crittall was an English businessman and philanthropist

Philanthropist

A philanthropist is someone who engages in philanthropy; that is, someone who donates his or her time, money, and/or reputation to charitable causes...

 who in 1884 in the 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...

 town of Braintree

Braintree, Essex

Braintree is a town of about 42,000 people and the principal settlement of the Braintree district of Essex in the East of England. It is northeast of Chelmsford and west of Colchester on the River Blackwater, A120 road and a branch of the Great Eastern Main Line.Braintree has grown contiguous...

 instigated the manufacture of metal-framed windows by the Crittall Manufacturing Company Ltd. This company, now known as Crittall Windows Ltd

Crittall Windows Ltd

Crittall Windows Ltd is a notable English manufacturer of steel-framed windows, today based in Witham, Essex, close to its historic roots in the county...

, became the world's leading manufacturer of steel-framed windows. Crittall also funded the development of the model village

Model village

A model village is a type of mostly self-contained community, in most cases built from the late eighteenth century onwards by industrialists to house their workers...

 of Silver End

Silver End

Silver End is a small village in Essex, between Braintree and Witham in England, UK. It was conceived as a model village by the industrialist Francis Henry Crittall who established a factory there to manufacture components for metal windows.-History:...

 in Essex.

Francis Henry Crittall was the son of Francis Berrington Crittall and Fanny Godfrey. Crittall, in 1849, bought the Bank Street ironmongery

Ironmongery

Ironmongery originally referred both to the manufacture, and the place of sale of iron goods produced for domestic rather than industrial use. The usage of the term has expanded in recent times to include consumer goods made of aluminium, brass, or other metals, as well as plastics...

 in Braintree. After gaining work experience in Birmingham

Birmingham

Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...

 and Chester

Chester

Chester is a city in Cheshire, England. Lying on the River Dee, close to the border with Wales, it is home to 77,040 inhabitants, and is the largest and most populous settlement of the wider unitary authority area of Cheshire West and Chester, which had a population of 328,100 according to the...

, Francis Henry took over the family business following his father's death, and in 1884 began to manufacture metal-framed windows. Five years later (1889), the Crittall Manufacturing Company Ltd was incorporated.

At this time the firm's output in a two year period was 20 tonnes. In 1880 the company employed 11 men, by the 1890s this figure was 34, by 1918, 500.

Under Crittall's management, the company expanded both domestically and internationally, manufacturing munitions during the First World War and then providing metal window frames for the UK government's post-war housing investment programme.

Crittall's portrait was painted by Augustus Edwin John in 1919, and the work was donated by the Crittall family to the National Portrait Gallery in 1994.

Silver End

By the 1920s, it was clear that the town of Braintree could not support the needs of the Crittall workforce. Crittall employees and their families made up an estimated 10,000 of the 18,000 population of the town. Francis Crittall, after an experiment with housing in Cressing Road, Braintree, therefore decided to build a village for his factory and workforce. The Silver End Model Village, near Witham, was started in 1926, and was intended to provide a good standard of living accommodation and civic amenities centred around a Crittall factory.

While Francis Henry Crittall funded the Silver End development, it was his second son, Walter 'Pink' Crittall (1887-1956) who provided much of the artistic and technical direction. He designed houses for himself and for Crittalls' employees and, with architect Thomas S. Tait

Thomas S. Tait

Thomas Smith Tait was a prominent Scottish Modernist architect. He designed a number of buildings around the world in Art Deco and Streamline Moderne styles, notably St...

, was largely responsible for the style and appearance of Silver End.

Family life

Crittall married Ellen Laura Carter, daughter of George Carter and Laura Hadley Rodway, on 6 September 1883. Together they had four children, including Valentine George Crittall, 1st and last Baron Braintree

Valentine Crittall, 1st Baron Braintree

Valentine George Crittall, 1st Baron Braintree was a British politician and businessman who served briefly as a Labour Member of Parliament before later joining the Conservatives.-Background:...

(1884-1961), and lived at Manors in Silver End. The couple produced a memoir, Fifty Years of Work and Play, published by Constable in 1934.