John James Hughes was a Welsh

Welsh people

The Welsh people are an ethnic group and nation associated with Wales and the Welsh language.John Davies argues that the origin of the "Welsh nation" can be traced to the late 4th and early 5th centuries, following the Roman departure from Britain, although Brythonic Celtic languages seem to have...

 engineer, businessman and founder of a city in Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

. The city was originally named Yuzovka or Hughesovka (Юзовка) after Hughes, ("Yuz" being a Russian or Ukrainian approximation of Hughes) but was renamed Stalino in 1924 (in 1961 the name was changed again, to Donetsk

Donetsk

Donetsk , is a large city in eastern Ukraine on the Kalmius river. Administratively, it is a center of Donetsk Oblast, while historically, it is the unofficial capital and largest city of the economic and cultural Donets Basin region...

).

Biography

Hughes was born in Merthyr Tydfil

Merthyr Tydfil

Merthyr Tydfil is a town in Wales, with a population of about 30,000. Although once the largest town in Wales, it is now ranked as the 15th largest urban area in Wales. It also gives its name to a county borough, which has a population of around 55,000. It is located in the historic county of...

, Wales

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

, where his father was head engineer at the Cyfarthfa Ironworks

Cyfarthfa Ironworks

The Cyfarthfa Ironworks was a major 18th century and 19th century ironworks located in Cyfarthfa, on the north-western edge of Merthyr Tydfil, in South Wales.-The beginning:...

. It was there that Hughes started his career, under his father's supervision.

He then moved to Ebbw Vale

Ebbw Vale

Ebbw Vale is a town at the head of the valley formed by the Ebbw Fawr tributary of the Ebbw River, south Wales. It is the largest town and the administrative centre of Blaenau Gwent county borough...

, before joining the Uskside Foundry in Newport, Monmouthshire

Newport

Newport is a city and unitary authority area in Wales. Standing on the banks of the River Usk, it is located about east of Cardiff and is the largest urban area within the historic county boundaries of Monmouthshire and the preserved county of Gwent...

 in the 1840s. It was here than Hughes made his reputation and fortune, patent

Patent

A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....

ing an number of inventions in armaments and armour plating. The resultant revenues allowed him to acquire a shipyard

Shipyard

Shipyards and dockyards are places which repair and build ships. These can be yachts, military vessels, cruise liners or other cargo or passenger ships. Dockyards are sometimes more associated with maintenance and basing activities than shipyards, which are sometimes associated more with initial...

 aged 28, and by the age of 36 he owned a foundry

Foundry

A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal in a mold, and removing the mold material or casting after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals processed are aluminum and cast iron...

 in Newport. It was also during this time that he married Elizabeth Lewis, and had eight children: six boys and two girls, all born in Newport.

Millwall Iron Works

In the mid 1850s, Highes moved to London to become manager of C.J.Mare's forges and rolling mills, which was then taken over by the Millwall Iron Works & Shipbuilding Company

Millwall Iron Works

The Millwall Iron Works, London, England, was a 19th century industrial complex and series of companies, which developed from 1824. Formed from a series of small ship building companies to address the need to build larger and larger ships, the holding company collapsed after the Panic of 1866...

, part of the Millwall Iron Works, Shipbuilding and Graving Docks Company. Hughes was a director of the company when it floundered, and resultantly became manager of the residual Millwall Iron Works Company. During this period, the various companies and successors won worldwide acclaim for the iron cladding of wooden warships for the British Admiralty, for Hughes was given much of the credit. In 1864 he designed a gun carriage for heavy cannons, which came to be used by the Royal Navy

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

, as well as the navies of some other European countries.

Foundation of Donetsk

In 1868, the Millwall Iron Works Company received an order from the Imperial Russian Government

Russian Empire

The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

 for the plating of a naval fortress being built at Kronstadt

Kronstadt

Kronstadt , also spelled Kronshtadt, Cronstadt |crown]]" and Stadt for "city"); is a municipal town in Kronshtadtsky District of the federal city of St. Petersburg, Russia, located on Kotlin Island, west of Saint Petersburg proper near the head of the Gulf of Finland. Population: It is also...

 on the Baltic Sea

Baltic Sea

The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and...

. Hughes accepted a concession from the Imperial Russian Government to develop metal works in the region, and in 1869 acquired a piece of land to the north of the Azov Sea from Russian statesman Viktor Kochubey

Viktor Kochubey

Count Viktor Pavlovich Kochubey was a Russian statesman and a close aide of Alexander I of Russia. Of Ukrainian birth, he was a great-grandson of the celebrated Vasily Kochubey. He took part in the Privy Committee that outlined Government reform of Alexander I. He served in London and Paris...

.

He formed the 'New Russia Company Ltd.' to raise capital, and in the summer of 1870 aged 55 he moved to Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

. He sailed with eight ships, with not only all the equipment necessary to establish a metal works, but also much of the skilled labour; a group of about a hundred ironworker

Ironworker

Ironworker is a class of machines that can shear, notch, and punch holes in steel plate. Ironworkers generate force using mechanical advantage or hydraulic systems. Modern systems use hydraulic rams powered by a heavy alternating current electric motor. High strength carbon steel blades and dies...

s and miners mostly from South Wales

South Wales

South Wales is an area of Wales bordered by England and the Bristol Channel to the east and south, and Mid Wales and West Wales to the north and west. The most densely populated region in the south-west of the United Kingdom, it is home to around 2.1 million people and includes the capital city of...

.

Immediately he started to build metal works close to the river Kalmius

Kalmius

The Kalmius is one of two rivers flowing through the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. The other river called the Kalchik flows into the Kalmius. The Kalmius flows into the Sea of Azov near the Azovstal steel manufacturing combine....

, at a site near the village of Alexandrovka

Alexandrovka

Alexandrovka or Aleksandrovka may refer to:Modern inhabited localities*Aleksandrovka, Khachmaz, a village in Azerbaijan*Aleksandrovka, Kazakhstan, a village in Kazakhstan*Alexandrovka, Russia, name of several rural localities in Russia...

. The state-of-the-art works had eight blast furnace

Blast furnace

A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally iron.In a blast furnace, fuel and ore and flux are continuously supplied through the top of the furnace, while air is blown into the bottom of the chamber, so that the chemical reactions...

s and was capable of a full production cycle, with the first pig iron

Pig iron

Pig iron is the intermediate product of smelting iron ore with a high-carbon fuel such as coke, usually with limestone as a flux. Charcoal and anthracite have also been used as fuel...

 cast in 1872. During the 1870s, collieries and iron ore mines were sunk, and brickworks

Brickworks

A brickworks also known as a brick factory, is a factory for the manufacturing of bricks, from clay or shale. Usually a brickworks is located on a clay bedrock often with a quarry for clay on site....

 and other facilities established to make the isolated works a self-sufficient industrial complex. He further built a railway line producing factory. All of Hughes facilities were held under the 'Novorussian society for coal, iron and rails production.'
The Hughes factory gave its name to the settlement which grew in its shadow, and the town of Hughesovka (Yuzovka) grew rapidly. Hughes personally provided a hospital, schools, bath houses, tea rooms, a fire brigade and an Anglican church dedicated to the patron saints St George and St David. The land around the metal works quickly grew to become an industrial and cultural centre in the region, with the population of the city founded by Hughes now exceeds 1 million.

Over the next twenty years, the works prospered and expanded, first under John Hughes and then, after his death in 1889, under the management of four of his sons. Amazingly, John Hughes was only semi-literate, he was unable to write and could only read capital letters.

Death and burial

Hughes died on a business trip to St Petersburg. His body was immediately repatriated to the UK for burial; his wife had predeceased him in 1880 and he was buried beside her at West Norwood Cemetery

West Norwood Cemetery

West Norwood Cemetery is a cemetery in West Norwood in London, England. It was also known as the South Metropolitan Cemetery.One of the first private landscaped cemeteries in London, it is one of the Magnificent Seven cemeteries of London, and is a site of major historical, architectural and...

. Several of his sons were taken there for burial when they died.

Post Hughes

By the end of the nineteenth century, the works was the largest in the Russian Empire, producing 74% of all Russian iron by 1913. A period of relative decline in the early years of the twentieth century was followed by expansion during World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, but the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 brought the Hughes family connection with the works to a close. The Hughes brothers and almost all of their foreign employees left Russia, and the works were taken over by the Bolshevik

Bolshevik

The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....

s in 1919. The town of Hughesovka

Donetsk

Donetsk , is a large city in eastern Ukraine on the Kalmius river. Administratively, it is a center of Donetsk Oblast, while historically, it is the unofficial capital and largest city of the economic and cultural Donets Basin region...

 was renamed first to Stalino, in 1924, and then Donetsk in 1961. The works survived and prospered, and Donetsk is still a major centre of metallurgical industries.

Many of the men who accompanied John Hughes settled in Hughesovka, bringing out their wives and families. Over the years, although a Russian workforce was trained by the company, skilled workers from the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 continued to be employed, and many technical, engineering and managerial positions were filled by British (and especially Welsh) emigrants. A thriving expatriate community was established, living in good quality company housing, and provided with an English school

English School

The English School of international relations theory maintains that there is a 'society of states' at the international level, despite the condition of anarchy...

 and an Anglican church. Life could be hard, with very cold winters, hot summers, and occasional cholera epidemics, but some families remained in Hughesovka for many years. After the Bolshevik revolution, however, almost all returned to Britain, although a few stayed on, and their descendents still live in Donetsk.

Publications

• An illustrated booklet on the history of Hughesovka is published by the Glamorgan Record Office. 'Hughesovka, A Welsh Enterprise in Imperial Russia' by Susan Edwards can be purchased from the Glamorgan Record Office, The Glamorgan Building, King Edward VII Avenue, Cathays Park, Cardiff, CF10 3NE.
• The Iron Tsar, the Life and Times of John Hughes, Roderick Heather, Penpress 2010

External links