It is with infinite sadness we have to announce the death of Mr. J.C.Taylor, founder of Ravenfield Designs, and my father.

Jim’s Eulogy

Jim died on Sunday the 17th July 2011, of pneumonia and heart failure, following a long, long fight against a lung disease few have ever heard of.

Jim was born in 1938, and after being educated at Hulme Grammar School, Oldham, went to Birmingham University to read electrical engineering. Dropping out in his second year, he returned to Oldham and began his career at AM Lock, designing instruments used in the textile industry. Later on, he would work for  AEG, GEC (twice) and Ferranti, twice.

In 1961, he married my mother Margaret,  and would have celebrated 50 years together in a few weeks. I came along in 1963, and my sister in 1965.

In his  last employed position at Ferranti Instrumentation in  Moston, he was first exposed to the Ferranti Viscometer, which became the basis of an interesting test rig created by BP, and the team of Pike, Banks and Kulik. Facing redundancy, after Ferranti abandoned their efforts to build a new viscometer,  Jim took some of his last holiday work,  and visited BP to offer them the design of our first viscometer, the model BE.  BP were delighted with the new instrument and helped us with many aspects of introducing a radical instrument into the market.  Our model BS and CS followed, flowing from his pen and pencils, as he pored over his drawing board – Jim never saw the point of CAD.

Jim had two, great, passions in his life, one was Ravenfield, which he created from scratch in 1981 and spent almost all his waking hours for many years in, the second was his family.

I joined Ravenfield “unofficially” in about 1981, and then officially in 1985 when I graduated. I grew as an engineer under my father’s exacting standards, and learned many practical and theoretical skills with him. I married Lizzy in 1995, and we were blessed with our sons, William and Jonathan,  who became my father’s greatest pleasure, and they in turn doted on their beloved Grandpa. Nothing was too much for Grandpa if it helped his grandsons, and he enjoyed playing with Meccano with them as much as they did with him. My sister Jill also married, and a third grandson pleased Jim greatly.

A couple of years after reentering the world of competitive ballroom dancing, after a 35 year hiatus (in the senior classes) Jim was disgnosed with a terminal lung condition, Fibrosing Alveolitis, more than 12 years ago, and managed to fight the ravages of this auto-immune disease for 10 years longer than the median survival term. Until 18 months ago, Jim managed without extra oxygen, but once started, he required exponentially more oxygen, and towards the end needed 15 litres per minute. As Jim’s health declined, I took over more and more of the work of managing the company my father had always done on his own, and it has been a very hard few years for Lizzy and I adjusting to responsibilities we always knew we would have to assume, but always in  a few more years yet.

Jim was often irrascible and could, to be polite, lack tact and diplomacy, he was uncomfortable with compromise, but a man of exacting standards and a big heart.

Thanks for everything you did for us all Dad,  We will always love you, and will always miss you.

Steve Taylor

Welcome to Ravenfield Designs Ltd

Ravenfield Designs specialises in the design & manufacture of scientific instruments. We have a global customer base which includes major oil companies and world class universities.
Our main products have historically been viscometers for the oil industry, but we have now developed a unique ultra high temperature measurement system for the properties of liquid glasses, metals and slags. We can measure at up to 1750C.
We supply a range of ancilliary equipment for our own viscometers and other industry standard rotational viscometers.

We have recently branched into the biomedical field with our Model EM Shear Generator . This instrument has been developed to apply known shear to a sample while allowing reagents to be added. Observation mechanisms for forward scattering, epifluorescence etc. can be provided

We design or design and build custom projects in laboratory and industrial instrumentation or embedded computer system design and we specialise in very highly integrated systems.