John Hetherington established a machine tool manufacturing company in 1836. The company was originally located in Pollard Street, Ancoats, Manchester, rapidly expanding to occupy other premises in the area. The original Pollard Street works eventually became known as the Ancoats Works. The company also had a factory at the Hope Mills on Pollard Street. Its Vulcan Works opened in 1856, also on Pollard Street, and was the company headquarters until 1939, when operations moved to the Union Iron Works in Gorton, Manchester.

Hetherington had originally been in partnership with William Fairbairn, as John Hetherington & Co, Machine Makers, but this partnership was dissolved in 1844 and Hetherington became a sole proprietor.

Hetherington’s sons joined him in business from 1854, and the company became known as John Hetherington & Sons, makers of machine tools and textile machines.

In 1851, the company employed 200 men. By 1861, the workforce had increased to 490 men, 250 boys and 46 girls. The company at this point manufactured machinery for cleaning, preparing, combing, and spinning cotton, including carding engines, drawing frames, slubbing frames, roving frames, and self-acting mules. It also continued to manufacture machine tools including self-acting slide and screw-cutting lathe, drilling and boring machines. By 1871, the workforce had expanded to 900 people.

By 1880, the Vulcan Works was the location for cotton machinery manufacture. The machine tool operation was separated out into a branch of the main company, known as Hetherington & Co, located at the Ancoats Works.

John Hetherington & Sons was incorporated as a limited company in 1890. Within a few years, it began to acquire other businesses, including Curtis, Sons & Co, which brought the Phoenix Works into the company, occupied under lease.

The company now occupied a large portion of the Ancoats manufacturing district, making it a centrally located manufacturer in the city.

In 1914, the company described itself as textile machinists and engineers' heavy machine tool makers, employing 4,200 people.

Further expansion came in 1929 with the acquisition of Smith and Coventry Ltd, machine tool manufacturers of Salford and later Timperley.

In 1931, in an attempt to counter the downturn in the textile industry, John Hetherington & Sons Ltd merged with six other companies to form Textile Machinery Makers Ltd. Each of the individual companies continued to trade under their own names until 1970, when they were consolidated into Platt UK Ltd.