Today I would like to take you back to about 1985 and take you on a tour of our depot at Green Lane Industrial Estate Spennymoor, with the aid of three photos, the first are two areal photos, which neither sadly show much of the huge parking area where most of our vans would be parked.
Looking at the first photo as you travel through the gates on the left is the Gatehouse with the warehouse behind on the right Directors and visitors carpark in front of the entrance door to our offices. Again to the right below the offices there is a white portacabin giving additional office space and the building further down below the offices is the traffic office, with windows right round like a goldfish bowl and drivers rest room. A Stairway leads down to this from a side door in our offices.
Behind the offices again to the right of the picture is our main workshops a side door from this leads under the offices into an area where the fitters toilet& washroom is located, and a workshop for our Auto-electrician together with heating and oil storage tanks. The Main workshop is 75 ft wide by 45 ft long. The fleet engineer has an office inside and a huge Wood burning stove (that provides the heating which is ducted down through the vehicle parts department and the second workshop). That workshop has four roller shutter doors leading into four service bays two with fully serviced full length pits and two solid floor area (All the buildings were built to give a height clearance of 15ft)
Keeping looking right you come to a ramp area on a concrete washing area for steam cleaning under chassis. Behind is double doors leading into our vehicle parts department which is built to join the first workshop with the second newer one. Hatch counter doors are at either side so mechanics have access from both workshops.
Next we come to our second workshop which is longer with two service bays with two full length (65ft) fully serviced pit which each could accommodate a full tractor unit coupled to 40 ft trailer with room to spare. Further down before you drive into the parking area is on the right The Wilcomatic vehicle wash which travels on a track & can wash a complete tractor unit with 40 ft trailer (including the roof)
Going back up to the Warehouse to the left in the centre of front (looking down our site) you can just make out the toilet block (Which in fact we pinched the design from one on a caravan park) Behind in front of the far end of the warehouse you can just make out a small shed like building where we stored tyres wheels etc and our Tyre fitter was based In the centre where there appears to be a mess is our fuel pump engine oil storage etc where the vehicles could refuel at either side (There was some building work going on there at the time of the photo putting new curbs in) behind near the fence far left side is one of our diesel tanks the other is at the bottom next to the vehicle wash. They were both piped to the fuel pumps.
The final square building on the left hand side as you progress down towards the parking area is our Body shop & Paint shop which could accommodate four vans. At the side of this building (Farthest on the picture is a lean-too garage for our two veteran Bedford vans)
Then its into the parking area, most of which is not shown on either photo & on the right hand side is the car parking area for employees cars.
The second picture gives a better sight of the employees car park and the Wilcomatic Vehicle wash (Which was in action at the time) This was taken before the veteran Vans garage was added to the side of the body shop & was in its original location on the far side of the warehouse. You will notice we left the original hedge which was there when it was originally farm land the maintain a natural divide between the two areas. The total site are was slightly over six acres.
The final photo was one of the warehouse when it was originally under construction and illustrates its size. Again it was built for 15 foot clearance. When we built it we containers for storage were not developed and sadly when we went containerised we found we hadn’t got the height, except in the centre for three high. When Courtaulds closed which was just yards from our building we got a part of their warehouse that easily could accommodate containers four high so we moved the household storage into that building and used our warehouse as a sorting area for our home deliveries for our mail order customers. These included British Mail Order catalogues such as Great Universal & Kays & independents such as Freemans Gratans & Empire Stores and Furniture Manufactures such as Homeworthy and Universal Bedding from Team Valley & Universal Upholstery from Chirton North Shields. Also a large area of the warehouse was converted into more office space for the Home delivery operation.
