I thought I’d start a new thread on industries and manufacturers in your home City or town
Dennis (Bewick) mentioned K shoes that was a large employer in his area
I’d like to start with my home the City of Nottingham it
may bring back memories good or bad from drivers of old or new
Imperial Tobacco Ltd (John Player and Sons)
Manufacturing ended in April 2016 but the distribution side is still going in Nottingham run by DHL
Boots The Chemist
The distribution side is still going in Nottingham again nearly all done by DHL along with operating RDCs but nearly all the manufacturing is done overseas
Raleigh Cycles manufacturing now done in the Far East though the national distribution centre is based in Eastwood Notts
Home Ales Brewery closed
James Shipstone & Sons Brewery closed
Kimberley Ales Brewery closed
Royal Ordnance Factory closed
Various large Hosiery and clothing factories now all gone (too many to mention)
Plessey Communications closed
The one famous world wide known Nottingham Lace only a few small outlets left
Over 30 collieries and pits all closed
These industries employed tens of thousands of local
Everyone knew some who worked in their local industries
I’m not politicalising any reasons why these industries have gone just a trip down memory lane
Tetleys brewery in leeds springs to mind
I mentioned that “K” Shoes were the largest employer in Kendal for about 150 years and there was also a fairly large Laundry Engineer in the town on Shap road called IBIS ( Isaac Braithwaite) Engineers they manufactured machinery for laundries all over the UK and abroad mainly South Africa and Australia and New Zealand. They did diversify into structural steel for buildings which is the part of the business Bewick Transport worked for. They eventually packed up in 1979 as the demand for big laundry machinery died away .
The other place in ■■■■■■■ or ■■■■■■■■■■ as it was in the 60’s is the town of Millom which has always suffered because it is isolated out on a limb opposite Barrow in Furness on the Duddon Estuary. Well Millom was a one industry town namely the Millom Haematite Iron Works and The Hodbarrow Iron ore mine which had provided the works with ore of the finest quality for well over 100years at the time of sudden and unexpected closure in September 1968. Apparently the works had developed a revolutionary method of producing Pig Iron which was their sole product but they needed Government funding to invest in the new process. But Harold Wilson’s Labour government refused to help ( IIRC about £50mil was needed) So this was a hammer blow so the Directors of the works “pulled the plug” which in turn forced the Mine to do the same and I recall being told that on the fateful day the miners were told to switch off the pumps ( the mine ran out under the sea) and they ascended the shaft and the mine flooded out inside 24 hrs !
It was a shattering blow for a town like Millom which has taken years to get over and is still really suffering nowadays but I heard on the news last week that Millom has just been awarded £30 mil from this “levelling up fund” so it remains to be seen how much help this will be . Cheers Bewick.
My ‘home town’ was Reading which was famous for the ‘three B’s’ which were beer (H.G Simmonds, later Courages) bulbs (Suttons Seeds) and biscuits (Huntley and Palmer) but all have long gone to be replaced by a mass of IT offices. The area is now known as Silicone Alley! 
Pete.
My home village was LLangadog a small welsh village in the Towy valley in Carmarthenshire West Wales up until the turn of the century it was a thriving enployment center .We had a CO OP creamery that employed many but was closed down economic reasons so they say Now the site is a pet food manufacturing site employing very few people We had Albion Concrete a family run firm that manufactured pipes specialist concrete products and at one time was the 3rd largest manufactuers of concrete box culverts in the country .It was bought out by Hansons as Albion was a thorn in there side after 3 years was shut down .The large site is now mainly redundant with only a small agricultural merchant on site.There was also a sawmills which also closed down Now hardly any work in the locality.Progress
Railway locomotive and carriage works.
Garrards, record players
WD HO wills tobacco
Triumph international
Cloverleaf giftware
Motorola
Anchor foods
Square D
Yorkshire imperial plastics
Clares equipment
Linton + Hirst
Shorko films
Honda
Pits have all gone.
Mills have all gone.
Nothing left unfortunately to list
My home town is Bedford, once had several large engineering works in the town as well of course the brickworks.
W.H.Allen- did my apprenticeship here, employed around 2000 people when I started but gone now and of course flats now on the site as next to the railway station with quick links for London commuters.
George Fischer castings- another large employer in the town opposite side of the river to W.H.Allen, now gone and replaced with more flats and housing.
Simplex- another large employer in engineering, now gone and replaced with more flats and housing.
Igranic (cutler hammer) another large employer in engineering, now gone and yet again replaced with flats and housing.
C.a.e.c. Howard’s, - engineering, construction and transport, now all gone and replaced with a retail park,
Robertson (part of the T.I. Group) - engineering, now gone but the buildings remain as a self storage centre.
London Brick- probably the largest employer, all gone now with the sites being cleared for development. Like W.H.Allen, you always knew someone or were related to someone that worked there, all the above were good employers so a real shame and has devastated the town which is now not worth visiting for shopping purposes.
Suchards (toblerone) - chocolate factory, now gone barring the sports and recreation park, replaced with flats and housing.
There’s numerous smaller companies that have gone, the upside is that quite a few major distribution companies have had large D.C’s built but Bedford is a commuter town with a large proportion of people heading to London every day for work. As previously stated though the town is a shadow of its former self and very sad to see the decline.
Ferguson TVs gone
Itt tv s gone
Parker’s dairy gone
Only a fraction of naval yards left
Quentiq gone
RN instute medicine gone
RN Hospital Haslar gone
All Gosport has is the Paper cup factory still Hutimki
Bewick:
I mentioned that “K” Shoes were the largest employer in Kendal for about 150 years and there was also a fairly large Laundry Engineer in the town on Shap road called IBIS ( Isaac Braithwaite) Engineers they manufactured machinery for laundries all over the UK and abroad mainly South Africa and Australia and New Zealand. They did diversify into structural steel for buildings which is the part of the business Bewick Transport worked for. They eventually packed up in 1979 as the demand for big laundry machinery died away .
The other place in ■■■■■■■ or ■■■■■■■■■■ as it was in the 60’s is the town of Millom which has always suffered because it is isolated out on a limb opposite Barrow in Furness on the Duddon Estuary. Well Millom was a one industry town namely the Millom Haematite Iron Works and The Hodbarrow Iron ore mine which had provided the works with ore of the finest quality for well over 100years at the time of sudden and unexpected closure in September 1968. Apparently the works had developed a revolutionary method of producing Pig Iron which was their sole product but they needed Government funding to invest in the new process. But Harold Wilson’s Labour government refused to help ( IIRC about £50mil was needed) So this was a hammer blow so the Directors of the works “pulled the plug” which in turn forced the Mine to do the same and I recall being told that on the fateful day the miners were told to switch off the pumps ( the mine ran out under the sea) and they ascended the shaft and the mine flooded out inside 24 hrs !
It was a shattering blow for a town like Millom which has taken years to get over and is still really suffering nowadays but I heard on the news last week that Millom has just been awarded £30 mil from this “levelling up fund” so it remains to be seen how much help this will be . Cheers Bewick.
£50m in 1968 is the equivalent of £1 billion today. Given that we had devaluation in 1967 I don’t think any government would have been able or willing to provide that kind of funding in those days, no matter how valuable the product being produced was. Or today for that matter.
Dennis Javelin:
Bewick:
I mentioned that “K” Shoes were the largest employer in Kendal for about 150 years and there was also a fairly large Laundry Engineer in the town on Shap road called IBIS ( Isaac Braithwaite) Engineers they manufactured machinery for laundries all over the UK and abroad mainly South Africa and Australia and New Zealand. They did diversify into structural steel for buildings which is the part of the business Bewick Transport worked for. They eventually packed up in 1979 as the demand for big laundry machinery died away .
The other place in ■■■■■■■ or ■■■■■■■■■■ as it was in the 60’s is the town of Millom which has always suffered because it is isolated out on a limb opposite Barrow in Furness on the Duddon Estuary. Well Millom was a one industry town namely the Millom Haematite Iron Works and The Hodbarrow Iron ore mine which had provided the works with ore of the finest quality for well over 100years at the time of sudden and unexpected closure in September 1968. Apparently the works had developed a revolutionary method of producing Pig Iron which was their sole product but they needed Government funding to invest in the new process. But Harold Wilson’s Labour government refused to help ( IIRC about £50mil was needed) So this was a hammer blow so the Directors of the works “pulled the plug” which in turn forced the Mine to do the same and I recall being told that on the fateful day the miners were told to switch off the pumps ( the mine ran out under the sea) and they ascended the shaft and the mine flooded out inside 24 hrs !
It was a shattering blow for a town like Millom which has taken years to get over and is still really suffering nowadays but I heard on the news last week that Millom has just been awarded £30 mil from this “levelling up fund” so it remains to be seen how much help this will be . Cheers Bewick.£50m in 1968 is the equivalent of £1 billion today. Given that we had devaluation in 1967 I don’t think any government would have been able or willing to provide that kind of funding in those days, no matter how valuable the product being produced was. Or today for that matter.
Dennis I think I have over quoted the figure that was required to revolutionise pig iron making at Millom and I will search the archives to see what I can turn up on the subject but from what I can remember it wasn’t an “arm and a leg” at the time it was more political I understand . Cheers Dennis.
Bewick:
Dennis Javelin:
Bewick:
I mentioned that “K” Shoes were the largest employer in Kendal for about 150 years and there was also a fairly large Laundry Engineer in the town on Shap road called IBIS ( Isaac Braithwaite) Engineers they manufactured machinery for laundries all over the UK and abroad mainly South Africa and Australia and New Zealand. They did diversify into structural steel for buildings which is the part of the business Bewick Transport worked for. They eventually packed up in 1979 as the demand for big laundry machinery died away .
The other place in ■■■■■■■ or ■■■■■■■■■■ as it was in the 60’s is the town of Millom which has always suffered because it is isolated out on a limb opposite Barrow in Furness on the Duddon Estuary. Well Millom was a one industry town namely the Millom Haematite Iron Works and The Hodbarrow Iron ore mine which had provided the works with ore of the finest quality for well over 100years at the time of sudden and unexpected closure in September 1968. Apparently the works had developed a revolutionary method of producing Pig Iron which was their sole product but they needed Government funding to invest in the new process. But Harold Wilson’s Labour government refused to help ( IIRC about £50mil was needed) So this was a hammer blow so the Directors of the works “pulled the plug” which in turn forced the Mine to do the same and I recall being told that on the fateful day the miners were told to switch off the pumps ( the mine ran out under the sea) and they ascended the shaft and the mine flooded out inside 24 hrs !
It was a shattering blow for a town like Millom which has taken years to get over and is still really suffering nowadays but I heard on the news last week that Millom has just been awarded £30 mil from this “levelling up fund” so it remains to be seen how much help this will be . Cheers Bewick.£50m in 1968 is the equivalent of £1 billion today. Given that we had devaluation in 1967 I don’t think any government would have been able or willing to provide that kind of funding in those days, no matter how valuable the product being produced was. Or today for that matter.
Dennis I think I have over quoted the figure that was required to revolutionise pig iron making at Millom and I will search the archives to see what I can turn up on the subject but from what I can remember it wasn’t an “arm and a leg” at the time it was more political I understand . Cheers Dennis.
It did seem a huge sum for the time hence why I checked it out. I don’t suppose the creation of the British Steel Corporation in 1967 did them any favours though. As they weren’t included in the companies that were brought together to form BSC they would have stood little chance of getting any funds from the government. I just wonder though why they weren’t nationalised with the rest.
Dennis, I found this in Hansard from March 1967:
“However, it is interesting to read some of the reasons why the Iron and Steel Board would have refused permission had it had power to do so, because those considerations will operate in the case of Clause 15 and any Order made under it. A letter dated 7th March and written by Mr. Moore, Secretary of the Iron and Steel Board, to the managing director of the Millom company, said: The consideration that has been uppermost in the Board’s mind has been that the new process should be tried out in existing steelworks which already possess, in addition to ironmaking plant, the facilities for converting molten steel into saleable products”. That means that the existing producer would have been favoured against the new man."
Seems that if the new BSC couldn’t have it then no-one was getting it. I think the sums being asked for was just under £200k, equivalent to £3.5m today.
Sorry for taking the thread off on a tangent.
More gen Dennis ! Millom works was nationalized in 1951 but this ended in 1958 and they were sold back to the private Cranleigh Group and eventually in partnership with the Iron and Steel Research Association Millom works developed a revolutionary process of injecting oxygen into iron to make steel it was called “The Millspray” process and they had built a pilot plant at Millom works but after entering into negotiations to open a brand new plant which it was claimed would create 1000 new jobs the Political and Financial battle was unsuccessful so in September 1968 the Iron Works suddenly closed with the loss of 500 jobs as well as a couple of hundred men at the Hodbarrow ore mine next door. You are quite right Dennis that in the second bout of nationalisation in 1967 Millom was not included so in essence the works was out in “the cold” so to speak which is obviously the main cause of the closure and believe me it decimated the town of Millom for many years after.
In Spennymoor during the war there was a large munitions factory which obviously closed at the end of the war. Fortunately a company called Smart & Brown Engineering Ltd took over a large part of the site and soon the company was bought by Jules Thorn (Thorn Electrical Injuries) He started making Light fittings and Fluorescence tubes selling under Atlas lighting & Echo lighting brands. Soon Thorn ventured into electric cookers selling under the Tricity brand then along came radiograms under Ferguson & HMV brand names until eventually in 1959 Fridges again Tricity brand The factory as it was known settles a split between lighting and domestic appliances with Spennymoor as the largest Fridge factory in Europe. and altogether employing 7500 people
next large factory to be built was for Perkins Engines Peterborough, however Spennymoor workers managed to go on strike just as this newly built factory was about to open so Perkins didn’t bother leaving a massive new building empty which was eventually to become Black & Decker making drills and other products incuding lawn mowers. Black and Decker wisely forbid trade union membership and so traded fairly sucessfully employing about 2,000
Then in 1969 along came Courtaulds building a huge factory meauring in length about 1/3 mile along A167 Courtaulds employed 2,500 and decided and built an identical plant next door with the intention of doubling production and workforse However 170 blue collar workers decided to strike but were unsuccesful at bringing the rest of the workforse out in support or stop our vans and drivers delivering their products or taking in the raw materials. They infact were picketing for almost a year as the factory continued without them, but there was a very bad atmousphere and the company decided not to open the now completed second factory which stood empty
Eventually Rothmans took over the second Courtaulds factory making cigarettes employing about 1200.
First to go was Courtaulds. They had a very large British market for their yarn to hundreds of clothing manufacturers many making clothing for Marks & Spencer who bragged that all their clothes were UK made, until policy changed and that changed. Another problem was Courtaulds major exports were to Russia. However as we joined the Common Market (EEC EU or whatever they chose to call it) They demanded Courtaulds added tarriffs to Russian sales and that market was no longer viable So Courtaulds closed .
Next was Thorn. As I explained largest Fridge factory in Europe however they were having severe competition as EU started to eat their sales It came that Zanussi in Italy was able to sell fridges cheaper than they could make them at Spennymoor. They couldn’t understand why until they found EU were giving grants to zanussi and when they applied for similar grants from EU they were refused so they closed refrigeration and sold what was left to Electrolux who kept cookers going until they could asset strip and pull out of Spennymoor. Thorn Lighting which has now no connection with the orriginal Thorn business remains but in a much smaller way and as a result almost 7,000 jobs lost
Fina casualty was Black & Decker so in total about 12,000 jobs gone I cannot understand where people work today as these manufacturing jobs gone for good and never been replaced and thats just spennymoor Wthin 10 miles radius we have Bishop Auckland Crook & Durham and manufacturing disappeared there as well
Dennis Javelin:
Dennis, I found this in Hansard from March 1967:“However, it is interesting to read some of the reasons why the Iron and Steel Board would have refused permission had it had power to do so, because those considerations will operate in the case of Clause 15 and any Order made under it. A letter dated 7th March and written by Mr. Moore, Secretary of the Iron and Steel Board, to the managing director of the Millom company, said: The consideration that has been uppermost in the Board’s mind has been that the new process should be tried out in existing steelworks which already possess, in addition to ironmaking plant, the facilities for converting molten steel into saleable products”. That means that the existing producer would have been favoured against the new man."
Seems that if the new BSC couldn’t have it then no-one was getting it. I think the sums being asked for was just under £200k, equivalent to £3.5m today.
Sorry for taking the thread off on a tangent.
Not at all mate ! I reckon we have sorted it ! At least we have established the monetary implications at the time and confirmed the devious workings of the Labour Politicians and it must have been a bitter pill to swallow at Millom particularly as it was a big Labour voting area in those days !
Carl Williams:
In Spennymoor during the war there was a large munitions factory which obviously closed at the end of the war. Fortunately a company called Smart & Brown Engineering Ltd took over a large part of the site and soon the company was bought by Jules Thorn (Thorn Electrical Injuries) He started making Light fittings and Fluorescence tubes selling under Atlas lighting & Echo lighting brands. Soon Thorn ventured into electric cookers selling under the Tricity brand then along came radiograms under Ferguson & HMV brand names until eventually in 1959 Fridges again Tricity brand The factory as it was known settles a split between lighting and domestic appliances with Spennymoor as the largest Fridge factory in Europe. and altogether employing 7500 peoplenext large factory to be built was for Perkins Engines Peterborough, however Spennymoor workers managed to go on strike just as this newly built factory was about to open so Perkins didn’t bother leaving a massive new building empty which was eventually to become Black & Decker making drills and other products incuding lawn mowers. Black and Decker wisely forbid trade union membership and so traded fairly sucessfully employing about 2,000
Then in 1969 along came Courtaulds building a huge factory meauring in length about 1/3 mile along A167 Courtaulds employed 2,500 and decided and built an identical plant next door with the intention of doubling production and workforse However 170 blue collar workers decided to strike but were unsuccesful at bringing the rest of the workforse out in support or stop our vans and drivers delivering their products or taking in the raw materials. They infact were picketing for almost a year as the factory continued without them, but there was a very bad atmousphere and the company decided not to open the now completed second factory which stood empty
Eventually Rothmans took over the second Courtaulds factory making cigarettes employing about 1200.
First to go was Courtaulds. They had a very large British market for their yarn to hundreds of clothing manufacturers many making clothing for Marks & Spencer who bragged that all their clothes were UK made, until policy changed and that changed. Another problem was Courtaulds major exports were to Russia. However as we joined the Common Market (EEC EU or whatever they chose to call it) They demanded Courtaulds added tarriffs to Russian sales and that market was no longer viable So Courtaulds closed .
Next was Thorn. As I explained largest Fridge factory in Europe however they were having severe competition as EU started to eat their sales It came that Zanussi in Italy was able to sell fridges cheaper than they could make them at Spennymoor. They couldn’t understand why until they found EU were giving grants to zanussi and when they applied for similar grants from EU they were refused so they closed refrigeration and sold what was left to Electrolux who kept cookers going until they could asset strip and pull out of Spennymoor. Thorn Lighting which has now no connection with the orriginal Thorn business remains but in a much smaller way and as a result almost 7,000 jobs lost
Fina casualty was Black & Decker so in total about 12,000 jobs gone I cannot understand where people work today as these manufacturing jobs gone for good and never been replaced and thats just spennymoor Wthin 10 miles radius we have Bishop Auckland Crook & Durham and manufacturing disappeared there as well
Very well explained Carl and really interesting thanks ! It makes you want to cry it really does and we look like the UK is descending into strike anarchy again but this time it is not industrial unrest apart from the Rail disputes it is the Civil government side of the job but The Brothers are doing their best to turn it into a Political action but what they believe Starmer and his Labour cohorts will be able to do differently I can’t for the life of me imagine but I suppose the Union Barons will have to find out the hard way when we do eventually get a change of Government !
The quicker there is a large does of reality the better I say ! Cheers Dennis.
Bewick:
Carl Williams:
In Spennymoor during the war there was a large munitions factory which obviously closed at the end of the war. Fortunately a company called Smart & Brown Engineering Ltd took over a large part of the site and soon the company was bought by Jules Thorn (Thorn Electrical Injuries) He started making Light fittings and Fluorescence tubes selling under Atlas lighting & Echo lighting brands. Soon Thorn ventured into electric cookers selling under the Tricity brand then along came radiograms under Ferguson & HMV brand names until eventually in 1959 Fridges again Tricity brand The factory as it was known settles a split between lighting and domestic appliances with Spennymoor as the largest Fridge factory in Europe. and altogether employing 7500 peoplenext large factory to be built was for Perkins Engines Peterborough, however Spennymoor workers managed to go on strike just as this newly built factory was about to open so Perkins didn’t bother leaving a massive new building empty which was eventually to become Black & Decker making drills and other products incuding lawn mowers. Black and Decker wisely forbid trade union membership and so traded fairly sucessfully employing about 2,000
Then in 1969 along came Courtaulds building a huge factory meauring in length about 1/3 mile along A167 Courtaulds employed 2,500 and decided and built an identical plant next door with the intention of doubling production and workforse However 170 blue collar workers decided to strike but were unsuccesful at bringing the rest of the workforse out in support or stop our vans and drivers delivering their products or taking in the raw materials. They infact were picketing for almost a year as the factory continued without them, but there was a very bad atmousphere and the company decided not to open the now completed second factory which stood empty
Eventually Rothmans took over the second Courtaulds factory making cigarettes employing about 1200.
First to go was Courtaulds. They had a very large British market for their yarn to hundreds of clothing manufacturers many making clothing for Marks & Spencer who bragged that all their clothes were UK made, until policy changed and that changed. Another problem was Courtaulds major exports were to Russia. However as we joined the Common Market (EEC EU or whatever they chose to call it) They demanded Courtaulds added tarriffs to Russian sales and that market was no longer viable So Courtaulds closed .
Next was Thorn. As I explained largest Fridge factory in Europe however they were having severe competition as EU started to eat their sales It came that Zanussi in Italy was able to sell fridges cheaper than they could make them at Spennymoor. They couldn’t understand why until they found EU were giving grants to zanussi and when they applied for similar grants from EU they were refused so they closed refrigeration and sold what was left to Electrolux who kept cookers going until they could asset strip and pull out of Spennymoor. Thorn Lighting which has now no connection with the orriginal Thorn business remains but in a much smaller way and as a result almost 7,000 jobs lost
Fina casualty was Black & Decker so in total about 12,000 jobs gone I cannot understand where people work today as these manufacturing jobs gone for good and never been replaced and thats just spennymoor Wthin 10 miles radius we have Bishop Auckland Crook & Durham and manufacturing disappeared there as well
Very well explained Carl and really interesting thanks ! It makes you want to cry it really does and we look like the UK is descending into strike anarchy again but this time it is not industrial unrest apart from the Rail disputes it is the Civil government side of the job but The Brothers are doing their best to turn it into a Political action but what they believe Starmer and his Labour cohorts will be able to do differently I can’t for the life of me imagine but I suppose the Union Barons will have to find out the hard way when we do eventually get a change of Government !
The quicker there is a large does of reality the better I say ! Cheers Dennis.
Like you say Dennis it does make you cry as the job losses didn’t end with the losses in the factories Service industries jobs went too We for instance made 250 redundancies local shops closed etc etc and to crown it they are building houses on the land where all the factories stood. Future generations will be economic cannibals with jobs like Dog walkers and of course thousands of jobs ‘working’ for local government etc