Slough manufacturing history

 A child of the War Office. Slough was one of many Buckinghamshire villages drawn to ever expanding London. London needed vegetables and Slough grew them. London needed houses and Slough had been making bricks for centuries; Eton College was built with Slough bricks. Slough wanted to be linked to the rest of the country by rail, but the Provost of Eton complained that the boys under his charge might use it to get away.

The Great Western Railway did come, but with no station for Slough; the nearest was in the neighbouring village of Langley. Trains did however stop in Slough, at a make-shift station, and then ran on through Langley without stopping on their way into London. The railway did slowly attract manufacturers, Slough was given its own station and trains began to stop at Langley.

James Elliman was already in the town as a linen draper and was producing his famous embrocation. He prospered and provided the town with a fire station and recreation ground. In contrast Lovegrove's chair manufactory closed. Halley's mineral water plant, the Gotha iron works and Fulbrook's engineering works all set up. Of more enduring benefit to the town, Horlicks, created in Canada but which nourished our forces in both world wars, chose to manufacture in the town. Naylor Bros. Paints came to Slough and formed the basis of ICI's paint division famously producing Dulux.

In 1917, the War Office commissioned the construction of a Mechanical Transport Repair Depot on a 600 acre site on which work began in July 1918. The depot was to collect, repair and repurpose the many thousands of vehicles used by the army in the war. In the months that followed the armistice, work continued until a parliamentary committee produced a report with the recommendation that the entire site, vehicles and all, be sold.

The site was bought by a consortium of businessmen and it became owned by the Slough Trading Company. Surplus vehicles were sold and buildings completed. The first factories were let to Gillette, Johnson and Johnson and the Hygenic Ice Company; Citroen Cars followed. The infrastructure of what had now become Slough Estates Ltd was added to, and further tenants arrived. St Helens Cable and Rubber brought its workforce from Warrington. Three Scots entrepreneurs set up Bitumen Industries but of greater significance Forrester Mars set up a confectionary factory and also a plant for producing food for the nation's increasing number of pets. Crane Packing followed with an Art Deco building echoing the design of the Mars towers. Workers came to Slough from the depressed areas of the country but the town struggled to build enough housing and community facilities.

In the Second World War nearby Langley was home to Hawker Aircraft's production of Hurricane fighter planes. After the war, Langley Park became the headquarters of Radio and Allied (later GEC Radio and Television) then run by Michael Sobbell, father in law of Arnold Weinstock. Both would become part of GEC which later also had in Slough Satchwell Controls. Langley also attracted the Ford Motor Company to build its commercial vehicle plant where the first Ford Transit was made. In order to house this further growth in the population, a good number of prefabs were erected.

Was John Betjeman right when he wrote: 'Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough'? The poem is a critique of places like Slough where fields were replaced by factories and to the benefit of 'the man with the double chin' who became rich as a result. The report on the parliamentary debate on the siting of the Mechanical Transport Repair Depot quotes members as lamenting the loss of 600 acres of fine wheat land.

Slough Trading Estate is the largest industrial estate in Europe under single ownership. It has some six hundred tenants from the UK and overseas countries including USA, Germany and South Korea. The estate receives electricity and heating from a dedicated power station fuel by refuse. Tenants now include Electrolux, GSK and Azko Nobel.

Further reading:

Judith Hunter, The Story of Slough (Newbury: Local Heritage Books, 1983)

Basildon manufacturing history

 The new town of Basildon was only eight miles from Tilbury Docks with good road links to the east of London. This location clearly attracted the Ford Motor Company, which was outgrowing its Dagenham site, to move its tractor manufacture to Basildon. The proximity to the docks also attracted cigarette makers, Carreras. In 1964 New Holland completed their first tractor factory in the town, followed by Standard Telephones, MK Electric and Yardley.

The development corporation produced a promotional brochure encouraging other businesses to the town. Highlighted were the availability of good housing and community facilities for employees and their families. The businesses mentioned in the brochure were not only the big names although Marconi was highlighted a building a factory for the ‘meticulously accurate construction of delicate precisions equipment’ for radio, radar and other electronics.

Albert Mann’s Engineering Company manufactured rolling mills, Nufloor manufactured floor sanders and polishers and Teleflex of Shadwell Heath built a new factory manufacturing conveyors and remote controls. The new town also attracted old skills such as Engineers Patternmaking and Thompson & Foster cardboard boxes and corrugated paper.

Further reading

Industrial Development in Basildon New Town (Basildon Development Corporation)

Who else shaped the Manufacturing World - The American System of Manufacturing

 Continuing my quest to discover who else shaped the manufacturing world, not unreasonably, I turn to America. 

An entry in the Oxford reference book is clear that America had a system of manufacturing that put it well ahead of other manufacturing nations. An academic article is more cautious looking at the American manufacturing system in the context of four products: guns, wooden timepieces, watches and axes. The system, in short, was to have interchangeable parts which could be machine made in bulk and then put together in the final product, the key being that all this could be done by unskilled workers. The article highlights one drawback that more time is needed for adjustment as interchangeable parts in practice don’t fit perfectly. Nonetheless, there it seems is the ‘system’.

The story of American manufacturing picks up from the accounts of the early settlements where the imperative was to secure food and shelter. Rebecca Fraser’s account of the Mayflower Generation focuses on the struggles with ill-health and the uninviting natural environment; relations with the native population were then not hostile. In time hostility grew as the native Indians took exception to the approach of some settlers. A third imperative was thus security.

As population increased and the infrastructure of society developed, American found itself as an exporter of agricultural produce not least tobacco, sugar and cotton. Imports were of slaves for the plantations but also manufactured goods. These goods would include weapons, agricultural tools, clothing and basic objects for the home.

The war of independence drew a line in the sand as the newly free nation weened itself off dependence on the old colonial power. This didn’t happen overnight and indeed had probably started before independence as Americans would invite in particular textile and arms manufacturers to help them set up their own facilities. As would be the case so often in the way Britain shaped the manufacturing world, the young countries would create new factories with new machinery and so not be incumbered with earlier processes or machines.

This opportunity to start with a clean sheet of paper surely contributed the what became known as the American System of Manufacturing where identical parts would be produced using machines instead of the then traditional more labour intensive and skilled manual process. Another driver of this was the need to move a workforce from agriculture to manufacturing without the time consuming learning of manual skills. The nature of the American republic is important. Where we talk of agricultural workers, we often mean small holders; men and women who had fought their way into self-sufficiency. There would therefore not be many prepared to give that up for the sake of a job in a factory. Equally in the agrarian society there were not skilled mechanics.

One name stands out in addressing this challenge and that was Eli Whitney whose career began in the southern states where he invented the cotton gin to improve the processing of raw cotton. He then moved north and set up in gun making. In order to meet the volumes needed, tasks needed to be undertaken by machines operated by unskilled labour.

Inventions alone were not enough, the creation of the American arms and textile industries was enabled by government purchasing for the needs of the army and so creating a level of demand that justified mechanisation. The position of US Ordnance is interesting. There were two main arsenals in Springfield, Massachusetts, and in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. In time these were supplemented by private manufacturers, principally Winchester Repeating Arms Company and Colt’s Patent Firearms Manufacturing both of which became successful leaders.

The evidence is that by 1851 the American system of manufacture was a known quantity as there is the story of Colt visiting the Great Exhibition and meeting a steam engine manufacturer, Richard Garrett, who was so impressed by Colt’s manufacturing methods that he built the first British factory geared to mass production, the Long Shop.

I can fast forward to the Second World War when Ford tried to make Rolls-Royce Merlin engines. These were handmade, but Ford needed to mass produce. Ford and Rolls-Royce engineers broke down the engine into parts and then into the engineering steps required to make those parts. These steps would be carried out on machines by largely unskilled workers many of whom were women new to the workplace.

Going back to the nineteenth century, America was becoming self-sufficient in manufacturing with one major exception. America, whilst rich in raw material, had only a very small capacity to produce iron and none really for steel, and it was steel that was needed not least for the massive project of connecting American by rail. This meant that not only England, but Germany and Belgium exported steel rails, tyres and other railway equipment including locomotives and rolling stock. I have written in HBSTMW how this export trade boosted British steel making and this was also the case with the German Krupp which I write about in a separate post. The story of the American steel industry is thus another strand which I will cover.

The image is of my mother and father together with the president of Chrysler at their WW2 tank factory which surely epitomised the American System of Manufacturing. You can read more of this by following this link.