Reading manufacturing history

 Reading enjoyed the twin advantages of being in a fertile agricultural county and being positioned on major lines of communication. It was on the river Thames and in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was linked by canals to the Midlands and the West Country; the image is of a lock in the Kennet and Avon canal. Importantly Reading was on the main road route from London to Bristol when the latter was booming with overseas trade.

Links provided the people of Reading with metal products from Birmingham, pottery from Staffordshire, groceries from London and stone from Bath.

It had been a cloth producing town, but this industry had gravitated to those areas whose natural and commercial resources best favoured it. Fortunately for Reading, London was growing quickly with a thirsty population preferring beer to polluted water. Reading provided tons of malt using water transport.

For a town far from the sea, it was perhaps surprising that a Reading firm supplied the navy with the sail cloth it needed to fight the Napoleonic wars. Musgrave Lamb in Katesgrove Lane played a key part of winning the battle of Trafalgar.

Malt provided the impetus for the industry for which Reading would become famous the world over. Joseph Huntley used money made from malting to set up his biscuit shop using local flour. Later, his son, also Joseph, set up Huntley Boorne & Stevens making tins in which to sell the biscuits in prime condition. It was Joseph's other son, Thomas, who persevered with the biscuit shop.

The coming of the railways in 1840 further improved communications. One year later Thomas Huntley took his cousin George Palmer into partnership. Palmer's focus was on the mechanisation of biscuit making. This was far from straight forward and cost the young business dearly.

Biscuit making was viewed as a lowly craft with hard, barely edible ships biscuits being made by small bakers close to ports. Fancy biscuits for home consumption were again made by bakers, whose main business was bread. The advent of the Napoleonic wars put pressure on the makers of ships biscuits. The three main naval ports of Plymouth, Deptford and Gosport had their own victualling yards which now embraced biscuit making. At the Clarence yard in Gosport, advances were made in introducing machinery, yet worker resistance was such that only very small steps were possible. After the wars further advances were made but anything like continuous production was a long way off.

Continuous production was George Palmer's goal and he worked on this with a local machine manufacturer, William Exzall. Eventually the problem was solved and machinery was installed in a former silk mill close by the Thames and Kennet and Avon canal. The challenge then was to expand the market which was then only local towns. Advertising and the use of sales agents was the route chosen until full time travelling salesmen could be employed. The invention of a process to print images and patterns directly onto tins cemented the image of the company in the minds of the buying public.

It was almost a game of leapfrog. New customers were found and capacity was utilised, but then demand leapt ahead and production had to catch up. One area of the process that was still manual was the loading of the ovens; what was needed were ovens through which a conveyor could pass carrying the biscuits. Such a mechanism had been tried by the American navy. Palmer found the perfect ovens for his purposes through two London companies: A.M. Perkins and Joseph Baker. These companies would later merge to become Baker Perkins of Peterborough. In Reading, Huntley and Palmer were the dominant employer and took advantage of this by offering meagre wages. The two world wars brought manpower pressures and wages had responded, however the company remained a low pay employer until well into the twentieth century when union action brought pressure to bear.

When Thomas Huntley died, George went in to partnership with his brothers, William who ran the factory and Samuel, based in London, who sold to that ever expanding market as well as managing exports. Biscuits were now part of the nation's diet. Railway journeys were nourished by biscuits, until dining cars appeared. Other biscuit manufacturers emerged including Carrs and Peak Frean with whom Huntley and Palmer would later enjoy a more formal relationship in Associated Biscuits. The Reading factory was further enlarged. The next generation of Palmers joined the business which was incorporated as a limited company on 29 March 1898. It was still very much a family affair with the shares split between George's descendants and those of Samuel; William died a bachelor. It then employed 5,000 people. Management continued as before with family members in charge and an understanding that, depending on the time of year, the chairman would spend three days a week hunting, shooting or playing cricket. Money for the business was spent only when there was no alternative. Machines were repaired rather than being replaced with more up to date technology. Unfortunately competitors took a rather different attitude.

The twentieth century saw the company serve its country in two world wars, suffer in the depression, face competition from other biscuit makers and retailers’ own brands; nevertheless it did prosper in the fifties. Associated Biscuits was eventually bought by Nabisco. I write of United Biscuits, Associated's great rival in Vehicles to Vaccines.

But back to Reading in the 19th century. Not all the malt produced in the town left for London; local brewers met the needs of the local population, or rather they didn't. The suggestion is that they worked in a cartel keeping the quality of beer low but cheap to make. William Simonds broke ranks and his brewery became highly successful using latest technology and chemistry to improve the product. Simonds merged with Courage and Barclay in 1960.

In common with many towns in agricultural areas, Reading manufactured farm machinery. The company emerged from Reading Iron works, was successful for many decades but closed in 1887. The mantel was taken up by George Gascoigne in the twenties in his milking machine business. The agricultural theme is taken up by Sutton's seeds. The nineteenth century saw an increase in farming but also in households with gardens; all these needed seeds. Martin Hope Sutton took advantage of this and the Penny Post to circulate catalogues and then the fast improving rail service for speedy delivery of the seeds.

In the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, it is Reading's communications but in particular its proximity to Heathrow which has grown its economy. It is now boasts Microsoft, Cisco, Ericsson, Apple and Proctor and Gamble.

Further reading:

• Malcolm Petyt (ed.) The Growth of Reading (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1993)
• T.A.B. Corley, Quaker Enterprise in Biscuits - Huntley and Palmers of Reading - 1822-1972 (London: Hutchinson, 1972)

Milton Keynes manufacturing history

 'Pooleyville', the nickname for the North Bucks New City was derived from the man who brainchild it was, the then Chief Architect and Planner for Buckinghamshire County Council, Frederick Pooley. Pooley was keenly aware of the developments in architectural thinking and also the experience of new towns in Britain: the shifts from the garden city movement to places to house those made homeless by the destruction of the Second World War. New towns were to have a balance of residential and employment accommodation as well as community facilities. By the sixties further challenges needed to be met. London and the South East were becoming over populated and so new towns had to be further away albeit accessible. The motor car, which was providing freedom and employment for many, was becoming a major headache in urban areas. Towns had to be designed to accommodate the motor car without being dominated by it.

Pooley's vision was for fifty neighbourhoods of five thousand people placed around four loops enclosing open space. The line of the loops would be marked by monorail track providing free public transport accessible by all residents. Industrial areas would be to the north and south.

Pooley's vision didn't survive the politics of London centric planners or the laissez faire of the Thatcher era during which later parts were built. Nevertheless the city did become a balanced community of manual and non-manual workers, living in neighbourhoods demarcated by a grid of dual carriage way roads sandwiched between linear park land with foot paths, bridle paths and cycle ways. Areas of employment were close to residential areas and all with abundant green space and literally millions of trees. There are lakes and woodland for recreation.

Milton Keynes embraces Newport Pagnell to the north and Bletchley to the south. The Grand Union Canal meanders through it, the MI runs down the eastern side and the A5 dissects it. The London to Birmingham railway perhaps gave it birth, as the village of Wolverton now within Milton Keynes was selected at the site for the railway workshops. In ways similar to Crewe and Swindon a community grew around Wolverton and is now evidenced by rows of victorian cottages amongst the twentieth century architecture of the city.

This is though a blog about manufacturing. The first large foreign companies to come were Alps Electric, Coca Cola, Mobil and Volkswagon. UK business brought Abbey National, Argos and the Open University. The days of large manufacturing units were coming to an end. In 2000, Milton Keynes was home to 4,500 companies most employing fewer than twenty people and there was a mix between manufacturing and the service sector.

Today the city's own website highlights Red Bull Racing; other websites pick out Lockhead Martin at nearby Ampthill and Unilever Research at Sharnbrook, both of which are closer to Bedford. Milton Keynes finds itself within what is known as Motorsport Valley stretching south of Birmingham through Oxfordshire. As well as Red Bull in Milton Keynes, there is Banbury with Haas, Brackley with Mercedes and Wantage with Williams. There is then a large cluster of specialist motor sport suppliers at Silverstone Industrial Park close to the racing circuit.

The overriding story about manufacturing in Milton Keynes is that it is about small and medium sized enterprises, with a strong bias towards technology in a community where knowledge is shared for mutual benefit.

Further reading:

• Mark Clapson, A Social history of Milton Keynes
• ORTOLANO, GUY. “PLANNING THE URBAN FUTURE IN 1960s BRITAIN.” The Historical Journal, vol. 54, no. 2, 2011, pp. 477–507. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23017981. Accessed 20 Apr. 2025.

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)