skating rinks to shadow factories: the evolution of british aircraft manufacturing complexes

Skating Rinks to Shadow Factories:the Evolution of British AircraftManufacturing Complexes

Michael Stratton

•Rochester

Airframeand

AircraftEstablishments,

1948

Brough•

Southampton

~'-.e~

Wolverhampton

• •Coventry

Gloucester ~uton

• •Reading .,.. .-

•••

Stockport

•Yeovil

•Bristol

fltt}umbarton

Fig. 1 Map showing the distribution of the mainAirframe and Aircraft Factories in the UnitedKingdom, 1948 (Fryer, D.W. 'The BritishVehicle and Aircraft Industry', GeographY:JXXXIII (1948) 145).

mechanical engineering, the survey of Britain'scar factories by Collins and Stratton portrayedfirms juggling between the flexibility and lowcost offered by inherited and ageing plant andthe potential, but not always realised, merits ofa newly-built plant designed specifically formass production.4

The aircraft industry has been neglected byarchitectural and economic historians, andperhaps in consequence by industrial archae-ologists, because it does not conform with thecreeds of modernism and mass production seenas being so closely associated in the twentiethcentury. The mass production of a standard-ised product in concrete-framed buildings, for

Summary: This article provides a broad analysisof the development of the British aircraft industryand the factories that it has occupied. Particularattention is given to the use of second-handbuildings, the way in which sites and structureshave been adapted, and the importance ofinvestment during the two world wars and linkswith car manufacturers.

Aviation and Industrial Archaeology!

Aircraft are widely hailed as some of the mostremarkable technological achievements of thetwentieth century, made to precise toleranceswith exotic materials and powered by highly-stressed engines. It might be expected that theywould be fabricated in factories of comparablesophistication. Even a cursory examinationshows that aviation pioneers and majormanufacturers have been happy to use simpleand often second-hand sheds and hangars.Throughout a ninety year history ofproduction, final assembly has depended moreon skilled manual labour with fuselages set ontrestles and trolleys, than on robots andcomputer-controlled assembly lines.

The modest literature on twentieth centuryindustrial archaeology has already exposed thisapparent contradiction in the context of otherindustries. The use of cheap, second-handworks by firms pioneering new materials,whether plastics or synthetic textiles, has beenconsidered by Hudson.2 Trinder demonstratedthat food-processing firms also took over oldbuildings left redundant from the firstIndustrial Revolution. Butterfield showed how,in the inter-war period, American approachesto factory design and management wereapplied by a firm making a simple andlow technology product - Shredded Wheatcereal - through a model, multi-storeyconcrete-framed factory opened in WelwynGarden City in 1925.3 In the realm of

223

224 INDUSTRIAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW, XVIII, 2, SPRING 1996

example by Albert Kahn with Henry Ford'sModel T in Detroit, has provided a benchmarkwhereby the more cautious and seeminglypragmatic approaches of British businessmencould be judged.s British industrialists areberated for being backward in taking up themanagerial and architectural leads offered bytheir American cousins.6 This dec1inist view-point has been countered by Edgerton whoviewed management of aviation companies asbeing aggressively dynamic, especially Whenspurred on by governments in time of war.7

New and more useful approaches to studyingtwentieth century industry are emerging. Theobsession with mass production from cottonyam to firearms and automobiles has beencountered by at least one study, namely JohnBrown's history'ofBaldwin's locomotive works,which extols the merits of flexible production.8This paper will highlight some of the factorsthat led to a more cautious and seeminglypragmatic approach in the field of aviation, inparticular the inheritance of factories built toserve the first Industrial Revolution, thefluctuations wrought by alternating war andpeace, and the need for flexibility in combiningthe manufacture of different types of aircraftalongside each other.

Industrial archaeologists still lack aframework for the evaluation of the confusedjumble of sheds, assembly halls, multi-storeywarehouses and office blocks that make upmost major industrial complexes. Such siteshave evolved over decades, marked by dramaticchange when war, upturns in domestic demandor new technologies justified major extensionsor rebuilding. Aircraft, ships and locomotiveswere and are still, in most basic terms, made inthe same way, with key elements or sub-assemblies coming together in one finalassembly area. The key requirements are spaceand ease in extracting the finished product.Given that aircraft factories were so often firstestablished in older buildings, and that newconstruction was less than radical in its formand servicing, the best way into the subject is tolook at the types of building stock and designsthat were available to industrialists at the turn-of-the-century.

Traditions of Factory Design in Britain

The prime functions of Britain's earliestfactories were to provide protection from the

elements and security from theft, while stillensuring adequate lighting for the workforce.Power was, with the exception of cotton spin-ning and one or two other types of industry, asecondary factor, many of the stages in workingwool, clay or metal depending on human effortuntil the middle of the nineteenth century. Twobasic forms of factory can be identified: theinformal and irregular cluster of workshops,and the formal and more likely multi-storey,rectangular block. The former is exemplifiedby the sheds that made up most ironworks orrural brickyards. Powered cotton mills, such asthose built by Richard Arkwright at Cromfordfrom 1771, or the Palladian frontages ofpotteries in north Staffordshire represent thelatter and a more architecturally self-consciousapproach. However it is worth noting that, inthe late eighteenth and early nineteenthcenturies, there was little distinction in terms offlexibility between the single-storey workshopand the multi-storey block. Multi-storey millsor potteries were designed as flexiblerectangular workspaces, piled one on top ofanother, which could house powered or non-powered machinery or semi-finished or finishedgoods as required. As long as the product -whether cloth or ceramic - was portable, it waslittle inconvenience to have to use stairs or liftsto transfer goods from one floor to another.9

In most general terms this distinctionremained during the Victorian period ratherthan being the subject of any revolutionarychange. Mills were built larger while themodest workshops used for many types ofmetalworking were supplemented by largerfactories. The most fundamental developmentwas the introduction of the engineering shop,derived from the shipyard and its smithy,and built as huge halls equipped with overheadcranes for the fabrication of steam enginesor railway locomotives, as for example at theSwindon works of the Great WesternRailway. 10

The aircraft and car industries were bornvirtually at the turn-of-the-century. Historianshave tended to see them as symbolic of the newage, emerging from the free-thinking minds ofpioneering inventors, unweighed down by anytraditions of established industrial technologyand plant. 11 An analysis of the works used byfirst-generation manufacturers of aeroplanesand cars shows that most were content to

MICHAEL STRATTON: THE EVOLUTION OF BRITISH AIRCRAFT MANUFACTURING COMPLEXES 225

develop and build their first aircraft in second-hand buildings. The design of any purpose-built works was likely to draw closely uponlong-established approaches to factory layoutand design. It might have been expected thatthe need of car firms to accommodate poweredproduction lines with feeder conveyors and ofaircraft engineers to gain wide, high productionspaces for large aircraft would have resulted ina rapid divergence in terms of industrial archi-tecture. In practice, the industries repeatedlyintertwine, not only because of a shareddependence on internal combustion engines,but because car firms managed the productionof aero-engines in shadow factories built in thelate thirties, and much of the aircraft plant builtin the two world wars was subsequently usedfor the assembly of motor vehicles.12

Stables and Railway Arches

Decisions made by pioneering manufacturersof aircraft as regards the location and form oftheir factories were relatively ad hoc, beingdictated by geographical circumstance and theneed to keep capital expenditure to a minimumat a stage when they were uncertain of the basicaeronautical viability of their product, let alonethe likely extent of its market. They needed,along with a touch of the dare-devil, a know-ledge of engineering,· access to some capital anda reasonably wide indoor space. Height washardly an issue until large bombers, such as theVickers Vimy, came into production around1917. It was a field that appealed more tospeculators with contacts in the field of lightindustry than to stalwarts of heavy engineering.The barnstorming aviators of the AmericanMid West, such as Clyde Cessna, were matchedby sons of British engineers and aristocrats whowere captivated by the challenge of developingand piloting flying machines. Alliott VerdonRoe, son of a founder member of the Auto-mobile Club, later the RAC, was a self-styledinventor by the age of thirteen. His careerprogressed from working as an apprentice withthe Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway tostudying naval engineering and working onmerchant ships. He started experimenting withconcepts of flight while working as a draughts-man in the car industry. 13 His first biplanewas built in 1907 inside a stable at Putneybelonging to his brother. The first generation ofaircraft firms were most likely to be located in

the south of England, due to proximity toskilled woodworkers and, in the years justbefore the First World War, to suitablelaunching sites for seaplanes.

A few pioneering ventures did start with thebacking of established industrialists. Vickers,Sons and Maxim Limited became interested inaircraft once rickety wood and canvas biplanesseemed to offer some military potential. Theybuilt their first airship in 1908; three years laterthey established an aviation department at theirErith Works in Kent and a flying school atBrooklands. The Bristol Aeroplane Company,founded in 1910 in the suburb of Filton, waslaunched by rich businessmen seeking a newand profitable area for investment. Amidst thissomewhat ad hoc context for the birth of a newindustry, the Royal Aircraft Factory at Farn-borough, established out of H.M. BalloonFactory in 1911 and housed in sheds used formaking airships, could have gained a nearmonopoly of military production had not theAdmiralty encouraged the proliferation of newfirms by opting to look to the private industryfor its early aircraft.

The example of A.V. Roe demonstrates thevariety of workplaces that might be used as afirm progressed to commercial production.During 1907, Roe completed his first aeroplanein a shed at Brooklands. The wooden structurewas so small that he could only squeeze hisbiplane in sideways. Banished in the followingyear from the Brooklands circuit by the motorracing fraternity, he took over a railway arch inHackney as a base for flights from LeaMarshes. 14The arch, now celebrated by a blueplaque, was infilled with wooden screen wallsto provide some security and protection fromthe weather. The Short brothers drew upontheir experience in making balloons to operatearguably Britain's first aircraft factory during1909, under two railway arches in Battersearented from the LBSC Railway.15

Early American aircraft manufacturers wereequally pragmatic as to where they first set upbusiness. William E. Boeing designed and builthis first aeroplane in a boathouse on the shoreof Lake Union c.1915 and moved to a shipyardwhen greater space was needed. The firstLockheed was built in a garage in SanFrancisco in 1913 while Douglas occupied anabandoned film studio in Santa Monica from1921.16

226 INDUSTRIAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW, XVIII; 1, SPRING 1996

Edwardian Production: Workshops, Millsand Tramcar Depots

As pioneers progressed from making aprototype to first batch production they had arange of options - adapt and extend theirplants by adding more sheds, or re-establish ona new site. The need for space usually resultedin a move, especially if premises were rentedrather than owned.

Slumps in the textile trade in some parts ofthe country left mills on the market, Britain'sfirst car factory being a cotton mill in Coventryoccupied by Daimler from 1896. In 1910 Roetook over the ground floor of Brownsfield Mill,built c.1825 and still standing by the RochdaleCanal in Great Ancoats Street, Manchester.His Type E prototype seems tailor-made to justfit between the cast-iron columns and underthe wooden beams. Within a year separate'shops' were provided for woodworking, metal-working, wing and fuselage assembly andfabric-covering. 17 Roe soon needed a lesscongested workspace; in 1913 he vacated theworkshops at Brownsfield Mills for a larger, butstill second-hand works in Clifton Street, MilesPlatting. The site of the two-storey office andhigh workshop with deep windows is nowoccupied by a scrap dealer.

It was soon clear that halls or hangars - highstructures with wide interior spaces anddoorways - offered great advantages for thefinal assembly of even primitive aircraft.Arguably the first aeroplane to be made inBritain, albeit by an American, had beenfabricated by S.F. Cody in an airship shed atFamborough during 1907-9. In the years justbefore the First World War, first-generationmanufacturers looked out for redundantbuildings with large uninterrupted spaces:boatyards, omnibus and tramcar depots and,in the case of Sopwith, Handley Page, andHewlett and Blondeau, closed-down skatingrinks. With a slump in the craze of roller-skating, rinks became available. Their woodenfloors provided an ideal surface on which tobuild and man'oeuvre aeroplanes. Some ofthese complexes, located in the suburbs withspace for expansion and easy access to airfieldsbecame key centres for large-scale production.Tramcar and omnibus depots provided thecore of major works developed by· EnglishElectric at Preston and by the Bristol Aeroplane

Company at Filton, Bristol, the latter stillbeing a major focus of operations for BritishAerospace. The erecting hall added behind thetram depot at Filton during the First WorldWar was doubled in size in 1935. A new planeassembly shop, as well as a completely detachedengine factory, followed in the mid-thirties,the vast majority of the blocks all followingthe same steel-framed, brick clad, north-litformula. 18

The Assembly Hall or Hangar

A number of firms overcame congestion in theirworks, exacerbated by the increasing size ofaircraft, by occupying even larger halls, likethose in a shipyard or railway works, for finalassembly. They were following the example ofsome of the better-established car manu-facturers who opted to use overhead cranes tolift out completed chassis without disturbingneighbouring work, rather than being commit-ted to making just one type of vehicle on aproduction line. The engineering hall built byDaimler in 1908 at Radford, Coventry allowedthem to expand production, while retaining theuse of the Motor Mill for machine tool work.Aircraft firms might obtain a comparable work-space by taking over second-hand halls orhangars well beyond the size of a roller-skatingrink. They had little need for an overheadcrane, given the lightness of early aircraft. Theexhibition hall occupied by Blackbums inLeeds from 1914 was 300 ft (91 m) long whilepart of the vast Coventry Ordnance Workswas used for building aeroplanes under sub-contract during the First World War.19 Overtwo decades later Scottish Aviation gainedproduction space for the Lysander at Prestwickby relocating the Palace of EngineeringBuilding from the site of the 1938 EmpireExhibition in Bellahouston Park, Glasgow.

Other nascent firms gained wide manu-facturing .spaces through relocating to earlyairfields where hangars had been already beenerected, or by setting up in boatsheds. TheBleriot company took over five hangars atBrooklands to the south-west of London in1914, giving them· the space to assemble tenaircraft at a time. With Martin & Handasydeand the British and Colonial Aeroplane Com-panies already having a presence at Brooklandsand Vickers moving into the old Itala motorworks, the sites on either side of the aerodrome


Plate 1 Aircraft production on wooden trestles. Caudron GIlls and Avro 504s being made at the Bleriot Works,Brooklands, c. 1914. (Brooklands Museum)

and within the banked oval racing circuitconstituted, albeit briefly, the heartland of theBritish aircraft industry. 20

Three years earlier Claude Grahame- Whitededicated part of his flying school at Hendon,north London to aircraft manufacture. Eightsingle-storey workshops were used for workingwood and fabric and for doping completedsections before final assembly took place in thecorrugated iron assembly hangar with its fourhigh bays. The complex, now listed, was givena formal focus in 1915 with the construction ofa two-storey entrance building topped by acontrol tower. Shorts had erected their firstpurpose-built factory in 1909 by an airfield atLeysdown on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent.Their main shed was designed with woodenbeams angled to give greater working heightwhile sliding doors allowed completed Short-Wright machines to be taken out· onto theairfield. As demand grew another series ofsheds were erected at nearby Eastchurch in191o. By 1913 Shorts were primarily

producing seaplanes for the Admiralty, and inthe latter part of the year they built a new,much larger works at Willis Avenue, Rochester,a long, aisled hangar being set parallel tothe River Medway. In the same year NoelPemberton-Billing gained space for theassembly of Supermarine flying boats by takingover a boatyard on the River Itchen atWoolston, Southampton.21

Wood, Linen and Dope

The predominance of wood and· fabric in earlyaircraft not only reinforced links with boat-building, but strongly influenced the layout andform· of early factories. Aircraft fuselages werebuilt up of wooden members called longeronsand wings of wooden spars, reinforcementbeing provided by cross members and ribsrespectively. A saw mill and woodworking shopwere the key adjuncts to the erecting space inany aircraft works. The wooden framework wascovered in part by plywood or metal sheet, butprimarily in linen fabric· which was coated in a


AircraftFactories atBrooklands,

c.1932

Clubhouse

~J~.~. I II

Site of I.A.V. Roe's .•first shed,1907-8

Vickershangars,formerly!tala works

~ Martinsyde works, 1911

,~; .•,.9~Hawker works, 1925

First plane sheds,1911, followed byHawker, 1934

Fig. 2 Brooklands Airfield and Racetrack, showing the location of buildings used for aircraft production, c.1932.

Plate 2 The Grahame-White Aviation Factory, Hendon, London, developed from 1911. These A-framed sheds date to1917-18 while the control tower building in the foreground is dated to 1915.


dope varnish - cellulose dissolved in a volatilesolvent - to stretch the fabric tightly over thewooden frame. The noise and dust from thewoodworking shops and the noxious vapour ofdope shops meant that these sections werepartitioned off whenever space and funds per-mitted. Early aircraft were built like upmarketEdwardian cars, by hand and on trestles, thecritical space requirements being for a smallteam to be able to work round one or morechassis or fuselages, components being carriedor trundled from other parts of the site. Whilemuch of the detailed assembly work was under-taken on the aircraft itself, workbenches fordrilling and shaping metal components wouldbe arranged round the assembly space underany windows.

From building aircraft up one-by-one, firmsprogressed to a simple form of batchproduction. The fuselage would initially bebuilt up on trestles, but if these trestles wereturned into trolleys by having small wheelsfitted or if the aeroplane was given its ownwheels at a early stage of fabrication, it could be'pushed from one part of the assembly place to

another. Seaplanes might be pulled around onmakeshift sledges. Production could be madefar more efficient by adopting the principle offlow production, with components and sub-assemblies being delivered to the assemblyspaces in an orderly sequence, the basic aero-plane structure then passing to the fabric anddope sections and finally on to receive itsengine and cockpit fittings, instruments andflying wires from the machine shop and fittingarea. Photographs of late Edwardian aircraftfactories show that planes were most likely to beworked on in groups, lined up side-by-side asmuch as in rows, and then moved as a batch onto the next stage of the process. There wastypically neither the space or the number oforders to justify a long, linear production line.

Military Orders and North-Lit andA-Framed Sheds

The First World War led to a dramatic growthin the manufacture of aeroplanes. It isestimated that there were less than 5,000aircraft in the world in 1914; by 1918 around200,000 had been built and most to much

Plate 3 Aerial view of the Blackburn works at Brough developed from 1916 with a hangar set parallel to the River Humberto facilitate the launching of flying boats. The huge range of north-lit sheds in the foreground and the formal officeblock, top left, both date to 1938-9. (British Aerospace)


more sophisticated standards of productionand performance.22 A major boost to theBritish industry came in 1915 when the RoyalAircraft FactQry was forced to 'open up designto the trade' in response to military pressure onthe Western Front.23 The number of Britishfirms involved in making .aircraft expandedfrom 48 in 1916 to 80 in 1918. Large ordersjustified investment in proper production linesand hence larger factory complexes both formaking components and for final assembly. 24

The increased demand for aircraft wassatisfied largely by established firms. Largesheds were added to some existing complexesfor making bombers, an example being the newassembly hall for the Vickers Vimy at Brook-lands. Other firms relocated, Airco movingfrom a works in the Edgware Road taken overfrom the Metropolitan Electric Car Companyto the wider spaces of Hendon aerodrome. Themost successful firms both expanded theirexisting facilities and invested in new ones onless constricted sites. Fairey, established byCharles Fairey who had been chief engineer atShorts, leased and operated the factory of theArmy Motor Lorries Company, in ClaytonRoad, Hayes in conjunction with their ownworks in nearby North Hyde Road.25 A furtherworks was leased at Hamble Point from 1916for completing seaplanes.

Roe found space for large scale-production ofthe Avro 504 by renting an engineering worksbuilt by Mather and Platt in Newton Heath inthe western suburbs of Manchester, theirClifton Street site being relegated to act as thewoodworking department. A new factory wascompleted on adjoining vacant land in 1919.26

As with Fairey, a third works with a watersidelocation was established in 1916 at Hamble, toallow for the testing of naval aircraft. Describedas a 'garden city' factory, it was intended thatthe high, erecting shop, measuring approxi-mately 210 ft (63 m) by 180 ft (54 m), shouldbe surrounded by 350 houses for workers,though only 24 were to be actually built.27

Most of the new entrants into the industryhad related skills iIi wood or metalworking,enabling them to win large governmentcontracts for aircraft during the First WorldWar. Boulton & Paul had their origins as anironmongers in London Street, Norwich, butcommenced building motorboats as well assteel structures and wire netting in the

Edwardian period. Gaining a contract in 1915to build FE2b fighter aircraft they supple-mented their city workshops with a series ofhangars three miles out of the city atMousehold Heath. Two hangars survive atMousehold, within an industrial estate. Thechallenge of moving part-completed aircraftout of the centre of Norwich was overcome byestablishing the Mousehold Light Railway. Itformed an end-on connection with the city'stramway network, electric traction vehicleshauling chassis converted into goods trucks.Westland also originated in a firm of iron-mongers. Petters of Yeovil, who achieved greatsuccess with their early oil engines, hadestablished a new foundry and factory to thewest of the town at West Hendford in 1914.Westland Aircraft was established a year later,initially to use the factory to make Short,Sopwith and de Havilland designs under sub-contract but developing a major works, andlater to become renowned for its production ofhelicopters.28

Scotland first emerged as a significant forcein aircraft production during the First WorldWar. William Beardmore & Co had developeda major shipyard and engine works at Dalmuirdownstream of Glasgow on the north bank ofthe Clyde. During the War a series of aero-planes designed by Tilghman Richards weremade, most, appropriately enough, beingintended for use from ships. Following theArmistice, Beardmore attempted to exploit themarket for civil aircraft and airships, butfinancial difficulties resulted in closure of theaviation department in 1929.29

As part of the Ministry of Munitions initiativeto expand production of the BE2c, G. &J. Weirof the Albert Factory, Glasgow gained acontract for airframes. Clydeside shipbuilderssuch as William Denny, and AlexanderStephen also became involved in makingaircraft; they typically subcontracted work tolocal cabinet makers, coachbody builders andpattern makers, so nurturing the principle ofdispersal that was to be revived in the SecondWorld War.

Industrial Management and theNational Aircraft Factories

Amidst a general picture of second-hand plantsand ad hoc expansion, a small number ofEdwardian businesses, and especially those


devoted to the prestige car market, invested inmodel factories during the first decade of thenew century. Their form pre-dated theapproach adopted for aero~engine and lateraircraft factories, and especially the shadowfactories of the thirties, which were to facilitatesuch a dramatic growth in armament andaircraft production during the Second WorldWar and, after conversion, in car manufactureduring the ensuing post-war boom of the fifties.The model factory juxtaposed single-storey,steel-roofed sheds, creating open flexibleproduction spaces, with symmetrical andornate frontage blocks. Early examples are theClement-Talbot factory built in west Londonin 1903 and designed by William T. Walker30

and the even grander Argyll factory built to thewest of Glasgow in 1906 to designs by CharlesHalley. The aviation industry was only to takeup the example of the model factory in the laterstages of the First World War.

Britain's aircraft makers never gave any morethan passing attention to the revolution in

industrial architecture led by Albert Kahn inDetroit and most specifically his concrete-framed, multi-storey factories. The advantagesof these designs; culminating in the four andsix-storey ranges of Ford's Highland Park builtfrom 1908 focused on the excellent lightingprovided by deep windows and the use ofgravity to move components from one stage tothe next.31 They were fundamentally unsuitedto aircraft production, where final assemblyhad to be at-ground floor level and needed highceiling clearance. In general terms, the advant-ages of multi-storey plants were soon to bediluted if not largely lost, once electric lightingbecame cheaper and as sophisticated electricconveyors were introduced.32

The most direct British derivative fromHighland Park was to be Arrol Johnston'sutopian car factory built on the edge of Dum-fries in south-west Scotland during 1912-13and quickly turned over to the production ofaero-engines. Britain's only multi-storeyfactory for complete aircraft was a product of

Plate 4 Arrol-Johnston Factory, Dumfries built 1912-3 for the production of cars but quickly turned over to themanufacture of aero engines. It is the most direct descendant of the American, multi-storey, concrete-framedfactory in Britain, being erected on the Truscon system, and is currently occupied by Gates wellington bootmanufacturers.


. circumstance rather than forward planning. AsSopwith developed their works at CanburyPark, Kingston-on- Thames from 1913, nearthe ice rink that they had taken over in 1912,the main buildings extended upwards to threestoreys, with the fitters shop being on theuppermost floor. The arrangement was soinefficient that SOJ>withwere forced to allowShorts and Fairey to sub-contract for finalassembly of their designs.

The model factory with its associations withefficient management and welfare provision,influenced the form of the National AircraftFactories built during the latter part of the FirstWorld War. From 1914 the introduction ofwomen into manufacturing and the need tomaximise production of munitions focusedattention on working conditions. The Ministryof Munitions funded 4,000 'controlled estab-lishments' where armaments were made byprivate firms on governmental instructions.These works lacked any architecturalornamentation, their design reflecting thedown-to-earth conclusions of committees thathad debated the link between welfare and

scientific management.33 Production was plan-ned in logical paths and strong attention wasgiven to lighting, ventilation and welfarefacilities.

The ..majority of controlled establishmentswere built as single-storey structures, with steelor wooden roof trusses. The North and We'stWorks erected by Austin at Longbridge onthe southern side of Birmingham for themanufacture of aero-engines and militaryvehicles were laid out with hug"emachine shops,one of them 850 ft (257 m) long, with two-storey office ranges, and with huge canteens,one of which accommodated 4,000 people.

The three National Aircraft Factories com-missioned by the Ministry of Munitions in1917 and built at Waddon near Croydon,Aintree in Liverpool and Heaton Chapel nearStockport are model factories more in termsof welfare than indulgent architecture. NationalAircraft Factory No 1 was erected at Waddonwith no less than 58 separate buildings,including machine shops, fabric shops, dopeshops, an assembly hall and flight sheds. Thefinal erecting shop measured 720 by 150 ft

Plate 5 National Aircraft Factory, Waddon, Croydon, London, built 1917-8, showing No 2 building, and, in theforeground, the first aid post.

· MICHAEL STRATTON: THE EVOLUTION OF BRITISH AIRCRAFT MANUFACTURING COMPLEXES 233

(218 by 45 m). Innovative features included aseparate canteen for female workers~ under-ground ventilation ducts and the provision of abranch railway and tram service into the site.34

The National Aircraft Factory at HeatonChapel between Manchester and Stockport wasa more modest investment focusing on six baysof engineering shops.

Initially planned, though not actually builtunder the National Aircraft Factory scheme,the Sopwith works erected in Richmond Road,Kingston-upon- Thames over 1917-8 attainednew levels in terms of scale and flexibility.Sopwith fighters were produced in a singlerectangular shed made up of six 84 ft (25 m)span bays and with a depth of about 500 ft(151 m), the open workspace being allocated tostages from tin smithing to sub-assembly andwith two bays allocated to final assembly.Machine tools were set at the southern end ofeach bay. 35 Handley-Page also followed thebasic format of a model factory in developingan enormous works at Cricklewood whichevolved over 1915-1 9 to consist of 24 bays ofA-framed shed fronted by offices. Airco,

located further up the Edgware Road inHendon gained a particularly impressive office- three storeys high and neo-Georgian in style- as their site expanded over the period of1912-18 to embrace four major blocks ofworkshops.

Incremental Growth in theInter-war Period

There was to be little continuity in aircraftfactory design into the inter-war period sincethe industry virtually collapsed in 1919-20.Investment during the First World Warprovided more than adequate capacity whilethere was little initial demand for new commer-cial aircraft, since surplus military bomberscould be converted. The world's largest aircraftmanufacturer, Airco, closed and other firmshad to diversify to survive. Glosters saw theirhangars used for mushroom growing and pigrearing.

Following the Armistice car companies tookover large single-storey sheds erected formaking munitions or aircraft; they exploitedtheir wide bay width and height to install

Plate 6 The Ham Works, of Sopwith Aviation, built 1917-8 and showing the open, high production spaces achieved innewly-built plants dating to the latter stages of the First World War. (Brooklands Museum)


Plate 7 The Handley Page Works, Claremont Road, Cricklewood, in production from 1915. The office block fronts twentybays of A-framed shed.

Plate 8 The neo-Georgian office block of the Airco factory in Edgware Road, Hendon, London. Developed out of apremises taken over from the Metropolitan Electric Tramway and Omnibus Company c.1912 to become reputedlythe largest aircraft producing firm in the world in 1919.


production lines with feeder conveyors. Somewere fortunate enough to inherit sheds withbays up to 105 ft (32 m) across. The high andwide sheds of Armstrong-Whitworth at Park-side, Coventry were turned over to makingArmstrong-Siddeley cars. Standard, also inCoventry, installed a V-shaped line in a shedbuilt in 1916 for aircraft assembly and theirsubsequent extensions of the twenties andthirties followed the same hangar-like form.Steel became almost universally accepted as themost practical material to form the roof andstanchions for aircraft and car factories alike. Itwas light, easy to rivet or weld, could be rapidlyerected and readily adapted in response tochanges in production technology. Sprinklersystems overcame any concerns as regards thevulnerability of exposed steel to fire.

Ford and Kahn had recognised theinflexibility of multi-storey concrete plants, thefactory-type that they had presented as a highideal to engineers across America and Europe.They laid out the huge River Rouge plant,developed from 1918 and initially for makingboats, on one level with steel stanchions andlightweight roofing permitting column spacingsof 40 ft (12 m) and 60 ft (118 m) as opposed tothe 25 ft (7.5 m) of contemporary multi-storeyplants. American and British manufacturersrecognised the advantage of single-storey shedsin terms of flexibility, allowing them to altertheir products, in terms of vehicles or aircraftand make a gradual transition to all-metal,monocoque construction.

Steel and DuraluminThe twenties may not have seen much in theway of new aircraft factories, but it was a keyperiod in the transformation of aircraft, fromconcoctions of wood, canvas and wire tomodem streamlined forms created out of light-weight alloys.36 The shift to metal constructionstarted during the First World War when steeltubing might be used for the fuselage memberstermed longerons. Shorts experimented withduralumin (a light, strong heat-treated alloyof aluminium, magnesium, manganese andcopper) to cover the hulls of their flying boats.The Germans led the way with all-metal con-struction. Subsequently, the American firmsgrasped its potential for making streamlinedaircraft with cantilevered and internally bracedwings and stressed skins to develop highly

successful monoplane airliners such as theBoeing 247 and Douglas DC1 and DC3.British firms were pushed down the road tometal construction by a directive from the AirMinistry in 1924 forbidding the use of wood forload-bearing parts.

The shift to metal construction did not, initself herald a new age of mass production,firms needing to take on more rather than lessskilled labour.37 Techniques of metalworkingadvanced incrementally through the thirties,smaller sub-contractors being most likely toretain hand methods. Sheets became worked byportable pneumatic nibblers rather than handshears. Rubber presses were used to formshallow shapes, so avoiding the expense ofmaking up press tools. Light radial arm drillswere developed for working on wing spars orother long parts.

There was no overnight revolution in theform of aircraft factories, partly since manyaeroplanes of this period still incorporateddoped fabric. Sheet metal shops, press shopsand machine shops could be created orexpanded through piecemeal extensions or theadaptation of spaces built for working woodand canvas. Bristol installed heat treatmentshops in an existing workshop, setting themalong an outside wall to ensure adequateventilation. To this day metalworking areas arerelatively simple in their layout, there being noequivalent of the lines of huge steel pressesfound in a car factory. Traditional lathes anddrills are set-up to work batches of a particularcomponent and then re-set, rather than under-taking a dedicated process in a production line.

The use of metal encouraged a shift towardsunit construction, aircraft being built up of sub-assemblies which are themselves made up ofsmaller units. Each sub-assembly - whetherthe nose and cockpit, tailor a section offuselage or wing - would be made up in aseparate department or, by the latter years ofthe Second World War, a separate works.Firms depended on the extensive use of jigs toensure accuracy and hence compatibility whenbringing sub-assemblies together. The fuselagewould be built up, starting with vertical framesand bulkheads set in a jig, which might be littlemore than a long pole with frames attached.Horizontal stringers were then placed inposition and riveted together. Holes for therivets would be drilled into the frame and into


Plate 9 Metal wings being built up on trestles at Brough during the 1930s. Note the absence of power tools or a productionline. (British Aerospace)

the skin, the latter being made up of sur-prisingly small sheets and cut on a simpleguillotine. Wings consisted of long spars carry-ing ribs. As aircraft became more complex, sohydraulic· and electric controls might beinstalled before the sub-assemblies cametogether in final assembly.

Aircraft Factories in the Twenties

Investment during the twenties centred onsixteen companies favoured by the Air Ministryas a 'ring' to maintain the core of an industryat a time when civil aviation was still very muchin its infancy. The chosen 'ring' firms were onlywilling to invest in new sheds and hangars whentheir order books started to fill Up.38In somecases it was possible to revitalise plant erectedduring the First World War. The NationalAircraft Factory at Heaton Chapel, Manchesterwas taken over by Fairey in 1934 and used forbuilding the Battle light bomber.39

Some firms responded to the increasing sizeof aircraft by relocating final assembly andtesting to large aerodrome sites, though

typically keeping their well-established urbanworks in operation, conveniently ready for theupsurge in demand through rearmamentduring the thirties. Fairey moved its assemblyfacilities to the base of the Royal AeronauticalSociety at Harmondsworth in 1926, the sitelater forming part of Heathrow airport.Armstrong-Whitworth took over an ex-RFCaerodrome at Whitley outside Coventry in1923. During the same decade Glosterrelocated from Gloucester to an aircraftacceptance park at Hucclecote while Parnallconcentrated production in an aircraft repairdepot at Yate. In 1936 Percival relocated fromGravesend to Luton Airport and Boulton &Paul to Pendeford near Wolverhampton.Shorts gained a massive new works at Queen'sIsland, Belfast with both an aerodrome and anestuary for flying boats.

Newly established firms were also drawn toaerodromes. Neville Shute, better known as anauthor than aircraft engineer, had to abandonhis original Airspeed works in a bus depot inYork, used from 1932, simply because its


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Fig. 3 Layout of the Boulton Paul Aircraft Factory, Pendeford, Staffordshire as first built in 1936. The sketch plan showsthe screening offices and the arrangement of the main production area behind for flow production with receivingstores, cover and dope shop and wood shop set to one side, to feed parts to the machine shop and assembly bay.Key: A. canteen, B. garage, C. receiving and dispatch and drawbench and chemical laboratory, D. wind tunnel,E. boiler house, F. open coal store, G. pilot's office, H. cover and dope shop, I. wood shop, I. managing director'soffice and boardroom, K. single storey front office, L. general office, M. raw materials, N. office entrance,O. drawing offices, P. works offices, Q. research, R. machine shop, S. aircraft assembly bay, T. main flight shed,U. apron, V. sewerage treatment plant, W. gun firing butts, X. runway to airfield.

location within the city walls preventedexpansion as his order book filled up. He andhis colleagues were attracted to Portsmouthaerodrome in 1933, by a council anxious toreduce the dependence of the local economy onthe Navy. It built a factory that offered thecompany a threefold increase in working space,charging 75% of the cost to Airspeed over thenext decade.40

Only those firms that chose to expand ontheir established and constricted sites werelikely to invest in more complex buildingsthan simple, steel-framed sheds and hangars.S.E. Saunders had branched out from boat-building to 'aero-navigation' in 1909· on thewaterfront at Cowes. In 1935, and as orders

came in for the London reconnaissancebi-plane, Saunders-Roe decided to clear fourbuildings for the new Columbine works. Themain assembly space could house up to a dozenlarge aircraft while metalworking and fittingareas were housed in galleries. A three-storeyoffice block faced Castle Street while theelevation to the harbour was adorned withribbing, fins and flagpoles, elements· of thestreamlined style in vogue during the mid-thirties.41

Re-armament, Bypass Factories andMass Production

Most industrialists remained pragmatic aboutthe design of their factories. They recognised


Plate 10 The Saunders, later Saunders Roe, Works in East Cowes, Isle of Wight. The Medina Shop, on the right, wassupplemented by the stylish Columbine Building; erected 1935 to accommodate large seaplanes.

the advantages of interchangeability of partsand flow line production from the example ofFord and the lessons of armament manufactureduring the First World War. However theywere hard-nosed in differentiating between thefundamental requirements of accommodatingspecific processes at modest cost, and theoption of creating striking and colourfulreception areas and entrances. These twostrands are juxtaposed most forcefully in agroup of British plants known as bypassfactories. Their form clearly derives fromClement-Talbot and the other prestigious carfactories built in the first years of the century.Thomas Wallis, doyen of the bypass factorydesigners, recommended that industrialistsshould use architecture to advertise theirproducts and promote images of themselves ascaring employers.42 The most striking sur-viving factory by Wallis, Gilbert and Partners isthe Hoover factory in Western Avenuedeveloped from 1932. The Art Deco frontageblock was faced in white cement and tilingwhile the production blocks behind weremostly steel-framed.43

Several aircraft companies invested in archi-tecture as advertising. De Havilland provedhighly successful in producing small civilplanes.44 Having relocated to Hatfield and laiddown a production line they built a stylish two-storey frontage block, facing the Al road and

screening the north-lit sheds.45 This type oflayout became virtually the norm in the latethirties. The Cunliffe-Owen factory built in1938 at Eastleigh on the site of an old UnitedStates Navy Air Station, and now occupied byFord, was given a two-storey office block againwith curved, streamlined detailing that seemedparticular appropriate to aviation.. Britain's rearmament programme brought adramatic increase in employment in the aircraftindustry, which almost quadrupled in theperiod 1930-6. The scale of orders for fightersand bombers justified, for the first time,investment in proper production lines. BothVickers and Hawker created new long erectinglines at Brooklands in the mid-thirties, whileHawker also built a new plant in 1939 atLangley near Slough for mass production of theHurricane fighter. British firms groped theirway towards mass production, partly due to theslow progress with developing monoplane civilaircraft, and a continued emphasis on flyingboats. Phillips & Powis can be credited withlaying down the first moving assembly line inBritain at their works developed by Woodleyaerodrome on the edge of Reading from 1933.From 1938 aircraft moved down the assemblyline past 15-20 stations,· the fuselages being seton trolleys riding on rails salvaged fromReading's tramway network.46


Shadow Factories and theSecond World WarThe key threads in inter-war factory designculminated in the shadow factories firstspecified in 1936 and built from 1937. Carfirms were contacted by the Air Ministry toencourage them to produce components foraero-engines in government-funded factories.Austin, Rover, Standard, Daimler, Rootes andRolls- Royce all signed up, their new factoriesbeing co-ordinated so they 'shadowed' anotherproduction facility. Most were located in theMidlands or the north, so reinforcing thegeographical shift of the industry away from thesouth-east, which was deemed too vulnerableto bombing. Notable exceptions to this rule arethose erected at South Marston near Swindonin 1938/9, Gloucester in 1939 and Christ-church near Bournemouth in 1940. Firms wereleft some freedom in the design of theirfactories but they share the same basic form.The complete plant and services were allhoused under one roof. The main hall might bequarter of a mile long and would have a roofclearance of around 40 ft (12 m). Aircraft couldbe rolled out under large, braced up-and-overdoors. Steel-framed, top-lit sheds were frontedwith a two-storey office block after theprecedent of Clement-Talbot with modernisticdetailing in the form of metal window frames,concrete lintels and projecting fins. Standard

adopted flow production on a conveyor systemfrom the outset'in producing complete enginecylinder units.47

Scotland gained· a renewed role in aviationas Rolls- Royce built a shadow factory atHillington, Glasgow in late 1939 primarily toproduce Merlin aero-engines. Only about 400complete aircraft were built in Scotland duringthe Second World War. The most importantsite was the Dumbarton works established byBlackburn Aircraft where some 250 of the hugeShort Sunderland flying boats were completedand then flown off the River Clyde.

The second tranche of shadow factories wereused for producing aircraft as opposed toengines. Rootes ran a Blenheim bomber factoryat Liverpool while one of the largest shadowfactories, built for Vickers-Armstrong atBroughton near Chester, was used for theassembly of the Wellington and Lancaster.Completed in the spring of 1939, it boasted themost extensive floor area of any factory inEurope. Not all the car firms were successful inturning their hands to making aircraft;management of the Castle Bromwich plant hadto be transferred from Morris to Vickers-Armstrong in 1940. Ford were more successful;during the course of the war their aero-engineplant in Trafford Park, Manchester was trebledin size and to employ 8,411 workers. Typicallythe vast interior spaces of shadow factories,

Plate 11 Pan of the shadow factory for Rolls-Royce under construction at Crewe, c1939. Note the complete steel frame andthe north-lit shed on the left already given its brick cladding. (Rolls-Royce Cars)


Plate 12 Spitfire III production c.1941 at Castle Bromwich shadow factory, Birmingham, now the body plant for JaguarCars. Note the wide spans created by lattice-girder roof trusses. (Brooklands Museum)

with internal bay widths of around 100 ft(30.5 m) wide, would be subdivided by screensof prefabricated and movable offices intomachine shops, parts· stores and an erectingshop. Parallel production lines ran the length ofthe factory from fuselage assembly though tothe fitting of engines, propellers andinstruments with stores and sub-assembly areasbeing laid out to one side and as close aspossible to the relevant section of the mainassembly lines.

Avro's first shadow factory was built atChadderton, Greengate near Oldham over1938~9. It produced Ansons, Manchesters, andBristol Blenheims in conjunction with thetwenty year old works at Newton Heath and isstill occupied by British Aerospace. Finalassembly of all these designs was concentratedin newly-erected hangars at Woodford Aero-drome and at Ringway Airport. A furthershadow factory, at Yeadon, north of Leeds wasbuilt 1939-41 to become the focus of Lancasterproduction. The location was convenientlyadjacent to Leeds and Bradford airport. Themain building was camouflaged by earth beingbanked in ramps round the walls. The flat roofwas made to blend in with the countryside, bybeing given a farmhouse, walled fields, dummycattle and even a duck pond.48 The works is

now used by a container truck operator.Avro made every effort to streamline

production of the Lancaster at Yeadon. Thebomber was built up as a series of major sub-assemblies, starting with the fuselage bombbay. Areas were clearly dedicated to thebuilding up of each sub-assembly, some beingset on roll-over stands so workers could gaineasy access for rapid erection.49 Demand fromBomber Command, and the principle ofguarding against loss of output from bombdamage, meant that the Lancaster was alsobeing made at Woodford, where, in thesummer of 1943, the lines were turning outseven of these aircraft a day.

The shadow factory scheme led to a dramaticrise in output, employment rising from 75,000in 1936 to 1,700,000 in 1945. Partly as a resultof the principle of duplication and dispersalthere was still a flexible rather than systematicrelationship between plant layout and pro-duction planning. 50 Major factories were fedwith components from a network of dispersedsatellite workshops. Glosters were dependenton workshops across the Cotswolds and theWest Midlands ..Bristol's Filton works was fedby over 100 dispersal premises including aprison, a cheese store, a railway arch and arectory. 51


The 'Fedden Mission' which studied pro-duction efficiency in the armament industrysaw a strong contrast with best Americanpractice, where there was no threat of bombingand hence no need to duplicate the facilities forthe supply and components and sub-assemblies. The output of aircraft in the UnitedStates grew from 2,141 in 1939 to 96,318 in1944; the comparable figures for Britain werefrom 7,940 to 24,461.52 In May 1940President Roosevelt had demanded that 50,000aircraft be produced a year. One firm, NorthAmerican, responded by establishing aMethods Department that resulted in theinstallation of overhead monorail conveyors totransport components within the factory. TheVultee works at Downey has the record ofhaving the first powered assembly line in theindustry, fuselages being suspended from anoverhead track as they passed through 25assembly stations; assembly time is reputed tohave been cut by some 75%. The car industryhad great success in making engines and sub-assemblies but experienced severe obstacles inmass-producing complete aircraft. Ford laidout their 70 acre (28 hectare) Willow Run plantbetween 1941-3 at Ypsilanti, west of Detroit,with the aim of assembling bomber fuselages intwo halves and riveting them together at. theend of line. During 1943 they had to grapplewith responding to a series of design modifi-cations, but eventually succeeded in producinga B-24 every hour.

Accommodating Airliners

All the car firms who had built shadow factoriesdecided to adapt them to vehicle productionafter the war, their high roof clearance beingparticularly advantageous in accommodatingoverhead feeder conveyors for engines andbody shells. Most aircraft companies also foundthat they had adequate capacity, but the scaleand complexity of new airliners was to demandnew sizes of hangar and, for smaller aircraftbeing built in large numbers, extendedproduction lines.

The Brabazon 'programme, conceived duringthe War, envisaged production of a range ofairliners. The largest, the Bristol Brabazon onlyreached prototype stage but it resulted in theerection, in 1947, of three-linked hangars atFilton of colossal size. Designed by Eric Ross,they combined to have a frontage of 1,052 ft

(319 m) and cover 8 acres (3.2 hectares). Eachof the doors was 300 ft (91 m) long, allowingthe eight-engined airliner with its wing span of230 ft (70 m) to be erected with the aid ofoverhead cranes and rolled out, over a railwaylevel crossing and onto the specially extendedrunway. The .roof structure followed the formof many shadow factories by being built oflattice girders, but was arched to give additionalheight and strength. As with many contem-porary plants the walls were clad largely withasbestos sheet.53

The Brabazon hangar was vindicated as aninvestment by its use for building such largeairliners as the Britannia and Concorde and iscurrently being used for refurbishment work onAirbuses and converting VC lOs from airlinersto tankers. Elsewhere new facilities for finalassembly came· a decade later, justified byorders for V-bombers or successful airlinerdesigns. In '1957 Woodford's main assemblyline was extended giving a total production areaof over 1 million square feet for the Vulcanbomber. A year earlier, Vickers extended theirtwo erecting halls at Weybridge each to lengthof 1,200 ft (364 m) to facilitate productionof the highly successful Viscount. 54 When theVC 10 jet went into production the mid-sixtiesboth the West and East works were needed, theformer for fabricating fuselages and the latterfor wings. A fuselage was built up in a join-upjig; wings and engine nacelles, and then thetailplane and elevators being added as theassembly progressed down the line. Thetrolleys were most likely to be repositioned atnight, ready for the next stage to be com-menced in the morning. In addition to thelength of the lines, the production of jetairliners demanded large open spaces for thedrawing office, for the mould 10ft and the skin-milling shop, in the years before computersmade any significant inroads into the labour-intensive tasks of designing and fabricatingcomponents.55

The sixties was a pedod of frustratedaspirations, mergers and then rationalisation,cuiininating in the incorporation of BAC andHawker Siddeley into British Aerospace. Sitesthat produce complete. aeroplanes, such asWarton in Lancashire, Woodford in Cheshire,Prestwick in Ayrshire and Shorts in Belfast nowproduce military .aircraft and smaller civilaircraft than those being· made in the sixties.


Plate 13 The Brabazon Hangar, built at the Filton site of the Bristol Aeroplane Company in 1947 for the production of civilairliners. It now houses r~furbishment work on Airbuses and VC lOs.

Plate 14 Avro 748s and 780s on the assembly line at Woodford, Cheshire in the 1960s. The plant built in 1938 now housesproduction of the Avrolinerfour engined jet. (Avro International)


There has been little need for new buildings,existing facilities being adapted for work withcomposite materials, such as fibreglass and,from the 1970s, carbon-fibre. Possibly the mostsignificant new facility, the new assembly hallat Hatfield for producing the BAe 146 jet,erected in 1987, proved somewhat ill-starred,shutting down after only five years whenproduction was transferred to Woodford.

Much of the workspace within Britain'saircraft factories is now devoted to producingsub-assemblies for completion at Warton or,in the case of the Airbus, in France. Flexiblemilling stations, short, powered productionlines and robotic riveting machines are set insheds and hangars dating back to the two worldwars and even the Edwardian period. The focusat Filton was a now-empty tramcar shedwhile Brough developed from a seaplanehangar built in 1916. The 1939 shadow factoryat Broughton accommodates massive skinmilling machines and· a 532 ton (540 tonne)routing machine for work on Airbus wings. 56

The most important new aircraft factory of thepost-war period at Dunsfold, near Godalming,Surrey was developed out of a temporarymilitary airfield. Standard aircraft hangars nowhouse final assembly of British Aerospace'sHawks and Harriers.

Conclusions

The concept of flexibility has been essential inthe development of the aircraft industry,allowing for firms to respond to small orders,shifts between war and peacetime, and togovernmental prevarication. This pragmatic,understated approach has now become amanagement creed - applied to cars and elect-ronic goods - and helping firms to balancequantity and quality, production continuityand design changes, productivity and workersatisfaction. 57 Architects and critics are nowgiving increasing attention to the way in whichbuildings evolve and adapt, though no specificstudies- have yet been undertaken on industrialplant in these terms. 58

British manufacturers have for reasons ofcapital, flexibility and sentiment shown apredilection to adapting their complexes ratherthan pursuing the intellectual exercise ofplanning and erecting the ideal factory. Thereare few points to be won in condemning theAmerican multi-storey experiment, exemplified

by Detroit's early car factories, with thehindsight of small electric motors, fluorescentlighting and sprinkler systems. However it isclear that the pragmatic approach taken byBritish industrialists was 'modem' in termsof correctly perceiving the nature andfundamental instability of their markets.Furthermore the formula of an elegant frontageblock screening a single-storey productionshed, well-established in the Edwardian period,has proved capable of accommodating modemproduction technology as well as changingideals of industrial management, fromTaylorism to Japanese-style team building.

The attributes of those aircraft factories thathave been adapted to different products,materials and technologies are light, space,height and access, and the use of steel framesand lightweight claddings that have allowedindustrialists to fine-tune their operatingenvironment. The key has been to invest inplant that established a sense of operationalorder and could maintain this quality astechnologies or even complete processeschanged. In this context the aircraft andmunitions plants erected during the two worldwars and, drawing upon the example of modeland bypass factories of the Edwardian andinter-war periods, represent a remarkableinheritance, all the more so because theysucceed in still housing the bulk .of modemaircraft, as well as car, production across theUnited Kingdom.

Notes and References1. I am grateful for help in researching this article from

Ian Anderson, Avro; Doug Black, British Aerospace,Brough; Helen Carlisle, Westland Group; MarkChaloner, British Aerospace, Broughton; John Hume,Historic Scotland; Trevor Mason, British Aerospace,Filton; Kate Mullan, Bombardier Shorts; MilesOglethorpe, RCAHM Scotland; Stuart Shaw; JulianTemple, Brooklands Museum; Dr Barrie Trinder,N ene College; and staff at Boulton & Paul; ImperialCollege and the Science Museum Library. DavidGeorge, Stuart Shaw, Don Storer and Julian Templevery kindly commented on the draft text.

2. Hudson, K., The Archaeology of the Consumer Society,(London, 1981)

3. Trinder, B.S., 'The Archaeology of the British FoodIndustry 1660-1960' Industrial Archaeology Review, XV(1993) 119-139; Butterfield, Richard J., 'TheIndustrial Archaeology of the Twentieth Century: TheShredded Wheat Factory at Welwyn Garden City',Industrial Archaeology Review, XVI (1994) 196-215

4. Collins, P. and Stratton, M.J., British Car Factoriesfrom 1896, (Godmanstone, 1993)

244 INDUSTRIAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW,XVIII, 2, SPRING 1996

5. Texts on industrial architecture have typicallypresented Germany and France as spearheading themodernist path due to their sense of 'discipline andorder'. See Brockman, H.A.N., The Bn'tish Architect inIndustry, (London, 1974) 118

6. Such critiques were started by Wiener M., English Cul-ture and The Decline of the Industrial Spirit 1850-1980,(Cambridge, 1981)

7. Edgerton, D., England and the Aeroplane, (Basingstokeand London, 1991)

8. Brown, J., The Baldwin Locomotive Works, (Baltimore,1995)

9. This argument is more fully explored in a forth-coming book: Stratton, M.]. & Trinder, B.S., Industn'alEngland, (London, 1996)

10. Peck, A.S., The Great Western at Swindon Works,(Poole, 1983) 11-39

11. Most studies of the American car industry give littleattention to first-generation workshops, concentratingon factories purpose-built for mass production. Thelink between Ford's Highland Park works and thedevelopment of mass production is covered .mostlucidly by Hounshell, D., From the American System toMass Production 1800-1932, (Baltimore and London,1984) 220-~89

12. For an overview of the factories used by these indust-ries see Collins and Stratton, note 4 and Gunston, B.,The Plane Makers, (London, 1980)

13. Jackson, A.J., Avro Aircraft since 1908, (London, 1990)xi-xv

14. Holmes, H., Avro Co.: the History of an AircraftCompany, (Shrewsbury, 1994) 10

15. George, A.D., Aircraft Builders around Manchester,(Manchester, nd) 1-2. On Shorts see Taylor, M.J.H.,Planemakers: 4 - Shorts, (London, 1984)

16. The origins of American Aircraft firms are recounted inGunston, note 12

17. Penrose, H.,· Bn'tish Aviation: the Pioneer Years,(London, 1980) 165

18. Green, G., Bn'stol Aerospace since 1910, (Wotton-- under-Edge, 1985) 24, 73, 87

19. Jackson, A.J., Blackburn Aircraft since 1909, (London,1989)

20. See Johnson, H., Wings over Brooklands, (Weybridge,1981)

21. Andrews, C.P. & Morgan, E.B., Superman'ne Aircraftfrom 1914 (London, 1981) 3

22. Williams, T.!., A Short History of Twentieth-CenturyTechnology, (Oxford, 1982) 262

23. Hayward, K., The Bn'tish Aircraft Industry, (Man-chester, 1989) 10

24. Shaw, S.J., 'The Development of the Aircraft Factoryin the South East of England: 1909-1990', (IronbridgeInstitute dissertation, 1994) 20, 23. This dissertationwas invaluable in providing information on all the keysites in the south-east of England. I am indebted to theresarch undertaken by Stuart Shaw while based at theIronbridge Institute.

25. Taylor, H.A., Fairey Aircraft since 1915, (London,1974)

26. Jackson, A.J., Avro Aircraft since 1908, (London, 1990)xviii

27. Shaw, note 24, 100

28. Mondey, D., Planemakers: 2 - Westland, (London,1982) 7-13

29. -Gillies, J.D. & Wood, J.L., Aviation in Scotland,(Glasgow, 1966) 39-50

30. Autocar, 12 (1904) 68-7031. For a broad coverage of the role of Kahn see

Hildebrand, G., Designing for Industry: the Architectureof Albert Kahn, .(Cambridge, Mass, 1974)

32. Hyde, C.K., Detroit: An Industrial Guide, (DetroitHistorical Society, 1980). I am grateful to FordCorporate Archives for considerable assistance and toCharlie Hyde for a tour of Detroit's factories.

33. Loader, R. and Skinner,J., 'Management, Constuctionand Architecture: The Development of the ModelFactory', Construction History, 7 (1991) 89-92

34. Shaw, note 24, Appendix no. 535. George, A.D., Aircraft Facton'es: Ongins, Development

and Archaeology, (Manchester, 1986) 2-436. Molloy, E., Aircraft Production, (Brooklyn, 1941) 29,

31, 33, 6337. Rae, J.B, Climb to Greatness: The American Aircraft

Industry 1920-60, (Cambridge, Mass., 1968) 82-338. Andrews, C.P. & Morgan, E.B., Vickers Aircraft since

1908, (London, 1988) 10539. George, note 15, 1140. Middleton, D.H., Airspeed: the Company and its

Aeroplanes, (Lavenham, 1982)41. For details on Saunder-Roe see Tagg, A.E. and

Wheeler, R.L., From Sea to Air: the Hen'tage of SamSaunders, (Newport, 1989)

42. Loader and Skinner, note 33, 94-9943. Jones, E., Industrial Architecture in Bn'tain 1750-1939,

(London, 1989) 213-544. On de Havilland see Jackson, A.J., De Havilland

Aircraft since 1909, (2nd edition updated by Jackson,R.T., London, 1987) and Martin-Sharp, C., D.H.: AHistory of de Havilland, (Shrewsbury, 1982)

45. See Hannah, D., De Havilland, (Lincolnshire, 1982)46. Shaw, note 24, 17647. Penrose, H., British Aviation: Ominous Skies, (London,

1980)48. Holmes, note 14, 126; and Aircraft Production, 5

(1943) 10.49. Jackson, A.J., Avro Aircraft since 1908, (London, 1990)

xxi50. Hayward, note 23, 2151. Barnes, C.H., Bristol Aircraft since 1910, (London,

1964) 4352. Rae, note 37, 158, 17253. Aircraft Production, 9 (1947) 11854. Aircraft Production, 18, (1956) 18755. An invaluable insight into the production of jet

airliners in Britain is provided by Storer, J.D., Behindthe Scenes in an Aircraft Factory, (London, 1965)

56. For an overview on post-war developments in airplanetechnology and manufacturing techniques see: Pite,C.D., The Jetmakers, (Kansas, 1978)

57. For a fuller consideration of this issue see, Zeitlin, J.'Flexibility and Mass Production at War: AircraftManufacture in Britain, the United States andGermany 1939-45' Technology & Culture, 36 (1995)46-79

58. For a general coverage of this issue see: Brand, S., HowBuildings Learn, (New York and London, 1994)

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skating rinks to shadow factories: the evolution of british aircraft manufacturing complexes

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