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Report - - Saunders Roe, Anglesey - 8/1/2010 | Industrial Sites | 28DaysLater.co.uk

Report - Saunders Roe, Anglesey - 8/1/2010

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5erenaur

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Final site of my exploration day with a friend not on the forum.

There is a fair amount of articles on the internet about this site online but I'll try and give a brief history here. This site was built in the 1940's by Saunders Roe to complement their Cowes facility on the Isle of Wight. Much work on flying boats was undertaken here, 399 Catalinas went through the site where they were kitted out with radars and other toys. During the war over 2000 people from all over North Wales worked at the site.

The design and development department of the Saunders Roe company also moved to the Beaumaris site as their Isle of Wight base was constantly under attack from air raids.

After the war the company shifted most of it's marine production to this site where the motor torpedo boat P1602 was built, the first to be made of aluminium alloy. The company also produced bus bodies of which many were exported, 620 going to Cuba.

Laird Ltd was formed in 1968 and took over the site and produced bridges and developed the Centaur which is half Landrover half light tank vehicle (none of these lying around unfortunately).

Laird Ltd are now known as FAUN Municipal Vehicles Ltd and still own the site although it looks to have been un-used for many years.

We didn't have too much trouble gaining entry and we went unchallenged throughout the explore. This first warehouse was all locked up and a small portion of it looks to still be in private use so unfortunately we couldn't gain access:

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The warehouse next to it is no longer in use and access was simple through plenty of broken windows:

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The main room of the warehouse:

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Big electrical junction:

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This building was totally overgrown and we'd of needed machete's to gain access!

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The warehouses behind it proved to be much more accessible though:

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I have no idea what this thing was but I'm guess it was perhaps used for painting things in?

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Inside it:

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The view of Snowdonia from the first floor of the warehouse:

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The final warehouse of the site:

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Warning for the use of a Crane:

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The warehouse looks like it's being used as a storage place for a large house just off the site for logs and machinery:

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And finally the site canteen which was rather small considering the size of the site!

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Here's a few links for further reading:

Saunders-Roe - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Fryars, Beaumaris During World War Two

Saunders Roe (SARO), Beaumaris
 
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