Easily one of my favorite industrial explores. Perhaps because its local but also because I remember it in use during the early 1990s. As a teenager spent a few weekends at the YHA opposite and even back then was fascinated with these bulidilngs. We're balls deep in the Forest of Dean and there is a whopping great factory plonked in middle of nowhere. I visited this place plenty of times over the the year (few of the shots are from later in the year) - I just loved the warehouses even though bare but then to find the main administration office looking like that was quite a bonus.. Haven't visted for a good 5-6 years and believe some of its back in use albeit probably as dodgy as before.
1912 Harold J Smith purchased land at Stowfield and erected The Lydbrook Cable Works. The First World War provided a number of contracts with employee numbers expanding from 40 to 650 with double shilfts being worked. With the end of the War, came a slump in business, and in 1920 the Official Receiver was brought in ending Smith?s connection with the Factory.
The business was bought in 1925 by Edison Swan Electric Company. With the greater resources available the plant at Stowfiled further expanded, and was well placed to help with the Second World War possessing one of only four machines for making lead alloy tube needed for P.L.U.T.O. ? (Petroleum Lines Under The Ocean), which allowed fuel to be supplied to the Allied invasion force on the Continent from Britain. In the late 1940s,
Edison Swan was swallowed up by the Associated Electrical Company – integrated with the Siemens Cable Works at Woolwich the Stowfield Factory at its height employed approximately 1,100 people. The Cable Works came to an end in 1966 when the Factory was bought by Reed Paper Group, which in its turn was taken over by a Swedish Company SCA. The factory finally ceased to be used around 2003.
1912 Harold J Smith purchased land at Stowfield and erected The Lydbrook Cable Works. The First World War provided a number of contracts with employee numbers expanding from 40 to 650 with double shilfts being worked. With the end of the War, came a slump in business, and in 1920 the Official Receiver was brought in ending Smith?s connection with the Factory.
The business was bought in 1925 by Edison Swan Electric Company. With the greater resources available the plant at Stowfiled further expanded, and was well placed to help with the Second World War possessing one of only four machines for making lead alloy tube needed for P.L.U.T.O. ? (Petroleum Lines Under The Ocean), which allowed fuel to be supplied to the Allied invasion force on the Continent from Britain. In the late 1940s,
Edison Swan was swallowed up by the Associated Electrical Company – integrated with the Siemens Cable Works at Woolwich the Stowfield Factory at its height employed approximately 1,100 people. The Cable Works came to an end in 1966 when the Factory was bought by Reed Paper Group, which in its turn was taken over by a Swedish Company SCA. The factory finally ceased to be used around 2003.
:
