History
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is a British pharmaceutical company. As of 2015, it was listed as the sixth largest pharmaceutical company in the world. The original company, Glaxo, was founded in the late 1850s as a general trading company in Bunnythorpe, New Zealand, by a Londoner named Joseph Edward Nathan. In later years, Glaxo went on to specialise in drying and processing cows’ milk to manufacture powdered baby milk. The company’s first pharmaceutical product was a vitamin D supplement, which was launched in the 1920s. Glaxo laboratories did not open units in London until 1935; however, their expansion was a success because the market economy in Europe was much stronger than New Zealand’s which, by comparison, was still in its infancy. Following the move Glaxo went on to take over two additional companies in the UK in 1947 and 1958. The New Zealand site continued to operate as part of the same company up until 1979, when it was transformed into the Pantha BMX manufacturing plant.
Following an expansion to the United States, Glaxo merged with Burroughs Wellcome, an American pharmaceutical company, in 1995 to form Glaxo Wellcome. The company went through a period of restructuring but by 1999 it had become the world’s third largest pharmaceutical company and the world’s largest manufacturer of drugs for the treatment of asthma and HIV/AIDS. Some of its key products included Imigran (for the treatment of migraines), salbutamol (for the treatment of asthma), Zovirax (for the treatment of coldsores) and Retrovir and Epivir (for the treatment of AIDS). In the UK, Glaxo Wellcome employed 13,400 people across several facilities and manufacturing plants in Hertfordshire, Kent, London, Scotland and the north of England.
A new merge between Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham – another pharmaceutical company – occurred in December 2000, to form GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). The company’s new official £300 million headquarters was opened by Tony Blair, who was Prime Minister at the time, in 2002. Today, GSK manufactures products for many diseases and health issues, such as cancer, infections, asthma, diabetes and mental health. However, the company has been fined heavily for committing various criminal offences. Some of those offences include trialling new drugs without taking sufficient health and safety precautions, misleading customers, producing and selling improperly made and adulterated drugs, manipulating the world market, claiming Ribena contained vitamin C when in fact it contained no detectable vitamin C and that Ribena Toothkind was good for teeth, bribing police officers, doctors and judges, tax evasion and treating depression in under 18s using drugs that were not approved for paediatric use. Other than those issues GSK is a legitimate company.
Closure of the GSK’s site at Harlow was announced in 2013. Parts of the facility have existed since the 1950s, when they were constructed by the Beecham Group as research laboratories. However, in an effort to reduce their carbon footprint and combine technologies across existing sites, GSK decided to move the research and development complex to other existing sites based in Stevenage or Ware. The company reassured staff that the move was not about making redundancies but making changes to cope with future demands. Nevertheless, following their reliable track record for operating an ‘honest’ company, GSK made a number of redundancies when the site closed in 2014.
As things stand presently, the old Harlow site is due to be redeveloped into a £400 million public health science hub to bring together ‘vital public health functions for England on one site’. The new facility is expected to provide up to 2,750 new site-specific jobs and 10,000 temporary construction-related jobs. Discussions between the science hub developers, Harlow College, Sir Charles Kao UTC and Anglia Ruskin University have also begun to form an apprenticeship scheme which will be available at the new site. The facility is predicted to be fully operational by 2024, and it will offer new office space, laboratories, a visitor centre, exhibition spaces, a training laboratory for educational purposes and a media centre.
Our Version of Events
It was a mild summers night and, yet again, we found ourselves in Harlow, armed with our cameras, tripods and buffs. We’d made a plan to meet UrbanDuck and MockneyReject inside GSK’s premises, which is absolutely huge. There are approximately eleven buildings, all ‘protected’ by a 10ft palisade fence, the odd camera here and there, and a security office with several enthusiastic guards. After much jumping, diving, rolling around and working our way through the labyrinth of doors, though, we manged to make it to the roof of the powerhouse, where we met our partners-in-not-so-much-crime.
From the rooftop of the powerhouse, where we had exceptional views of a gigantic smoke stack, we planned which building we should hit first. In the end, we decided to visit the service tunnels that took us into the building opposite. The tunnels themselves were nicely laid out and virtually intact. However, no sooner had we entered our target building did we cross a room labelled: ‘The Bunker: Security Control Room’. Uh oh! And inside we could hear very distinctive radio chatter. It didn’t take us long to reach a mutual decision that we would hit legs and explore another part of the building. The last thing we wanted was to bump into secca.
By the time we’d reached the next section of the site, it was very clear that the facility is pretty much ready to be put right back into business if someone moves their shit in. Even the air conditioning was still working. Most of the site consists of former high-tech laboratories, which are mostly empty except for tables, fume cupboards and the odd gas tap here and there. The canteen we came across still looked ready to go back into service too, and it seemed large enough to have once catered for hundreds of scientists and their hearty appetites for cheese, beans and jacket potatoes.
After the canteen, we found a stairwell and made our way to the rooftop once again. This second roof was just as spectacular as the power house roof. There are also seven large metal frames towering well above the Harlow skyline that give it a kind of sensual industrial feel. We spent a little while up there, gazing down at the lights of Harlow, until eventually we decided to head back to the reception area to gather more snaps. However, as we made our way back we started hearing things, as you often do in these environments. There was some kind of knocking sound, which quickly developed into footsteps (or so we convinced ourselves) and the all-too-familiar sound of radio chatter. Needless to say, we all shit ourselves and bailed like a group of right fannies. The scramble to get back out was intense, and it very nearly resulted in the loss of a testicle or two!
Explored with Ford Mayhem, Mockney Reject, UrbanDuck, Stewie and Nynke.
‘Glaxo builds bonny babies’ (Glaxo’s 1930s company slogan).
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is a British pharmaceutical company. As of 2015, it was listed as the sixth largest pharmaceutical company in the world. The original company, Glaxo, was founded in the late 1850s as a general trading company in Bunnythorpe, New Zealand, by a Londoner named Joseph Edward Nathan. In later years, Glaxo went on to specialise in drying and processing cows’ milk to manufacture powdered baby milk. The company’s first pharmaceutical product was a vitamin D supplement, which was launched in the 1920s. Glaxo laboratories did not open units in London until 1935; however, their expansion was a success because the market economy in Europe was much stronger than New Zealand’s which, by comparison, was still in its infancy. Following the move Glaxo went on to take over two additional companies in the UK in 1947 and 1958. The New Zealand site continued to operate as part of the same company up until 1979, when it was transformed into the Pantha BMX manufacturing plant.
Following an expansion to the United States, Glaxo merged with Burroughs Wellcome, an American pharmaceutical company, in 1995 to form Glaxo Wellcome. The company went through a period of restructuring but by 1999 it had become the world’s third largest pharmaceutical company and the world’s largest manufacturer of drugs for the treatment of asthma and HIV/AIDS. Some of its key products included Imigran (for the treatment of migraines), salbutamol (for the treatment of asthma), Zovirax (for the treatment of coldsores) and Retrovir and Epivir (for the treatment of AIDS). In the UK, Glaxo Wellcome employed 13,400 people across several facilities and manufacturing plants in Hertfordshire, Kent, London, Scotland and the north of England.
A new merge between Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham – another pharmaceutical company – occurred in December 2000, to form GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). The company’s new official £300 million headquarters was opened by Tony Blair, who was Prime Minister at the time, in 2002. Today, GSK manufactures products for many diseases and health issues, such as cancer, infections, asthma, diabetes and mental health. However, the company has been fined heavily for committing various criminal offences. Some of those offences include trialling new drugs without taking sufficient health and safety precautions, misleading customers, producing and selling improperly made and adulterated drugs, manipulating the world market, claiming Ribena contained vitamin C when in fact it contained no detectable vitamin C and that Ribena Toothkind was good for teeth, bribing police officers, doctors and judges, tax evasion and treating depression in under 18s using drugs that were not approved for paediatric use. Other than those issues GSK is a legitimate company.
Closure of the GSK’s site at Harlow was announced in 2013. Parts of the facility have existed since the 1950s, when they were constructed by the Beecham Group as research laboratories. However, in an effort to reduce their carbon footprint and combine technologies across existing sites, GSK decided to move the research and development complex to other existing sites based in Stevenage or Ware. The company reassured staff that the move was not about making redundancies but making changes to cope with future demands. Nevertheless, following their reliable track record for operating an ‘honest’ company, GSK made a number of redundancies when the site closed in 2014.
As things stand presently, the old Harlow site is due to be redeveloped into a £400 million public health science hub to bring together ‘vital public health functions for England on one site’. The new facility is expected to provide up to 2,750 new site-specific jobs and 10,000 temporary construction-related jobs. Discussions between the science hub developers, Harlow College, Sir Charles Kao UTC and Anglia Ruskin University have also begun to form an apprenticeship scheme which will be available at the new site. The facility is predicted to be fully operational by 2024, and it will offer new office space, laboratories, a visitor centre, exhibition spaces, a training laboratory for educational purposes and a media centre.
Our Version of Events
It was a mild summers night and, yet again, we found ourselves in Harlow, armed with our cameras, tripods and buffs. We’d made a plan to meet UrbanDuck and MockneyReject inside GSK’s premises, which is absolutely huge. There are approximately eleven buildings, all ‘protected’ by a 10ft palisade fence, the odd camera here and there, and a security office with several enthusiastic guards. After much jumping, diving, rolling around and working our way through the labyrinth of doors, though, we manged to make it to the roof of the powerhouse, where we met our partners-in-not-so-much-crime.
From the rooftop of the powerhouse, where we had exceptional views of a gigantic smoke stack, we planned which building we should hit first. In the end, we decided to visit the service tunnels that took us into the building opposite. The tunnels themselves were nicely laid out and virtually intact. However, no sooner had we entered our target building did we cross a room labelled: ‘The Bunker: Security Control Room’. Uh oh! And inside we could hear very distinctive radio chatter. It didn’t take us long to reach a mutual decision that we would hit legs and explore another part of the building. The last thing we wanted was to bump into secca.
By the time we’d reached the next section of the site, it was very clear that the facility is pretty much ready to be put right back into business if someone moves their shit in. Even the air conditioning was still working. Most of the site consists of former high-tech laboratories, which are mostly empty except for tables, fume cupboards and the odd gas tap here and there. The canteen we came across still looked ready to go back into service too, and it seemed large enough to have once catered for hundreds of scientists and their hearty appetites for cheese, beans and jacket potatoes.
After the canteen, we found a stairwell and made our way to the rooftop once again. This second roof was just as spectacular as the power house roof. There are also seven large metal frames towering well above the Harlow skyline that give it a kind of sensual industrial feel. We spent a little while up there, gazing down at the lights of Harlow, until eventually we decided to head back to the reception area to gather more snaps. However, as we made our way back we started hearing things, as you often do in these environments. There was some kind of knocking sound, which quickly developed into footsteps (or so we convinced ourselves) and the all-too-familiar sound of radio chatter. Needless to say, we all shit ourselves and bailed like a group of right fannies. The scramble to get back out was intense, and it very nearly resulted in the loss of a testicle or two!
Explored with Ford Mayhem, Mockney Reject, UrbanDuck, Stewie and Nynke.
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