EPW009813 ENGLAND (1924). The Artificial Silk Works beside Frederick Milner House, Ashstead, 1924. This image has been produced from a damaged negative.

Was it a production plant or a yarn processing plant? and what was the 'Artificial Silk'? Acetate or Viscose? What was the company?

Anyone help?



Dave Trigg.

Derby.

I have just realised I should have know this when it first came round and probably would have done so if it was a couple years later as in EPW032791, where Stay Leys is set out and the bungalows have been built along the A24 in the background.



Why should I have know this? .... I grow up just out of the top of the picture and used to walk or ride my bike pass this works on the way to country rambles.



My only plea is that I never saw it from this angle!

The Goblin Vacuum Cleaner Co occupied this site until the early 1980's when it was sold to Esso and their new head office was built there.

probably esso/mobil house, research facilities for the petroleum company

leatherhead, surrey

How deeply frustrating. I now recognise this site, and know that I have catalogued other images in the Collection that show it - but for the life of me I can't put my finger on the location!



I have in mind something to do with laundry or synthetic textiles, a placename that might begin with H, and a memory that the OS mapping for the location isn't great (but don't hold me to these vague notions, they just seem to ring a bell).



It will annoy me all weekend, if not longer...



Yours, Katy

Well done Tony D for getting this one. Katy had given us a clue mentioning synthetic textiles but I was never going to locate this. A good result!

The rather grand and possibly historic house in the background would seem to make a rather strange neighbour to this collection collection of brick boxes.

I have looked at this collection a number of times. I agree about power plant or pumping house.

The idea of a water works has been entertained and rejected due to the lack of filterbeds. Even when water is extracted from chalk artesian wells it is normally filtered.



Tiny Tim's suggestion of a refrigerated warehouse has some attractions. I wonder if it was an early government reserve warehouse? When did these start to be built? Most of them seem to have an air of secrecy about them. One set I know used to be hidden in the forest just north of Okehampton in Devon. It would seem unlikely that the government would have used refrigerated storage for long-term emergency supplies as early as 1924. The lack of railway does suggest infrequent move of materials in and out, which would tie in with the idea of an emergency store.

The problem with relying on numbers to locate a site is that these were all taken on individual glass negatives. Between being exposed, taken from the aeroplane and developed there was ample opportunity for them to get out of order. Negatives made on continuous film remain in sequence, these, it seems, may not.

The numerically previous photo to this has been identified as Hurst Park. The next in the sequence to be identified is Welwyn. Logically this site should be somewhere between.

The buildings don't have many windows, yet have ventilation towers, lifts and a substantial power plant. I think they are refrigerated warehouses, although what they contain is hard to guess.

It seems unusual to me that a facility this large isn't rail served, so I would guess that it's not far from a railway.

In this photo, next to the power house, is a freestanding piece of machinery that looks like a condenser. In the next view (EPW009813A) on the opposite side of the power house is a pit or pond, with railings around it and what look like steps going down into it. I've no idea what that's about.

I cannot imagine a use for these buildings. I have been looking in Little Bookham, Surrey and I have forgotten why.