The Longbridge factory has grown over the years, but is split up into four main areas. South Works where it all began, then North Works, West Works and then East works.
Plan
of the Works in 1961
Introduction
The
origins of the Longbridge works are a tin printing and box
manufacturing works built by the Birmingham company of White and
Pike Ltd. They were copper plate printers, established in 1860 and
occupying several sites in the city centre. In 1893 they decided to
diversify their operation to include the printing and manufacture
of tin boxes. For this a new works was built on a site outside the
city boundary at Longbridge comprising a series of twenty or so
fields bounded by Lickey Road and Lowhill Lane, the Midland
Railway's main Birmingham-Gloucester and Halesowen Branch Iines.
The setting was entirely agricultural save for one house, 'The
Wonders' (now buried some where under CAB I ), which was approached
from Lowhill Lane. It also included Cofton Hill, a local land mark,
which rose 70ft or so above its surroundings. The architects were
Messrs Stark & Rowntree of Glasgow and the builders were James
Moffatt & Sons of Camp Hill, Birmingham. White and Pike had to
raise £105,000 to cover the cost of the new factory and
construction work commenced on 19th March 1894 to build the new
factory which was finished in the first quarter of 1895.
You
will see from the picture that it was actually at first producing
components for the cycle industry. Perhaps this work tailed off so
they then decided to go into tin printing. This venture proved to
be unsuccessful and the Longbridge factory closed down in about
1901.
White
and Pike factory built in 1895
For
four years the factory lay empty and on the books of E A Olivieri,
a Birmingham financier at a price of £11,000. Herbert Austin, then
working out his notice as general manager of the Wolseley Sheep
Shearing & Equipment Supply Co. at Aston. Having made a
decision to start up his own company The Austin Motor Co. Ltd.
which was registered on 26th June 1905 he began to look round for a
suitable factory. Time was running out as the annual Motor Show was
the place to exhibit if a manufacturer wanted to attract the
maximum attention from the motoring press and the car buying
public. It was going to be in London on the 17th - 25th November
1905. In November he learned about the former White and Pike works
at Longbridge; visiting it on Saturday 4th November 1905 with his
wife and his entire staff of three. The factory was exactly what
Austin had been looking for and the following Monday he contacted
Olivieri to talk terms. The asking price was £11,000 but a deal was
satisfactorily concluded at £7,5000. With out delay Herbert Austin
and his staff of three moved into the works later that same week.
With a set of drawings of their first car ready in time to be shown
on Stand 42 at the Motor Show just two weeks later. Firm orders
were placed, giving Austin and his backers the confidence they
required to raise extra capital. On the 22nd January 1906 ownership
of the factory along with an extra 8 acres was finally
transferred.
South
Works
With
the firm orders received from the Motor Show, Herbert Austin was
planning an expansion of the original works. On 26th November 1905,
just three weeks after he moved in, a planning application was
lodged with Kings Norton & Northfield RUDC for the erection of
a kitchen block on the site; this was the first of several hundred
such applications submitted over the years. Almost a year passed
before an expansion of the work's production capacity was planned,
But during the nine months from October 1906 applications were
received to build a Paint Shop, a Mess Room, a Cycle Store and a
Toilet block. It was stated at the time that the Longbridge factory
had the latest machines available such as several new, high speed
turret and gear turning lathes. In the first quarter of 1906 new
shops were already been erected and output was slowly building up
to four cars a week. With all this building work going on, the
drainage on the site had to be revised. A plan for this work, dated
lst March 1909, provides a unique picture of the development of the
works at that date and a basis for comprehending the historic core
of the current Longbridge works. White and Pike's rectangular block
was divided into the machine shop, erecting shop and body shop, one
behind the other. The sections were partitioned and subsequently
further divided by glass screens, creating an enclosed, craft
atmosphere. These workshops shared, and are still dominated by
lines of cast-iron columns, round in section up to their capitals
and then square above to carry bearings for line-shafting. The
columns supported sturdy wooden roof trusses and north-lit roofing.
Workbenches and rows of chassis were arranged in lines running
east/west in these shops, to make best use of the spaces left
between the columns; the brick walls incorporate bearing boxes for
the line- shafting.
South
Works 1907
One
of the land marks of South Works was the brick water tower, once
emblazoned with the company's name and later with its stylised
flying 'A' symbol. it was in 1909 that planning application was
submitted for a paint shop. The timber sheds were another early
Austin investment, located in the south east corner of the site;
planks of ash were stacked behind slatted wooden screens to aid the
drying out of the sap. Before the First World War there was no need
for a metal press shop since the body panels were made of aluminium
and could be beaten into shape by hand on a workbench. The
expansion of Longbridge proceeded apace, with just 2.5 acres and
270 employed in 1906, in 1910 it covered 4 acres and employed
1,000. More planning applications were submitted so that by about
1912 the following had been agreed Works Additions, Loading Dock
Cover, Motor Body & Paint Shop, Photographic Room and
Two-Storey Building etc. It was stated that the main machine shops
covered an area of 47,000 square feet, and were situated in the
centre of the Works. Machines include millers, driffters, turret
lathes, boring drilling, profiling and grinding machines and
automatic tools of various descriptions. All the finished parts
were checked for accuracy and interchangeabilately in an adiacent
View Room.
Hardening
Shop
The
Hardening Shop occupied an area of about 1,200 square feet. The
power generating building contained two vertical compound steam
engines for driving the shops - one a 150 horse-power Anderson, and
the other a 286 horse-power Brush. For lighting purposes a 75 horse
power single-cylinder vertical engine is used coupled to a Crompton
dynamo. A 30 horse-power gas engine drives an electric generator
for motors used in the wood mill, pattern shop, wheel building shop
etc. One of the largest building was the erecting shop covered an
area of 17,000 square feet. a total of 24 chassis can be worked on
at the same time . The frame drilling section covers about 5,000
square feet and is fitted with radial and electric drills. Other
shops were:- Copper and tin-smiths shop 500 square feet; wheel
building shop 2,600 square feet; pattern-makers shop 1,160 square
feet and so it goes on. Owing to the large amount of wood used in
the construction of the buildings and in the making of cars and
aeroplanes a system of pipes from a tank of 8,000 gallons capacity
situated in a tower feed 1,200 sprinklers around the factory.
The workforce at this time numbered about 1,500 working day and
night shifts. By December 1913 the works had doubled in size,
primarily through extensions built to the south in the form of a
narrow range and a large shop which accommodated the frame section,
and spring and axle section on an open plan and hence flexible
basis. The fitting out of this new block pioneered some of the
innovations that were adopted during and after the First World War
in the name of mass-production. Larger components were moved by an
overhead trolley system while the work areas for each type of car
were clearly segregated. Meanwhile, the mess room fronting the road
was extended to form a two-storey block of
offices.
Power
House
A
new power-house was constructed and two 4-cylinder vertical gas
engines of 200 hp each, designed by the Anderson Foundry Co. of
Glasgow, were installed. these were directly coupled to three-phase
alternators built by the Allmanna St'enska Electric Co. which
provided the current for twenty 20hp motors driving sections of
machines. Herbert Austin was committed to pursuing mechanisation
and efficiency in terms of his plant layout. A article in the The
Motor after a visit to the works reported in January 1914 that the
arrangement of the various shops calls for special praise, instead
of the some what haphazard planning found in most works, everything
is arranged to provide maximum convenience. Some of the machines
were of Austin's own design and great emphasis was placed on the
testing and inspection of each component.
Railway
Station on
the left under the footbridge.
Water Cooling Towers on
the right.
A
railway station was built within the works in February 1915. The
Midland Railway began to operate workmens' services to Longbridge
from Birmingham New Street that summer. Longbridge's expansion had
started in 1914 with an addition to accommodate shell production
and an extension to the Power House, applied for on 17th September
1914 and completed by l3th November. What amounted to a virtual
doubling in area embraced most of the available land extending back
to the Midland Railway's main line, mostly taken up by a stamp shop
with a high roof that stepped down to the south and an adjoining
forge. The stamp shop provided rough stampings for cars and
aeroplanes. Hammers were arranged in batteries: 2 ton hammers, two
25cwt hammers, four 15cwt ones and others of smaller size, all of
which pounded billets into forgings. Later on this shop formed the
basis for the current No.2 machine shop. The most impressive
surviving element of these extensions was the power house,
nick-named 'The Chapel'. It was one of 22 planning applications
submitted by the company between 31st March and Ist December 1915
that included a shell shop, stack and press shop and a doping room.
Completed in 1915, the power house used brick piered construction
and has round-headed openings. A Belliss & Morcom compressor
provided the air to drive the various tools around the factory.
Another large structure was built for making l8 lbs shells, after
the war was converted into the main erecting shop. Along the
southern boundary of the works was accommodated timber and
employees' cycles. It was necessary because of the war effort to
increase supplies to the army. So 41 planning applications were
lodged by Austin between lst February and 4th November 1916, large
shops were built for making shells, aeroplane engines and stampings
and these is when North and West Works came on the
scene.
North
Works
Layout
of North Works 1920
Longbridge's
North Works was buiit upon land bounded by the Midland Railway's
Halesowen Branch, the Bristol Road and Longbridge Lane; a series of
seven irregular fields that formed the holding of Longbridge Farm.
The latter's buildings were in a misshaped quadrangle and stood
just off the Bristol Road. The River Rea which flowed eastwards
towards the city bisected the site so was put under ground in a
culvert.
Longbridge
Lane:- Works entrance Gate 'B'
Bridge over the River Rea 1930s
Work
on the North Works first began in June 1916. It consisted of a
machine shop 850ft x 270ft finished by December 1916, plus an
adjoining forge which became operational in March 1917, a mess room
seating 4000 and administrative blocks were all built parallel to
Longbridge Lane.
Boiler
House
A
new power unit situated to the east of the North Works which was
equipped with twelve Lancashire boilers, have their ash removed by
a narrow gauge railway system with trucks and small turntables.
Three l500kw turbo generators which supplied 386 electric motors
varying from 0.5 to 200hp. The power house was erected in the north
east comer of the works and still houses a turbine and four
operational compressors.
Station and siding accommodation for goods traffic and employees
was also provided. After the war North Works was designated for the
assembly of tractors, lorries and car axles, plus the machining of
components. Its rebuilding commenced in April 1919 with a steel
foundry at a cost of £80,000. This foundry was capable of making
twelve tons of mild steel per eight hour shift. Converters were
also installed and a press shop of huge dimensions
erected.
Quite
quickly these new facilities needed to be extended and in 1920 a
planning applications on the 5th January for extension to the Steel
Foundry. The North Works machine shop included batteries of
gear-cutting machines, lathes and drills and completing the
facilities were large pattern and machine moulding shops, plus
stores for wood and metal patterns. The need to provide powered
conveyors was appreciated in 1925, but these were not actually
installed until early 1928.
Front and rear axles were produced on a slow moving track, coming
together on a slat conveyor that passed through a tunnel between
two shops. They were brought up on a chain conveyor in the sequence
they were required and then hoisted on to a runway to pass through
the paint spraying plant. Next they were attached to another
conveyor to go through the drying booth. At the end of the conveyor
the axles were deposited on carriages which ran on rails and took
them through various operations, such as the attachment of springs,
before they reached the chassis erecting shop in South Works. North
Works was re-equipped for engine production in 1928. Further
expansion took place in 1931 a Generator House, Engine Testing
Building. The reorganisation of North Works was completed by
January 1935, although a new boiler plant was in-stalled in 1937-8
made by Babcock and Wilcox with a coal feed. The Power House had
four Belliss & Morcom compressors and a Belliss & Morcom
turbine, which drives a 4 mega- watt generator. with a tower and
horizontal conveyor all added later. North Works has steel columns
but wooden truss roofs. Two cooling towers made of wood were
situated in the north-east corner of the works. The foundry, was
built with anaisled form of a high central nave supported by two
lines of lattice columns with cupolas rising through a lower line
of roof back to the south. Core making took place at the eastern
end while the fettling shop was set to the west.
In the the late 1940s plans were drawn up to rebuild the whole of
North Works, below is how it would have looked had the plans come
to fruition.
Proposed
re-build of North Works
North
Works in the 1950/60s foundry was were the 'A' & 'B' series
engine blocks and heads were cast. 'A' series blocks were machined
and assembled next door, but the 'B' series engines were machined
and assembled in No 5 shop in South Works. The area had a large
tool room at the Bristol Road South end, along the Longbridge Lane
was the where the canteen and rehabilitation section is
located.
Because in the late 1960s all the 'A' series were now built in East
Works a big area of North was under used so in the early 1970s the
following buildings were demolished canteen and rehabilitation
block along with the training school. A new building was
constructed for the machining of the new ‘O’ series engine
etc.
North
Works 'O' series Machine Shop
In
the BMW era the only operational building was the North Tool Room
so machines and employees were moved over to the West Works. The
plan was for the North area to be demolished in preparation for a
brand new Body Shop. for the New Mini. Although part of the site
was cleared, at the eleven hour BMW decided to install the new
multi pound press at Land Rover Solihull. This was the first signs
that BMW had a hidden agenda.
West
Works
Layout
of West Works 1920
The
site of West Works at Longbridge was bounded by the Bristol Road
and the Midland Railway's Halesowen Branch. To the rear were the
grounds of Hollymoor Mental Hospital, The works occupied seven
field plots, the only existing building on the site being a large
house called 'Beaumoors' which stood on the Bristol Road South
opposite the junction with Longbridge Lane. Work commenced on the
West Works in December 1916, with the building paid for by the
Government as part of the War effort and was completed in June
1917. It comprised a 660ft x 330ft, 23 bay machine shop equipped
with 1000 machines each driven by electric motors. This was for
making shells and it achieved a record output of 104,000 18
pounders produced in one week. Stores and a mess room were built in
front of the main block and a boiler behind. A number of additions
were made to the works in its early years, including extensions to
its grinding shop. After the Armistice the West Works was laid out
for body manufacture. Something like a thousand machine tools were
removed. New storage sheds, timber-drying kilns, sawmills, a boiler
house, paint spraying and drying rooms, plus new heating and
ventilation systems.
Saw-Mill
Timber
was unloaded from railway wagons in a new siding on to a narrow
gauge trucks on which it remained until it reached the saw- mill
and was reloaded after sawing to take them to the drying kilns. On
26th March 1919 permission was sought to build a Timber Drying Shed
and a Breaking up Mill in the West Works as it converted from the
manufacture of l8lb shells to a body making shop. One feature of
this new shop was spray painting by compressed air each paint gun
enabled a body to be painted in twenty minutes rather than the
three hours it took using a brush. Bodies were carried on a
swivelling bogie which enable them to be moved easily. In January
1920 the West Works was stated to have an output of 250 complete
car bodies per week. Other shops there were adapted to build
wheels, hoods, glass screens and radiators. The forge shop had also
almost been doubled in size and a new black-smith's shop added,
plus drying kilns, a saw mill and a store for completed cars. By
1925 the bodies were being made on a series of production lines.
Once completed they were lifted by slings to an overhead runway to
the mounting shop where they met the correct chassis.
A
further reorganisation of West Works for complete body production,
embracing assembly, painting, trimming and wiring, took place in
1928. Flow production was used with tracks zig-zagging to make the
fullest use of available floor space. The metal bodies were built
up from the main frame, The base pieces of which were strengthened
by spot welding on angle pieces. Cross-members were riveted on, the
scuttle forming an integral part of the design. Aluminium door
panels were used and the running boards, frame valance and wings
were added to the chassis before the body was fitted. Cellulose
paint had been adopted for all Austins in 1926 and by June 1932 the
paint process had been mechanised with bodies being slung on to a
continuous chain and passed through cleaning, priming and painting
stages, ending in an oven, by which point nineteen spray coats had
been applied. Two such painting plants were istalled. Parts were
moved by a conveyor chain 800yds in length, suspended from a girder
framework, which moved at 2.5ft per minute. There were 19 spray
booths in all capable of painting 1700 bodies per week as part of
its normal work. Further alterations were made in the mid
1930s.
Axle
assemble
It
was in 1939 that the chassis erecting shop which was l,000ft in
length was introduced were by all components, including front and
rear axles, power units and cabs, were fed by three elaborate
conveyor systems. The machine shops were laid out in a three-storey
building providing 35,000sq ft of floor area.
These all changed in the early 1950s with CAB 1 up and running, so
bodies from West were taken by lorry the short distance to No 2
Paint Shop on the Lickey Road. In 19xx the convery was build which
then connected West works with South
Part of this is occupied by the marshalling area for the conveyor
that takes the bodies over to CABI in the South Works. The old
machine shop, with timber north lit roofs on steel columns,
accommodates the long-standing body production line for the Mini.
Each section is built on a short U-shaped line before being united
to make up the highly distinctive rounded form of Issigonis's baby.
At its northern end, the building has wider bayed roofs, all of
steel, and houses a rectification and marshalling area for Mini
bodies. In contrast to the broad production areas, the southern
perimeter of the West Works comprises a medley of ancillary
buildings. The now redundant boiler house and a brick engine shed
shelter beneath the conveyor from the new West Works.
The
West (Metro Building)
New
West Works is twice the size of the Old
It
was in 1975 that the planning for the all new Metro Building for
Body in White (BIW) began. Harry Weedon Partnership, who have acted
as architects for the company since the 1950s on all the major
redevelopment schemes at Longbridge were awarded the
contract.
It was necessary to purchase extra land behind the Old West Works.
So 142,000sq m of land belonging to Hollymoor Hospital was
purchased from West Midlands Regional Health Authority. This land
had previously been two sand pits which probable supplied the sand
for the construction of the Old West Works. Time for construction
was limited as the new facility had to be up and running by mid
1980 as the Metro was to be launched at the Motor Show in October
which had moved to the National Exhibition Centre from
London.
The
building which would cover an area of over 71,000sq m with an
unobstructed height of 8.75m in the production areas. Tarmac Ltd
was awarded a £750,000 contract to level the site and put in the
site services. This was completed in April 1977. Sir Alfred
McAlpine & Son (Southern) Ltd was the main contractor and
construction began on the £15.5 million Metro Building in July
1971. Part of this contract also included an extension to the South
Works, covering 32,500sq m in an area adjoining the existing CABs;
this was required to increase trim, final assembly and validation
facilities. Wimpey Construction UK Ltd were given a contract, which
involved the construction of a link bridge (conveyor) to the Old
West Works.
The
front of the building and the link bridge
The
building was handed over to British Leyland in April 1978 with
production commencing on schedule in 1980. Their was a rail link
into the building as the body panels came from the Swindon plant.
The body store is at one end and the panel store in a higher
section at the southern most end. The process begins at an
automated panel store capable of holding sufficient material for
6500 bodies. Each Metro body is formed out of some 180 or so steel
pressings, some of the larger of which are joined by spot welding
for sub-assemblies. Stage two is body side assembly in which four
lines of multi-welders produce two pairs of sides every 50 seconds.
Elsewhere, two multi-weld lines assemble the underframe, using 700
spot welds. These sub-assemblies then pass to the main body
assembly process. Four body preparation lines capable of handling
30 units per hour unite the underframe, front end, body sides and
tailgate aperture sub-assemblies using small metal tags. These
tagged bodies are then automatically transferred to a body store
capable of holding 120 Metro bodies at any one time.
Ready
to fit this immense building out
Some
of the Robots in action
From
here these assemblies pass to one of two automatic body framing
lines, where seven robots unite them using around 450 spot welds.
Next, 24 crucial dimensions on each body are checked electronically
at a body audit station before robot welding stations apply a
further 250 or so spot welds. To complete body assembly, the shells
pass to the body finishing lines where the seams are welded and the
bonnet, doors, tailgate and fender sub-assemblies are added. The
next stage was the long journey by conveyor across the road and
into South Works up to No 3 Paint-shop, and onto CAB1 for final
assemble.
East
Works
Showing
Low Bay left and the High Bay right 2006
East
Works,
Showing
ramp where aircraft were towed to the Flight
Shed
The
whole of East Works stands on land outside the former Warwickshire
county boundaries (now the West Midlands), in the parish of Cofton
Hackett, part of Bromsgrove Rural District in Worcestershire. The
site is defined by this boundary and the line of Lowhill Lane and
was formerly farm land. The East Works was built upon a l5 acre
site bounded by Groveley Lane and Lowhill Lane from 1936 onwards,
as part of the Government's Shadow Factory Scheme which Lord Austin
was in charge of from its inception that year. It included an
under-ground factory built under Groveley Lane where aircraft
engines and associated components were assembled during the Second
World War. By March 1940 tunnels were also constructed to link to
other parts of the works site . These underground tunnels were
capable of accommodating 10,000 workers mainly in South
Works.
East
Works Coal Fired Boilers 1965
A
boiler house with thee boilers employing an underground coaling
apparatus was built in 1937 to supply the East Works. Ash disposal
is accomplished via a small, hand-powered narrow gauge railway. The
main East Works building is 1500ft long by 400ft wide and of
conventional shadow factory design, except that the north lights
run parallel to the sides of the building rather than to the front.
As built, its western end was an unobstructed up-and-over
garage-style door of huge dimensions which was designed to allow
the egress of fully completed bombers. The building has a
conventional shadow factory-style office block fronting it. This is
not directly attached to the factory other than by a rather slender
umbilical corridor.
East
Works Main Office (1996)
Austin's
first aeroplane was the Fairey Battle, completed examples flying
direct from Longbridge. The company leased and eventually purchased
the Cofton Hackett aero factory after the war. It was used for the
production of commercial vehicles, including the 5cwt Champ. A
number of alterations were made to the East Works facilities: a
planning application of 6th December 1948 made various site layout
alterations at Lowhill Lane end, another three applications lodged
between 23rd March and 19th November 1949 developed the site
further through the extension of a laboratory. Most of the East
Works redevelopment was completed in 1951 when nine planning
applications submitted between l2th January and 9th July added,
amongst others, an office, canteen and manufacturing despatch
department as the building was used for the reconditioning of major
components such as engines and gearboxes, which were painted
gold.
East
Works CKD
The
main East Works building, with its high, double-storey roof creates
an unencumbered space which was ideal for the packing of Completely
Knocked Down (CKD) kits which would be sent overseas for final
assemble at the many factories that Austin had around the world.
Later on the large door at the western end where the aircraft used
to be tow out and up a ramp across Groveley Lane to the Flight Shed
was removed. A block were the aero engines were tested was changed
into a research block and called East Research.
Construction
of the Aero Engine Test Cells (1937)
East
Research Test Cells (2006)
This
block housed along with test cells a Cold Room and at the far end a
Wind Tunnel. In the early 1950s to the late 1960s the following
work was carried out. The Gas Turbine (Link) engine
was developed along with a new Alex Issigonis range of small engine
vee four which never went into production because there was no
space advantage when installed in a FWD East West layout. A great
deal of time was spent on a automatic transmission called
Hydrostatic which also did not go into production but the principle
behind it has been used in other
applications.
Wind
Tunnel
Flight
Shed
Flight
Shed 1950s
A
notable structure as part of the East Works development was the
building of the Flight Shed. A planning application lodged on 17th
September 1936 for a hangar in Lowhill Lane on the corner with
Groveley Lane. The work commenced in late 1936 and was completed in
October 1937. The building was to be used as a shop where
aeroengine components were to be machined and assembled. Aircraft
that had been assembled in the East Works were towered over the
road into the Flight Shed were they were fitted out and then lifted
up on a platform by cables to the airfield. The building roof was
constructed from pressed steel sections assembled to form a
honeycombed lattice which gives a single span. There are only a few
examples of this form of construction left in the
country.
Flight
Shed Roof
___________________________