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 finally 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
South
Works
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.
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 adjacent 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.
Chassis Erecting
Shop
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.
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.
Gear Box &
Rear Axle Section
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.
Chassis
Assemble Line North Works
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 where the Canteen and
Rehabilitation section was 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
O' series production
continued till 1998. The Tool Room was moved over to West Works
around mid 1998. BMW had took over the company in 1994, and in late
1998 work stated on demolishing part of North Works 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. North Works was still
carrying out machining parts for Land Rover along with the 'A'
and 'L' series engine items up until 1999, and some parts for the
MGF going into 2000.
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.
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.
Ready to fit
this immense building out
Some of the
Robots in action
East Works
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.
Showing Low Bay
left and the High Bay right 2006
East
Works,
Showing ramp where aircraft
were towed to the Flight Shed
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
___________________________