Stranded in the 21st Century

PATONS AND BALDWINS’ “wonder factory” in Darlington was born in the first age of austerity after the Second World War, so it is appropriate that it is the home of this weekend’s Festival of Thrift, which is a product of the second age of austerity of the early 21st Century.

In fact, the “wonder factory” – the biggest and most modern of its kind in the world – was so tied up in the spirit of its age that when the times changed in the mid-1960s, it got left behind.

The factory, at Lingfield Point, began the production of wool on December 10, 1947, and was fully operational by 1951, when it employed 3,000 people (three-quarters women) who converted £500,000-worth of fleeces a week into 250,000lb of knitting wool, 60 per cent of which went for export.

However, in the mid-1960s, trendy teenagers, with a few shillings in their pocket and Beatles’ 45s on their record-players, fell out of love with the idea of knitting and woollen clothing. They instead bought machine-made garments manufactured from fashionable man-made fibres like nylon.

This meant Patons and Baldwins was being squeezed at both ends: not only was its market diminishing, but low-wage competition from overseas meant countries like Czechoslovakia could produce wool more cheaply than Lingfield Point.

The factory started laying off workers in the 1970s and all wool production ceased in 1980.

Now the company is known as Coats Threads UK, and it still employs 150 at Lingfield Point marketing and distributing around the world such well known brands as Sylko sewing thread, Anchor embroidery and tapestry threads, Patons handknitting wool and Opti zips. Amazingly, almost one in five garments on the entire planet are held together by Coats’ thread.

ALL the statistics connected to the gargantuan “wonder factory “, as 1950s headline writers called it, are staggering. For example, it had 1.7m square feet of floor space, all on ground level, which made it the largest single storey factory in Europe, and possibly the world. It was planned from 1942-46 to operate on the “flow-line” principle – 1940s managerialspeak for fleeces arriving by train at one end of the factory and then weaving their way on a mini-railway conveyor belt through all the different processes so that the “flow-line” came to an end with coloured balls of wool emerging into the daylight for onward transmission.

This magnificent aerial view has been sent in by Richard Barber of the Armstrong Trust.

It was taken in the second half of the 1960s by John Boyes, who flew out of Teesside International Airport’s newly-opened passenger terminal.

To the left of the picture can be seen the gasholder in John Street, and to the right of the picture is the chimney of Patons and Baldwins’ powerplant, which gobbled up 700 tons of coal a week in providing all the electricity and steam for the factory.

It even provided the steam that powered the factory’s fireless steam locomotive which pushed the fleeces off the Stockton and Darlington Railway and around the site.

A fireless locomotive is one without a fire. Instead of burning its own coal to create steam, it was plugged into the P&B powerplant, which produced steam for use in the factory for cleaning and heating, and filled with steam. Once charged, the engine could run for three hours.

Fireless steam locos were used in situations where having sparks shooting about the place might be dangerous, like in paper mills or ammunition factories, or where cleanliness was important. The P&B engine was able to sidle into the sheds without pumping out soot and smoke which could have contaminated the delicately coloured wools.

P&B’s engine was made in 1948 by WG Bagnall, of Stafford. It retired in 1979 and is now at Darlington’s Head of Steam museum, where it wears a Manchester City blue.

Its chimney and dome are false because, as a fireless engine, it didn’t need them. They were added for cosmetic reasons.

NEXT to the P&B powerstation was the Grease Removal Plant which, along with the washing sheds, was the point of entry for the fleeces as they came off the Stockton and Darlington Railway (its trackbed beside the chimney is clearly visible on the photograph and is now the new Eastern Transport Corridor road).

The fleeces, shorn straight from the sheep’s back, came from as far afield as Australia and New Zealand, and were clearly in need of cleaning when they arrived at Lingfield.

This leads us to the most horrific anecdote we’ve heard about life at P&B. Apparently, all the grease and gloop and scum that was washed out of the fleeces was scooped out of the water and sold to the cosmetic industry which turned it into make-up which women plastered all over their faces to make themselves look nice. Lovely!

TODAY’S front cover photograph is entitled “Inspecting Knitting Wool”. It was taken at P&B in Darlington in 1960 and it was exhibited at Photokina 1960 in Cologne. Photokina is the world’s leading photographic equipment trade fair which is still held in Cologne every September.

The photograph was taken by Walter Nurnberg, whom Wikipedia describes as “one of post-war Britain’s outstanding industrial photographers”. He was born in Berlin in 1907, fled the Nazis in 1937 and settled in London. He was best known for his dramatic use of light.

Wikipedia says: “By doggedly sticking to his lighting principles, creating memorable black and white images for the printed page, he did much to boost the image and confidence of British industry.”

He was awarded an OBE for his services to photography, and he died in 1991.

SO what was it like to work at P&B? The redoubtable Gypsy Nichol, of Darlington, joined in 1950 as PA to the chief chemist, Joe Gaunt. She finished in 1980 as laboratory administrator, helping dismantle the lab for its move to Alloa when production ceased at Lingfield Point.

She says: “In the beginning, there were 50 acres of sports fields and gardens, and I remember playing both tennis and hockey for P&B teams. We also had a popular dramatic society, and I helped to run a Scottish country dancing club. It was a wonderful sight to see 300-plus people dancing Scottish reels in the Beehive to music played by the famous Jimmy Shand and Andrew Rankin bands (with lovely suppers provided by Arthur Messenger and his canteen staff!).

“I have happy memories of the girls in the lab creating a 400ft long scarf in red and white stripes for Sunderland football supporters, who were going up to Wembley for the 1973 FA Cup Final. We carried it out of the factory in a long procession and appeared on TV!

“Another time, we had some important visitors from Germany and I had to drive a huge Mercedes left-hand drive car through Darlington on a market day and speak German at the same time!

“Once, a glider landed in a field adjacent to P&B and out stepped Geoff Crawshaw, who a few years previously had been assistant chief chemist. He had flown from Sutton Bank, but had lost height and decided to land where he knew it would be safe.

“Finally, I well remember Willie Ford, the section head in the export department, as a young man sliding down the curved bannisters in the entrance hall, and landing at the feet of one of the company directors – not a good idea!”