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Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Where in Bradford?

As we discussed before, during the war, part of the Royal Enfield factory was relocated to an underground location in an old quarry in upper Westwood, near Bradford-on-Avon. After the war production continued, but an overground building in nearby Bradford-on-Avon was also used to supplement the production in Westwood. It produced the big twin engines which were then shipped to Redditch. It was a five story building. According to Roger Shuttleworthe, quoted in Anne Bradford's book, the building, called the Greenland Mills, burned in 1990. The building was about 200m away from the "Prison on the Bridge" (upper picture) in Bradford. This is what Greenland Mills, now a residential neighborhood, looks like today (arrow indicates the "Prison on the Bridge"), The building in Greenland Mills was vacated by Royal Enfield in the final winding down of the company in the late 1960's and the entire production was moved underground to Westwood. This may also have been done due to the fact that the Greenland Mills building, being close to the river, was prone to flooding as these pictures show, Photo credit: "The mighty interceptor" by Andrew Strait.

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