The Redditch factory in Hewell Road was demolished a few years ago to make way for the Royal Enfield Business park. There is one remaining building from the time,
They have placed a stylized sculpture of a bike in front of it and has the little round plaque that the Royal Enfield Owners Club had placed commemorating the factory (it was originally placed on another building that was demolished). They also painted the Royal Enfield logo on the side of the building,
It belongs to Prestantia Eco, which lists its address as "Enfield House, Royal Enfield Business Park, Hewell Road, Redditch". Rather tastefully, they kept their modern signage at the back of the building,
I always found that building rather odd, it was at a 90 degree angle with respect to the other buildings of the factory, and had a different construction style than them,
In Anne Bradford's book there is a map listing the various buildings. It is hand drawn, rather schematic, and not to scale, so it is not easy to identify the individual buildings in the picture. But a building roughly in the location of the one we are discussing says it did not belong to the factory but to Terry Springs (which owned several other buildings in town, having being founded in 1855 and still going strong) and that Major Mountford, the Enfield CEO in the 1950's attempted to buy it but failed.
It would be good if this could be corroborated. Any readers out there with knowledge of this?
This is a very good question, and it would be quite a sorry thing if the most prominent remaining reminder of Royal Enfield at the site of its iconic Redditch factory had not really been part of that factory. The modern Worcestershire property record map labels the little building "Enfield House." It is seen in the very early aerial photos of the factory. (Did it predate the factory?) Royal Enfield often included the building in its advertising illustrations of the factory, but it is excluded in at least one of these illustrations I've seen. What is going on? The answer is in the out takes of Anne Bradford's book, which she left with the Redditch Library and the Royal Enfield Owners Club. It's one paragraph in the section by Eddie Wright, the executive who "carried out all general building work" at the factory from the 1930s into the 1960s, and then for the Redditch Development Corporation, which acquired the site after E&HP Smith bought Royal Enfield and eventually sold off the factory:
ReplyDelete"E&HP Smith managed to do what Major Smith had been trying to do for years and never succeeded. At the front of the site toward the Windsor Road side was a small factory belonging to Herbert Terry Springs. He never succeeded in purchasing this in spite of Charles Terry being on the Enfield Board. E&HP Smith agreed a price and the sale went through, then they didn't know what to do with it."
So the little building did become part of the factory site, but perhaps not a very active part of it before the end came.