Courtaulds

Hi all Work in progress, or A/C 4400, for anyone that knows their accounting codes. I was travelling on the 56 when recording these pictures.

I'm glad they've boarded the windows up. The building is scheduled to be retained, but I was getting concerned that it was being allowed to deteriorate to the point is wasn't viable. I spent a year seconded to CEL in the late 1980's working on a external contract for a Zirconium Chemicals plant in north Manchester. The project office was on the ground floor to the left of the entrance. One of the quirks of the building was the internal partitions had been altered which meant that the light switch for our area was in an adjacent office! This was solved by having a (well designed) hole in the partition next to the light switch, covered by a calendar. Being from Research I had a more flexible view of finishing time so I'd often look up to find that the office had suddenly emptied. Peter.

As an ex-employee (twice) of Courtaulds, and son-in-law of a Courtaulds chemist of note, I've enjoyed revisiting this thread. I was unit accountant for the Elastomeric Fibres (Spanzelle) Unit - the manager was Frank Hyde, I think, who had been out in Swaziland with Usutu Pulp. On a second spell with the company I was unit accountant for the Carbon Fibres Unit, which was only in its infancy at the time - I remember very little about it, although wasn't it based at the Amtico factory?

As I have mentioned before I initially came to Coventry to work at Courtaulds as a research chemist for six months in 1972 and never got round to leaving. During my time there I (along with several others) spent some time unofficially exploring the tunnels underneath Courtaulds, although several of them were unlit or blocked off. There were stories and rumours that the tunnels covered a large area and that there was even one that went to to the British Celanese plant. After Courtaulds closed nothing was mentioned about the tunnels until the burglary at the Re-Use Centre a few years ago. I am wondering if anyone knows of any map of the tunnels or of what area they did actually cover?

Hi OldLincoln, I joined Courtaulds as a Research Engineer on Lockhurst Lane in 1984 and worked on site in various forms until last year. The large "tunnels" under the main works site were the extraction ducts from the old Viscose Rayon plant to the tall chimney. These were back filled when the chimney was demolished. The bricks were dropped down the middle of the stack and taken off to fill the old ducts. There were also a number basements and also service tunnels connecting the sites carrying steam, water, telephone cables and an old pneumatic tube system to a central telex room. The tunnel I know of was crawlable rather than walkable, but was always sealed at the one end. The only connection with British Celanese (Little Heath) was a bore hole water pipe down the Foleshill Road from a well on the Engineering site. Regards, Peter.

I served my apprenticeship with the NCB, this job prevented my call up for National Service. For personal reasons I quit the mine but needed a job while waiting for my call up papers to arrive. A friend, Bruce Greenway who was in charge of carbon fibre development, recommended me for a job in viscose research. This involved building a single end machine for experiments in the production of elastic fibre as Clive mentioned above. There was a lot going on in Courtaulds at that time. Carbon fibre was on its way as well as Kesp, artificial meat made from soya, tobacco free cigarettes, Amtico and the future Dexcell plant. There were several other projects in the pipeline. When my call up papers eventually arrived I was reluctant to leave. I explored those underground tunnels but I think they were just for the distribution of services. As an after thought. Clive is correct in that the Carbon Fibre plant was to be situated next to Amtico.

OL, I am on a facebook site "I worked at the East Midlands Electricity Board" (Which I did). Someone has posted some pictures of IV & HV Switch-gear at Courtaulds, Coventry, in what look like long narrow rooms. I wondered if this equipment would have been in the tunnels you are talking about.

Many thanks for your responses PeterB , when I was at Courtaulds much of the machinery was below ground level as was the wet lab. I could certainly walk down parts of some of the tunnels without stooping, the main problem was lack of light and rubbish. LesMac , the main projects I worked on were Kesp (Kesp based meals were the cheapest meals in the canteen as they wanted the feedback), synthetic tobacco and a material that would completely dissolve in water within a couple of days. During my (short) time there the synthetic fibres department was known as science fiction (SF) Annewiggy , unfortunately that's a closed group and I feel a bit a fraud asking to join when I didn't work there, but I just might do.

Certainly the Spanzelle unit was below ground level (1960s)

OL. When I was there they were producing a thread that would dissolve inside the body. It was called Alginate and that was used by surgeons for stitching inside the body and it would dissolve harmlessly in a few days. I knew little about that plant except that they made a lot of it. I still remember a couple of names from Alginate, George Snell was the fitter and he travelled from Birmingham every day. The foreman was Norman Pickering who lived in Broad Lane and was the nicest guy you could hope to meet.

That's probably what the water soluble item was then LesMac. I did not meet many of the workforce as I was based in the labs in the main building occasionally going to collect samples. Much of my work consisted of making slight changes in the "recipe" of a thread and testing what, if any, change it had made to it's properties. The samples came up with a four colour code marked on them, occasionally confusion was caused when two samples had been given the same colour code. I can still remember the names of a few of the lab chemists but many of them were on short-term University placements (six months for a thin sandwich course and twelve months for a thick one) like me and then went back to University to resume their course

For anyone who worked at Courtaulds sites, there are several clandestine 'explorations' of the abandoned factories that may be of interest at this site 28 Days Later

I frequently had a jar or three with a couple of chemists in Courtaulds club. Totally forgotten their names though. Harry Shaw, he of the bus company, owned the two one armed bandits in the club besides having a milk round. One of the chemists, feeling a bit miffed after losing a lot of cash in the bandits, nicked Harry's large bunch of keys and made off with them. Harry, not too pleased, called in the old bill. Years later I met the key thief in Winsford Ave and he was running his own courier business. As for the tunnels. As mentioned above, one could walk through most of them without having to stoop. Above the head were many pipes, cables etc. The CRS machines consumed a lot of HP superheated steam and this was brought to the machines via these pipes. I explored from the boiler house down to Courtaulds Engineering. In places the tunnels widened out to accommodate huge vats of some unknown but probably nefarious brew. I know that there were several side tunnels but as I was expected to do some work occasionally, I had to curtail my explorations.

Hi All, I can't think of a member of my family who didn't work for Courtaulds. Even having researched my family history, the link goes on! I have discovered the list of hands and the date they started work, so even back before WW1 my uncle on my father's side, his sister, and my grandfather on my mother's were working there. My grandfather was a pipe fitter and so, I guess, spent a lot of time in the tunnels mentioned above. My father worked in main works for 50 years until he took early retirement in the 60's. He was a foreman in viscose spinning, and met my mum - although I don't know what she did! Because of the biggish age gap, my grandfather did not approve of the match, as my father was one of his friends. My step sister, worked as a comptometer operator, my mother's sister, her husband - the list goes on. However my first job when I left school was in the Textile Technology Lab on the top floor of main works. My headmistress at Coundon Court was friends with the boss of the lab - I can't remember her name, but she was transferred to Manchester, and a guy called Michael, who had been her second in command but had been promoted to another lab came back to be our boss. He lived behind my boyfriend's house in Earlsdon, but that and the pear tree is another story! My headmistress was always asked first if she had anyone who might be interested in a job - so much for equal opportunities in 1968, and so the world of work brought me for 3 years to follow the family tradition. I remember going to the basement to wash samples of knitted fabric in the machine down there and that there were very large cockroaches betrween the duck-boards, which always seemed to chase me when I let the water out - mind you, I suppose I wouldn't have been too pleased if someone was trying to drown me in hot water. A lot of the work we did was in microscopic analysis, wear and strength testing and ensuring that if it said 50% polyester / 50% cotton, that was what it was. I was quite surprised recently when buying a new sofa that they still used a Martindale to do wear tests, and put the results in the blurb. One memory was that when there was a fire practise they always seemed to choose our lab as the seat of the fire, as the turntable lift, used to evacuate people, although it could get high enough, could not get close enough to our window. I know I worked with a lady called Bobbie and a guy whose name I can't remember, who left to work for a transport company testing seat material. I do remember though that for his ATI exam he was putting water on to hand towels little by little to discover how much water it would take before the towel felt wet!!! As I was going to Cov Tech day release to do my City and Guilds Full Tech Cert and they had a vacancy for a lab technician I moved on.

The 10th Duke of Richmond and Gordon, owner of the Goodwood estate, passed away recently at the age of 87. I never knew, until today, that he worked as an accountant at Courtaulds during the early 1960s. Post copied from topic Obituaries on 6th Sep 2017 8:40 am