Courtaulds

Thanks for reply Philip. Les

I used to live near this chimney, it stood behind the houses on Pridmore Rd. I lived on Guild Rd and used to be scared if that thing fell down it would land on my house I'm pretty sure the photo that states it's the tallest is taken in Guild Rd!!

OK all - correct me if I've missed this but just to confirm - the "Tallest Chimney in Britain" as per the 2nd post (postcard) on this thread was the one behind the houses on Pridmore Rd - as seen from Guild Road in the postcard. When did this get knocked over?........

Hi Neils yard, I cannot give you a date, but it was taken down brick by brick, from an original height of 365'. I need help on the dates.

It`s still there, or at least the lower half. It is now festooned with mobile phone aerials / dishes. I suppose this was better than destroying it.altogether. Incidentally there is a section of the original ornate wall (on Kingfield Road) also still there.

Hi Greg, The base of the chimney that is still there is the boiler-house chimney, off Kingfield Rd, not the tall 365' stink chimney, which was taken to the ground.

Yes Greg - as Philip says the one on Kingfield Road is a different one. Was that one the one that was knocked down in 2010?

No, the one at Little Heath went in 2010

I'm pretty sure it was shortened in the late 80's

The 365ft chimney came down in 1987. Here's a link to my photo, referred to earlier, in January 1987, just after demolition had started. It was taken down pretty much brick by brick and within around 4/5 months, it was tiny and unrecognisable from the beast that had dominated the skyline for over 60 years. Here's another taken from Pridmore Road on the same day with the other chimney

Whilst looking through the site, which I found very interesting, I came across a couple of postings which I think I need to correct. When I left school in 1955 I became an apprentice at Little Heath which was a Courtaulds site from the time it was built in 1928 until Courtaulds took over British Celanese in 1957 and it then became under the British Celanese banner as it was making the same acetate products as British Celanese at Spondon, where I also worked in the 1960s. The other point is the reference to the site contamination. I don't know anything about what was found but as Little Heath was an acetate yarn plant there would not have been contamination with viscose process or sulphurous waste. Acetic acid contamination maybe but not viscose process contamination which would have been at the Main Works .

Hello & welcome Jimbo Before the war, waste was actually carried in canal barges from the "rayon" production in Foleshill & literally dumped in what then was open country. There were not the rules about waste disposal as there is nowadays.

This was going on when I was young, I remember the barges loaded with coloured stuff all hanging over the sides coming from the factory, and it really minged of chemicals.. This would be 40s/50s....

The first viscose yarn spinning machine installed at Courtaulds main works in Coventry in 1904

I remember running the purchase and sales ledger accounts through the computer at Courtaulds. A large deck of punched cards for the various ledgers, each batch of which had to be balanced. One became surprisingly adept at flicking through a bunch of cards and riffing them to spot the misplaced hole, then blank it off and re-punch. I can still read a punch card, though paper tape has passed out my memory now.