Measuring the Electronic World

Tech industries were thriving during the 20th century's first quarter, and Guglielmo Marconi was ahead of the game when in 1896 he brought to the world the concept of wireless telegraphy.  He delivered and set up the first Marconi Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company in Chelmsford the following year.  

St Albans folk are, of course familiar with the name Marconi as one of its companies was a major employer here, but we are perhaps short on the detail as the company was associated with several sites.  So, we will explore exactly where in our East End and elsewhere, the Marconi name came to rest.

Result of the blaze which destroyed the Hill End Brick Works in December 1928.
COURTESY HERTS ADVERTISER

The first homes to be advertised in Longacres in 1937.

Making way for new buildings at Longacres HQ by inventive manoeuvring of the portable canteen building to its new location on the site.
MARCONI STAFF JOURNAL VOLUME 1    

The completed Longacres HQ buildings on the former brickworks site.
COURTESY MARCONI HERITAGE GROUP

An early commercial connection Marconi made was not in St Albans at all, but in Southend.  This was the home of E K Cole, the sole manufacturers of electronic testing instruments in the UK. Many of us may remember their radios under the EKCO brand name.  As electronic equipment became more sophisticated the need for more complex testing instruments proved increasingly essential.  In 1936 the two firms joined forces, but in 1939 the E K Cole/Marconi team were moved, on government instruction, away from Southend's potential enemy danger to a temporary works site in High Wycombe.  A short time later the two teams became one as Marconi purchased Cole shares and a new company formed as Marconi Instruments Limited (MI).

Manager's Secretary Hilda Wallace who was featured
in the staff journal's first edition in 1951.

This is where St Albans enters the story – well almost.  A young song and dance lady by the name of Hilda Wallace – ex Cook's Tours – joined the formative MI as the Manager's Secretary, working from a small house in Radlett.  Whether this cottage was also Hilda's home I'm not certain. Remember, this was wartime and business space was where it was available, not where you would like it to be.

Within a short period space was found in part of a large house in Hatfield Road, St Albans, called Elmhurst, later simply number 29.  This building will be familiar to many citizens as it became the formative home of St Albans College of Further Education – before all the 1959 new buildings went up.  Hilda led a small team of Marconi typists from here and it is from this point that the very necessary company departmentalising was formulated to develop efficiency over multiple sites.

Former straw hat factory featured in a Heather & Heather promotional brochure. Here looking
rather more attractive than the actual building shortly after WW2.

The manufacture of electronic instruments and equipment required the availability of a huge variety of components in ever-increasing quantities and sourced from all over the UK.  But a number were made from scratch at a building in Ridgmont Road.  Not one of the sizeable villas which fill both sides of that road, but the very much  larger former straw hat manufactory which many commuters would have remembered as Heath & Heather (H&H), the herb specialists, whose four-storey building stood next to the Midland railway line by the the City Station.

The work of H&H had been downsized or squeezed into smaller spaces, and Marconi assemblers were installed wherever space could be found. And storage space was required for a large range of components prior to shipping to the High Wycombe works.

Back at the end of 1928 a serious fire had resulted in the closure of the Hill End brick works between Hatfield Road and Hill End Lane (Station Road).  [see top photo] The site remained desolate and unused for some time.  Nearby, housebuilding had begun nearby in 1936 to provide residential accommodation in a new road named Longacres. Work was undertaken in 1939 to clear and level the brickworks site next door and temporary buildings were brought in to become the company's warehouse.  There is no connection between the 1936 Longacres housing development and the Marconi Instruments factory site adjacent to that road, other than the street name.

Day-to-day operation of the company was hardly efficient under such dispersed war-time arrangements, as Miss Wallace discovered; therefore no sooner had the Longacres' residents' 1945 street party taken place than two years of building and moving began on the brickworks site to add the first generation of works buildings to the existing stores.  The entire company of Marconi Instruments Ltd came under one set of roofs for the first time in mid 1947.

Work stations at the Hedley Road service department.
MARCONI STAFF JOURNAL VOLUME 8

Except, that the one roof concept was short lived for a company whose reputation and size kept expanding. The next site which came into the frame; behind Beaumont Works, which was the Nicholson coat factory, was a single storey brick building with its own former basement air raid shelter and ready for new occupants.  MI opened its service department here.  It was quite a complex operation, where equipment arrived for repairs, replacement of parts and investigations about reliability.  The department was undoubtedly hugely significant, as its proved the baseline for all departments. The experience garnered here fed back to improve designs, increase standards and create modifications leading to new models at the main works at Longacres.

Left: part of the Ballito building originally built by T E Smith's Fleet Printing Works.  Right:
the post war expansion building of Ballito and subsequently taken over by Marconi Instruments.
COURTESY MARCONI HERITAGE GROUP

Probably the first of the company's post-war advertising in 1945, and too early to add
the name Longacres to the street address.
    COURTESY GRACIES GUIDE

We're not finished yet, because Fleetville featured more than just Hedley Road.  Even during the dispersed period of wartime the embryonic MI was using space at the large Ballito factory, which itself had turned over to shell casing manufacture.  Later, the post-war Ballito multi-floor block built for new ranges of woollen wear and nylon products, was partly, and then entirely used for MI components and assembly.  Finally, when Courtaulds acquired ownership of the main Ballito mill by acquisition, the site, but  was promptly sold again to MI.

While 1970 was the high-point of MI's occupation of buildings in St Albans' Own East End, the company continued to run a successful business.  There is, of course much more to the MI story, but the only part which remains to be included here, is a mention of prefabs brought to Hill End Lane and St Julians for key workers from the High Wycombe works, who for a few years had commuted to St Albans by special coaches laid on each day. As  building licenses became available a number of permanent homes in Charmouth Road and other locations were made available for a number of MI key employees.

Probably the most well known of the company's buildings, Marconi House on the corner of The Strand and Aldwych, has not been further mentioned, along with buildings in Stevenage, Colchester and Chelmsford.  They might make a blog on another occasion.

Finally, there may be a number of former MI employees who are able to fill in gaps in the firm's location story – for example, whereabouts in High Wycombe were the two entities sent at the beginning of hostilities?  Or perhaps that is still a state secret!

Living Near to Your Job

Residents of Marconi Way may have a reasonable idea of the economic activity which once occupied the land where they now live.  They might try digging their gardens and discover a lot of clay; they might also check the second line of their address.  The first lets them know that Hill End Brickworks thrived here between the First and Second wars.  The second informs of the highly successful business which moved in after the closure of the brickmakers. 

There was, of course, a close connection between Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company's requirement to set up a new offshoot, Marconi Instruments, and the national need for new technologies as the Second World War approached.  Two obvious problems presented themselves: the scrabble among hundreds of firms to relocate as war loomed; and the need to collect in one place a number of the best qualified staff, irrespective of their current home towns.

St Albans came to the rescue for a location.  Longacres came a little later; initially a small building would do – this was setting up time, or planning.  A building in Ridgmont Road sufficed, but the author admits to not knowing which building and would be grateful for further information on this matter.  It was the home of Marconi's formative Special Products section, before moving to Elmhurst, 29 Hatfield Road, which thousands of early students of the College of Further Education will recall in its early days.

Finding accommodation for all of MI's staff was also a headache.  As the company's Longacres premises, albeit initially in temporary buildings, ramped up, the temporary High Wycombe site was closed, and because there was so little appropriate housing in St Albans, many High Wycombe staff were brought to St Albans each day by coach from their High Wycombe homes 30 miles away.

Meanwhile, the company worked with government to supply metal bungalows – prefabs – for staff members at Lectern Lane, Holyrood Crescent and Creighton Avenue.

The first Marconi homes in Charmouth Road,
photographed in 1949 by Marconi Instruments Ltd.

By 1949 a site at the northern end of unfinished Charmouth Road, where new house-building had stopped in 1940.  St Albans Council allocated 19 licences (the method then used to control the supply of vital building materials and labour).  The first seven were for an arc of homes on the west side (one detached home was included as the number of licences was odd).  A start was then made on the remaining twelve on the east side, to the north of where Charmouth Court was later laid out.  

The same houses today.

The company expanded quickly into its new technological world and homes in other locations were also sought, including on the London Road estate.  The 1940s and 50s must have been an exciting, if frustrating, time for the company and its fledgling employees.

Recollections All Round

During the past three months there has been a steady flow of old news arriving at SAOEE.  Occasionally prompted by a previous item on the website; on other occasions quite unsolicited.

Marconi staff photographer (using Marconi technology, of
course) atop the old Hill End water tower.
COURTESY MARCONI LTD

Let's start with the heaviest; a collection of eight volumes dating from the 1950s, of the staff magazine of the Marconi giant, of which Marconi Instruments Ltd had three bases in St Albans, all in the east end.  The pages contain details of new technologies, developments within the factories, results and snippets from sports encounters, and on occasion the social difficulties of finding sufficient houses for the company's employees.  Time will be taken to abstract the St Albans features, which also include photos not previously seen.

House and shop of Sear & Carter, Hatfield Road
COURTESY MARK CARTER

A few years back, and published in the SAOEE books, were details of one half of the Carter family, Charles, who launched a motor garage in Fleetville, which later became Hobbs Garage and is now KwikFit.  So a very warm welcome was extended to a descendant member of the other half of the Carter family.  Thomas had arrived in Fleetville before Charles and had teamed up with nurseryman Frank Sear.  The name Sear & Carter was well-known in the district, not only for its little Ninefields nursery where St Pauls' Place is now located, but also for the more spacious nursery where is now Notcutts Garden Centre at Smallford.  One result of our recent conversations has been the rediscovery of a photograph of the house and shop opposite Hatfield Road cemetery.

Occasionally the topic of the Smallford Speedway crops up (and also the nearby golf links too, but that's another story).  The names of a few cycle speedway teams have been put forward by Bill, another correspondent.  You may recall St Albans Cobras and EAC Hawks, Hilltop Vampires (Redbourn) and Harpenden Aces.  Just to show that none of us has a monopoly on local knowledge, we are trying to establish where the home grounds were.  The Cobras, for example, raced in Cell Barnes Lane, and Bill sent me a photo of a group of the Springfield houses opposite the former farm yard entrance.  Of course, the circus field was close by, so perhaps it was there.  We also need to establish the specific location of the Hawks' track.  Was it in the grounds of the EAC factory, did they share with the Cobras, or was there another Cell Barnes location, for example, at the bottom end?

Advertisement for L Rose & Co Ltd on
back cover of 1953 Pageant programme

Having long been custodian of a souvenir programme of the 1907 St Albans Pageant – printed at the works which launched Fleetville, T E Smith's Fleet Works – I subsequently acquired a cover of the 1953 pageant programme; just the cover!

 Now, through the diligence of Gill, I have both the 1948 and 1953 programmes complete.  Both contain interesting advertisements and these will appear on the website in the months ahead.

Former coal yard and coal office St Albans City Station
COURTESY ROB CRISP

Rob delighted me one day recently, supplying me with a picture which had, until then, resided only in my memory; the chalet shop, or coal office, by the railway bridge where today is the road into St Albans City Station (and where many news reports are transmitted from).  There it is, looking a little worse for wear, shortly after closure, and shortly before work began clearing the former sidings and coal yard.

What a great time local history is having.  Long may it last.  Future blogs will expand on all of these topics, and more as they arrive.