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Abbey Road Engineering Works
The
company's Engineering Department started
in 1904, and grew throughout the years
from a number of separate premises to one
large Engineering Department, which moved
to a site in Abbey Road, Acton, in 1935
(this is not the road of Beatles fame). It
occupied a site of nearly 4 acres and
employed over 300 engineering staff
working in six main workshops:
Electricians, Coppersmiths', Sheet Metal,
Machine, Fitting and Refrigeration Shops.
The factory did not have a foundry or
furnaces and had to sub-contract all their
metal castings to outside contractors.
There was, however, a pattern shop in
which wooden patterns or moulds were made
which the outside foundries used for
casting. The Coppersmith's Shop was
equipped for tinning all those metal
articles which for hygienic reasons
required this treatment.
Servicing
the workshops at Abbey Road, and supplying
materials as required to other departments
within the group, was an Engineers' Store.
Here over 9,000 items were stocked ranging
from screws to 250 gallon tanks. Some 350
requisitions were received, from company
departments, every week from all parts of
the country but, the Abbey Road workshops
were obviously the largest customer of
their own stores. The Abbey Road works
tackled between 5,000 and 6,000 jobs every
year varying in cost from a few shillings
to thousands of pounds, and in size, from
a single bracket to a complete wash-up
machine. As there was up to 1,800 jobs on
the work's books at any one time it was
important that the work proceeded
according to priority and care was taken
that bottlenecks did not occur within
parts/trades/workshop areas.
Most
of orders received at Abbey Road required
work from several, if not all, of the
workshops, and a control was maintained to
track each order during its journey
through the works and to make sure that it
received the required treatment. Orders
for work came from all parts of the
company. These were received by the Order
Control Section who would allocated a job
number and description of the item, and
the workshops through which the job would
pass. The order was then circulated among
the many technical and clerical staff,
returning to the Order Control Section
after each treatment, so the records of
work-in-progress were up to date. No item
could be made without the necessary metal
or other components being to hand, and the
received order first passed, together with
any plans, to the technical staff so they
could estimate the amount of metal or
components required to complete the work
and, if necessary, prepared technical
drawings. This done, copies of orders for
the metal and/or components needed were
sent to the Stores Records Section of the
office who determined whether the required
materials were in stock or had to be
ordered from outside. The 'Rate-fixers'
would then calculate how many hours would
be required to complete the task. Job
documents were then prepared for the
foreman of each workshop involved showing
the time for each stage of the job. These
job documents were then passed to the
Planning Clerk, who decided on what date
each workshop did its share of the work.
Finally his documents were then sent to
the different workshops on the dates
indicate. This was a very complicated
process involving much clerical
intervention but it appears to have
worked.
All
routine kitchen and factory equipment such
as saucepans, potato peelers, ovens and
dough mixers were purchased from outside
suppliers, but repaired, in most cases, by
Abbey Road engineers. Service equipment
such as teashop service counters, coffee
urns, cold cabinets, conveyors or
ventilation trunking was made by Abbey
Road. When the company's Corner Houses and
hotels were erected the Engineering Works
built most of the service equipment
installed. Whenever a machine or service
facility was designed in the Cadby Hall
Drawing Offices it was the Engineers
Workshops who built it. The Swiss roll
plant, for example, was built by them as
was the Bev coffee extracting plant
installed at Greenford. Abbey Road Works
also made the Bev coffee extracting plant
for the Durban factory and other coffee
machinery for the Canadian factory as well
as the ventilation trunking for the tea
factory in Nyasaland (Malawi). The Abbey
Road Factory also had the responsibility
of refurbishing ice cream cabinets before
the formation of Total Refrigeration Ltd,
the ice-cream cabinet subsidiary. When the
LEO computer was being built in the 1940s,
trunking was made and installed by Abbey
Road engineers who also made the units in
which the electronics and wiring were
housed.
In
1954, in conjunction with Normand Ltd, the
Company’s motor
subsidiary, they built a mobile bank for
the Maharajah of Patiala (Punjab). Built
on the chassis of a Guy Otter 6-ton van,
the cab was steel framed with side panels
7-mm thick armour plate. Windows were
bullet-proof and the floor made of teak
with steel plate protection. Propelled by
a Gardner 4-LK engine, the vehicle was
painted in a gold colour with
Lyons’ shade of grey and
blue and weighed over 6-tons.
As
factory machinery technology developed
less work was carried out by the Abbey
Road works but they still had a
responsibility for maintenance. They
continued to design and build special
equipment but as the Lyons companies
became more autonomous demand lessened on
the Engineering Works. Their contribution
to the success of the Lyons production
machinery has not been fully recognised
but there is no doubt that the skills of
Abbey Road Engineering Works played an
important part in the story of J. Lyons
& Company.
©
Peter Bird 2005
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