Bridge
Park Ice Cream Factory (Lyons
Maid)
Ice cream production was
started by Lyons at Cadby Hall - next to
their fish department where there was a
ready supply of ice - in about 1894 using
what was known as the 'turbine bowl'
method. This essentially was a spindle
driven revolving drum, cooled on the
outside by salt and ice. When the mixture
froze inside the bowl the operator would
scoop the mixture from the inside with a
spatula into a variety of containers for
further freezing. This method was used
until the 1920s when refrigeration methods
dramatically improved.
In 1922 a prototype
factory was built at Cadby Hall, using the
improved freezing technologies, in what
was 'A' Block. In August 1922, having
tested the technology, a new large ice
cream plant was installed in 'R' block.
Occupying four floors, the factory space
consisted of 69,000 square feet and was
the largest ice cream factory in Europe at
this time. The main 'engine room' was
situated in the basement and here Lyons
installed four Brotherhood double-acting,
vertical, enclosed crankcase, two
cylinder, ammonia refrigerating
compressors. Three of the compressor had a
capacity equal to 150 tons refrigeration
each, while the fourth compressor was an
80 ton machine. From this plant the
various ice cream products were produced
including choc ices. Progressively new
plant and technology was introduced when
it became available which in those days
was from the US. In 1931, for example,
Lyons installed a Vogt J1000 machine to
manufacture their famous Pola Maid ice
cream which were made in vanilla and
strawberry flavours.
Mark Bogod, who was
appointed an Employee Director in
February 1958, had joined the Company in
1922 coming direct from the Royal College
of Science. He joined the Laboratory as an
Assistant Chemist and worked there until
1933 when he became joint manager of the
Ice Cream Department largely as a result
of his work in the Laboratory's Milk
Products section. He, and other key
figures, notably Harold Boon and Maurice
Salmon, were largely responsible for the
early development of the Ice Cream
Department.
During
the Second World War the production of ice
cream was banned and it did not pick up
again until 1945. At this time Lyons
recruited George Handelman to develop the
overseas trade (he spoke several
languages) and in this he was very
successful. In addition he introduced the
concept of cold storage depots and a
refrigeration distribution system using
refrigerated cold boxes on railway sites.
The additional sales he generated demanded
more production and the Cadby Hall factory
was almost at full stretch despite the
fact that most food items were still
rationed. Some of the extra capacity was
satisfied by the acquisition of smaller
companies but by the 1950s other food
manufacturing departments, other than ice
cream, had also outgrown their capacity
and it became necessary to relocate the
ice cream factory. This would free up
space at Cadby Hall for food production
expansion and provide a clean sheet to
design another ice cream factory. A
committee was formed in 1954 consisting of
Neil Salmon, Henry Scott, Harry Hudson,
Harry Benson, Denis Long, Harold Boon and
Mark Bogod to plan a new factory on land
adjacent to the Tea Factory at Greenford
alongside the Grand Union Canal. At the
time this was no more that a 'wheat field'
but it became one of the most
sophisticated ice cream factories in
Europe when it opened in 1955 as Bridge
Park.
Designed
by the architects Harrison, Stevens, Ashby
& Partners the factory was on two
levels and from the outset was planned
with expansion potential. The building
design was somewhat idiosyncratic in that
all the heavy equipment was placed on the
upper floor while the ground level was
given over to engine rooms, cold stores,
raw material storage and staff restaurant.
The main contractors were G. Percy
Trentham & Co Ltd with electrical,
mechanical engineering and interior design
carried out by the Works Department of
Lyons themselves. However, the factory was
so specialized that over seventy
engineering, seventeen electrical and
forty-five building sub contractors were
used.
The
style of layout was more important that at
first appeared; in fact it was the key to
the whole factory. The aim was to avoid
any possibility of contamination anywhere
and for that reason it was decided not to
have pipes coming down through the ceiling
to the various machines because, apart
from being unsightly, they could form dust
traps. A completely waterproof upper floor
was built and all the pipe-lines for
ingredients, water, refrigeration,
electricity and other services were led up
through it. The result was that the
production area presented a clear
uncluttered space. The room ventilation
had a higher pressure than the outside to
prevent the ingress of dust. The
production lines were laid out
symmetrically and the whole controlled
from a central panel from which an
operator could direct the flow of the
various ingredients to the points needed.
The panel showed at a glance exactly what
was going on. For reasons of hygiene
nearly everything in the production
sections of the factory was made from
stainless steel. More than 5,000 feet of
stainless steel pipelines were so designed
that they could be linked together into a
continuous cleaning circuit. All the
joints and junctions were so made to
prevent traps in which material might
lodge. The cleaning process was operated
from the control panel by a series of time
switches. Hot water and sterilizing agents
were pumped through under pressure for the
required time for any particular cleaning
process. The cleaning process which had
taken a full shift in the Cadby Hall
factory was reduced to 2 hours, each
night, thus increasing production
capacity. At strategic points around the
factory 'capstans' were placed from which
water and other cleaning liquids were
available for cleaning individual machines
or washing floors. In addition there were
cleaning and sterilizing trolleys and for
personal hygiene showers were provided and
wash basins at each factory entrance.
The
Bridge Park factory had its own laboratory
where each batch of new ingredients were
checked for quality. Their most demanding
role was the searching bacteriological
test on samples of finished product from
every freezing unit in use. The samples,
which were coded, documented their history
of manufacture and were selected at random
from the conveyors at various times of the
day. Checks were made on the first
products of each day's run to ensure that
sterilizing had been carried out properly.
If for any reason a production line had to
be stopped bacteriological sampling was
carried out when it started.
In
June 1967 it became necessary to extend
the factory to provide more space for the
Product Development section as well as
additional space for production and
storage. The factory was continued with a
new two level 'L' shaped extension
measuring 256 feet long and 25 feet wide
thus providing an additional 13,000 square
feet of space. As with the original
factory, the extension was so designed so
as to allow further extensions at a later
date. The Product Development team
occupied the second floor where they had
their own laboratory, a pilot plant to
manufacture new products on a small scale,
a packaging unit and a taste panel and
offices.
In
1968, with the growth of hand-held ice
creams, it became necessary to extend the
factory again. Building work started in
that year and continued for 18 months. The
expansion provided for: the central
production area to be increased by 25 per
cent; the cold-store capacity in the
dispatch centre to be increased by two
thirds - to hold a total approaching one
and a quarter million gallons of ice cream
and iced lollies and the plant for canned
mix used for Softa-Freeze and
Tastee-Freeze soft ice cream for cones and
sundaes, then based at Cadby Hall, to be
transferred in their entirety to Bridge
Park. Much of the scheme was completed for
the summer of 1968 with final work
completed in 1970. In July 1969, in just
one week, the Bridge Park factory turned
out 30 million portions of ice cream and
ice lollies before the new extensions had
been fully completed.
As
well as storing its own output Bridge Park
was a cold store/distribution depot for
the other two factories at Barking, Essex
and Laurel Road, Liverpool. About 60 per
cent of Lyons Maid production of ice cream
was produced at Bridge Park. They handled
just about every variety in the Lyons Maid
range and many well-known lines were made
exclusively there, for example Luv, Zoom,
Orbit and Super Sea Jet lollies. With the
phenomenal growth of children's ice cream
it became necessary, yet again, to improve
the production of the stick ice creams and
in 1985, as part of a £1 million
investment in the factory, a Hoyer Rollo
35 machine was installed which was capable
of producing 29,000 ice creams on a stick
every hour. As well as these the ice cream
made at Bridge Park included many flavours
of bulk ice cream, choc ices, family
bricks, Pola Maid and Zippy.
By
1992 Allied Domecq felt they did not want
to keep the Lyons UK ice cream business
and sold it to Clarke Foods Ltd who, after
they acquired Lyons Maid, went into
receivership in October 1992. The remnants
of this collapse were eventually acquired
by Nestle Ltd later in the year. Nestle
continued to use the three dancing
children logo on some of their
products/literature and continued to make
some of the famous brands such as Zoom,
FAB and Mivvi. However, Nestle eventually
sold the business to Richmond Foods Ltd in
2003. The packaging and marketing
giveaways (trade cards etc) which Lyons
Maid issued in the 1960s/70s are now
collectors items. The Bridge Park factory
closed and one of the largest warehouses
in Europe occupies the
site.
|