ASSOCIATION FOR INDUSTRIAL ARCHAEOLOGY ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2017 TOUR NOTES SOUTH EAST MIDLANDS EDITED BY DAVID INGHAM CONTRIBUTORS: PETER PERKINS MARILYN PALMER AND NICK CRANK INTRODUCTION TO THE SOUTH EAST MIDLANDS LOCATION OF AIA CONFERENCES FROM 1973 to 2017 English counties are shown Welcome to the South East Midlands, an a width of 400m, the A5 road, a branch of with Old county boundaries area not previously visited by an AIA annual the Grand Union Canal, the M1 motorway conference (see map on inside front cover). and the West Coast Main Line Railway now Our visits take in sites in Northamptonshire, traverse this gap in parallel. Once past this, Bedfordshire and Milton Keynes, not an area you are either in the North or the South, 1973- renowned for its great industrial enterpris- as shown by the sign in the Watford Gap 1984 es. It was dominated by the great estates Service Station – the first motorway service of prominent landowners, which hindered station in England. Many of our talks and industrial development and left many of the visits take in this considerable transport SCOTLAND 1985- villages unaltered and as attractive as those heritage. 1994 of the Cotswolds. Nevertheless, there was In the 1960s, the South moved north as a plenty of manufacturing going on in the further generation of new towns were con- past – textiles, leather goods and lace, for structed to meet the need of overspill from example – and widespread extraction of 1995- a rapidly expanding London. Bletchley had 2004 ironstone in the 19th and 20th centuries begun to take both people and business- NO which has left considerable traces. es from bombed-out areas of London in There are no major hills in the area and so the 1950s, but the government eventually NI CU decided on a completely new town to the Co.D 2005- many small airfields were constructed here, 2016 as we shall see during the conference. north of this, designated in 1967 as Milton Nevertheless, one of England’s best known Keynes. YK transport corridors, the Watford Gap, is References in these notes to GIHN numbers LA not far from our base at Moulton College. for the Northamptonshire tours relate to This shallow depression between two low site numbers in ‘A Guide to the Industrial hills in Northamptonshire was first exploit- CH NG LC Heritage of Northamptonshire’, distribut- DY ed as a transport route by the Romans. In ed recently to all AIA members. ST LE NF WALES SH CA Coaches for all tours will depart from the car park at the Main Centre. Please be prompt, NP WO WW 2017 SF as many of the tours are on a tight schedule. Remember to bring appropriate clothing and HF BD BU footwear with you. Maps showing the coach routes that we will be taking can be found in HT ES GL OX the centre pages of this booklet. WL BK The 2017 conference has been organised by David Ingham and Nick Crank of CBA South SR KT Midlands, Peter Perkins of the Northamptonshire Industrial Archaeology Group, and SO HA SX Marilyn Palmer. We hope that you find the tours enjoyable as well as educational. DO These notes were compiled by David Ingham, with contributions from all members of the CO DV conference organising team. We are grateful to John Stengelhofen for the layout, design and the maps. cover photograph: the North entrance to Blisworth Tunnel; see page 26 J.P.S 2017 1 © Association for Industrial Archaeology and contributing photographers, 2017 TOUR SUNDAY, 27th AUGUST A short coach ride from the museum to A a drop-off point will enable us to walk to the sites of the three missile launch CARPETBAGGER SECRET WARFARE MUSEUM, HARRINGTON pads. The concrete infrastructure is Site conditions clearly identifiable – a concrete base on which the missile was stored horizontal- The museum is primarily housed in one single-storey building, accessed from ly, the rail seating bolts which allowed the coach along a rough track and across grass. Toilet facilities are available. The the protective housing to be rolled blast walls of the Thor missile launch pads are accessed by walking c.0.5 miles away, and a series of bolts which held along a concrete road and across a ploughed field, on level ground. The coach the base on which the missile could be will leave Moulton at 1:30pm, returning about 6:00pm. raised to a vertical position. The base was flanked by concrete-lined pits The museum buildings are some of the all, 208 crew and 18 aircraft were lost Inside the museum at Harrington which held the propellant tanks, oxy- few remainders of Harrington Airfield, in action. missiles were 65 feet long and 8 feet gen on one side and fuel on the other, which was the first WWII airfield to be in diameter, with a range of 1,700 as well as pumping gear. There are also In September 1944, 60 Liberators were built by US Army engineers for the RAF, miles. Three were placed on above- massive L-shaped blast walls which handed over on 6 November 1943. It stripped down and flew 800,000 gal- ground launching pads and could be protected ancillary vehicles and various had three runways (one of 6,000 feet lons of fuel to airfields in France and deployed by crews that manned the other conduits, trenches and pits. Belgium to aid the advancing allied ar- and two of 4,200 feet), and was used site constantly – they were raised ready The tour will return through Desborough as an operational training unit for near- mies. In the closing months of the war, for firing during the Cuban missile crisis on the way back, driving past some of by Desborough airfield who were flying Mosquitos flew from Harrington at high of 1962. In August 1963, the missiles the town’s industrial buildings (cf. pp 28- Wellington bombers. altitude, picking up weak radio signals were removed and the airfield returned 29 of A Guide to the Industrial Heritage from agents inside Germany. In addi- to farmland. Most of the runways had The airfield was handed back to the of Northamptonshire). These include tion, adapted A-26 Invaders dropped already been removed. In September two shoe factories (GIHN 98 is dere- Americans in early 1944. By 27 May, agents into Germany. All USAAF aircraft 1987, 50 US ex-servicemen returned lict, but Cheaney’s (GIHN 99) is still in four squadrons of USAAF black-paint- and personnel left Harrington within two for dedication of a memorial to those of use), a former corset factory (GIHN 100) ed B-24 Liberators were based at months of the end of WWII, and the air- their colleagues who had died during and the former Desborough & Rothwell Harrington, all drastically modified to field was used by the RAF for storing the war. Station (GIHN 102) drop agents into occupied Europe at vehicles. night, as well as supplies to resistance groups. 1,744 successful sorties were Harrington airfield was re-activated undertaken during 1944, dropping 415 in 1959, becoming a joint USAAF/ agents and more than 31,000 packag- RAF firing site for Thor intercontinental es of supplies behind enemy lines. In ballistic missiles. These liquid-fuelled 2 3 The museum buildings Concrete blast walls at at Harrington Thor missile launch site B TOUR SUNDAY, 27th AUGUST NORTHAMPTON: BOOTS & BEER Site conditions The walking tour of the Boot & Shoe Quarter will be entirely on paved surfaces, covering slight inclines. The guided visit to Phipps Brewery will involve going up and down stairs to get around the building. Toilet facilities are available at the brewery; it will also be possible to sample the beers. The coach will leave Moulton at 1:30pm, returning about 6:00pm; the coach will also take you from Former Grove Works, Clare Street. Former Waukerz factory, Overstone Road the Boot & Shoe Quarter to Phipps Brewery. © Peter Perkins ©Peter Perkins areas outside the town centre were de- factory buildings that were once used The Industrial Heritage of workers in their own homes or work- veloped, and the Boot & Shoe Quarter by the shoe and leather industries still Northampton’s Boot & Shoe shops, before being sent back to the was one of the main areas for expansion remain, converted into other industrial warehouse for packing and distribu- Quarter: c.1:45 – 3:45pm between the late 1860s and the 1890s. use or apartments. The tour will look at We travel into the area just north of tion. The first stitching machines were This gave rise to the typical streets- a range of former shoe and leather fac- Northampton’s town centre, now a introduced in 1857, signalling the start cape of boot & shoe factories, usually tories, identifying the features relevant to Conservation Area called the Boot & of mechanisation, and manufacturing three storeys high, often on street cor- their use and the companies that used Shoe Quarter, where a guided walk will increasingly took place in factories over ners, interspersed amongst the terraced them. Details of the buildings can also look at some of the numerous former the next 30 years. housing. In addition, there were leather be found in your copy of A Guide to the boot, shoe and leather factories. In 1851, some 5,400 people were factories where skins were processed industrial Heritage of Northampton’s and finished (tanning was usually car- Boot & Shoe Quarter (GIHB&SQ). Boots and shoes were originally man- employed in shoe manufacturing in ried out adjacent to the River Nene) as Depending on speed of progress, we will ufactured in Northampton by hand: Northampton.