As if to prove what appears to be a developing rule, the following came up during some other research relating to artillery.
I'd no idea about this (and if anyone should, it should be me), and haven't come across any references to it elsewhere, either in military or civilian stories, but ECKO, an electronics company that began in 1926 with the manufacture of a battery eliminator, had a World War II satellite factory in Rutherglen, dispersed from the main site in Southend to protect it from German bombers.
From what little I have found to read so far, it seems the Rutherglen factory produced bomber radio sets, and this would seem to be borne out by the pictures. EKCO itself was involved in top secret manufacture of radar sets for air interception and air to surface operation.
Whether or not it remained in service postwar and carried on with domestic electronics is not mentioned in anything I've picked up so far, but that is really very little as I am busy with other items at the moment, and this deserves fuller attention.
EKCO was involved in domestic radio and television manufacture, and began with mechanical TV as far back as 1938, under licence, when a large set from them was priced at 220 guineas! Now that's more than a week's wages at the time.
There doesn't seem to be any obvious indications of where this factory was located, and it might be safe to assume it was abandoned by EKCO postwar and is forgotten, becoming better known as another property.
Sorry, I think you've mis-read - or I'm not playing my words well
The example TV set was 220 guineas (which was high, and about two to three times more than a "non-large" item), and I said that was more than a week's wages at the time, to highlight the difference. I don't know what a week's wage was in 1938, so didn't want guess, and hoped someone might chip in with a realistic number. Postwar I guess around £5 from other info I've seen, but I haven't got anything detailed, or anything to refer to.
I think you misplayed your words. It says that 200 guineas was more than a week's wages at the time which is certainly true by a factor of somewhere about 40!
Scratches head (avoids skelf ) and thinks "But it was saying 200 guineas was more than a weeks wages at the time" and something like half the average now - if we believe what we're told and that around £24,000 is an average annual salary today, giving around £400 per week.
With TVs (ignoring the real junk at £9.99) starting at £40 (now), a little set comes in at less than a week's wages, even after deductions.
Just before the war, a set between nine and twelve inches might then have been had for £40 (then) or so.
If you wanted picture only (ie no sound) you could then get below £30 (then).
Go any earlier, and things climb agian, and you start climbing toward almost £100 for the same size, and these are CRT sets. Mechanical types like the monster mentioned above were even more expensive, despite being about to be obsoleted by the electronic version. A couple of sample ads, with those guineas, or gns as they appears in the ads, which equate to £1.05 each, for anyone that the old British money is now a mystery.
I doubt we're likely to come up with anything worthwhile on the web in relation to the EKCO factory in Rutherglen, so it looks like the might need to be a Blog entry and appeal for info.
Unfortunately, the web searches are all fouled up and take ages to work through (in case they contain valid reference ferreted away somewhere) because some useless wally in Rutherglen was inspired to hijack the EKCO name and use for their taxi business. Since this is pushed all over the place in adverts, it fill all the searches with useless results. even when you try and filter them out.
Just out of interest, wonder if you can answer a query on Rutherglen which might be related to this. You know when you come to the traffic lights at the end of the road from Tollcross? Used to be a pub straight across the road; right turn takes you to Rugglen, left to Cambuslang. If you go left and then take the first right, you go up past a pub on the right hand side. Just past this, there are fenced-off areas on both sides of the road with signs up warning of contaminated ground. Always wondered why this is; my wife is from there originally but doesn't know why the areas were suddenly fenced off when she was a kid. I know there were RE camps in Rutherglen in wartime, so I wondered if military activity/stores might have contaminated the ground?
I think I know the area you've identified, and I think it has been included in development in the past year or two.
There's nothing marked on the usual sources, and the vague references in recollections aren't that accurate to pin them down to that degree.
Too far away from the various steelworks to the north, or the Hoover and other factories nearby - these are located closer to the river.
You probably know the are is famous for the contamination that arose from numerous chemical works that populated the area during the 19th and into the 20th century. These operated with no regard as to pollution, and the effects came to light in fairly recent times when chemicals were only found leeching out of the ground after development, leading to much protest, publicity, and a cleanup campaign.
At a wild guess, I'd say the site was used a rogue storage or dumping area by the 19th century factories, undocumented and forgotten until discovered and fenced off as you describe, and hopefully decontaminated before any new buildings were erected.
As and example, this quote from Hansard of 1995:
Mr. Thomas McAvoy, Glasgow, Rutherglen (to Sir Hector Monro): Does the right hon. Gentleman recall his meeting with me in Glasgow about chromium toxic waste sites in Rutherglen, when he committed the Government in principle to doing something about those sites and expressed great and genuine concern about them? Does he further agree that that commitment has not been honoured by his successors, who have repeatedly said that they will not provide the resources to make the sites safe?
The now infamous White's chemical works was active in the area up until the 1960s, and was responsible for the huge swathes of land from southern Glasgow across to Cambuslang being polluted with chromium waste.
If you search on White's, chromium, Rutherglen, Cambuslang, pollution etc etc, you'll be rewarded with tons of articles and pics.
Has it occurred to you that the taxi company was probably named EKCO because it began on the site of the factory and for all I know could still be on the site?
But a search will show there to be one only, based in East Kilbride, so unless they moved (and I can't find a company listing to provide a history) and were indeed originally on the site, I suspect their name to be nothing more than a coincidental hijack, maybe even re-used by an EKCO radio/TV fan
(You didn't really think I hadn't checked, did you?)
I had a poke at a couple of historic records for the more well-known factories, in case there was maybe a sideways, historic reference, but I abandoned that one quickly as there's no telling what might have been considered to be Rutherglen at the time, especially by English ministry people working remotely, and by English people being dispersed.
One thing that struck me as I sped through some of the writings about EKCO was a mention somewhere of places such as Thornliebank.
To you and me, not Rutherglen, but to someone working off a bad map and with no local knowledge, and maybe just looking for boundaries...?
I happen to know that factories within the industrial estates in Thornliebank were involved in manufacturing operations that would have been most appropriate for switching to the production of such things as tank radios, and would also have been able to manufacture the specialist parts they would have needed. Some were still in operation until not to many years ago, although I have now lost touch with them.
Unfortunately, this means it might take a large and widely cast net to catch any more info about this subject.
Possible location for the EKCO factory is Quay Rd, Rugglen, according to me father in law. Barges used to go from the railway station to the quay, where there was a lot of industry. He remembers a tv factory down there but can't be sure it was EKCO. Not sure if it was called Quay Rd then, but is on the main road from Rugglen to Shawfield.
That brought a smile - at one time I thought every factory down there was in Quay Road, Rutherglen, such was our customer list at one point. I've no detailed knowledge of names, as I didn't deal with them though, just recognised the location. Only ones I knew were printers and alarm systems.
The place was saturated with business back then (c. 1950s), and was a near continuous industrial estate running from Cambuslang, through Rutherglen, Polmadie and Dixons Blazes - the industrial estate named after the steelworks down there. Like the steelworks, the industrial evidence has been all but razed across that whole area.
I don't know that there is any implication that EKCO ever manufactured domestic products up here, there's no reference to that type of production in the company's history, just the wartime dispersal of their radio work, so the TV factory may be a red herring in EKCO terms, but I'd still be curious to find out who it was.
Quote: "1940 - A site was also opened in Rutherglen in Scotland for component manufacture especially transformers."
Thanks to the owner, this is a pic of the wartime Rutherglen factory in case anyone recognises it
I should add this is a war factory, presumably constructed to a standard pattern, so isn't really going to be uniquely recognisable, unless seen by somethat recognises it for what it is.
Yes, I know, in those days all the factories looked the same unless you went to Inchinnan
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but if they're all "Ahh, emmm, er, oh" then it doesn't really matter, and two thousand would be no better.
You're right about the background, and even the buildings are all but featureless, and of a type that's likely to be long gone - the shelter at the gate is probably more likely to still be standing alone today than they are.
Well, I just grab the cavatars when I see them, and that little pie-faced cutie is indeed clearly a Scottish Fold (should have a page, shouldn't they?).
A breed that arose in Ayrshire according to my sis in OZ who has 2 of them. I don't see why they shouldn't have a page I am very fond of cats anyway although I am a catfree zone at present.
I assume good ol' Wikpedia is accurate, since breeders would have blasted it, placing the origin in Perthshire. I'd never bothered to look before, and had no idea they were so "new", and just assumed they were another breed as old as any other:
Origin: The original Scottish Fold was a long-haired white-haired barn cat named Susie, who was found at a farm near Coupar Angus in Perthshire, Scotland, in 1961. Susie's ears had an unusual fold in their middle, making her resemble an owl. When Susie had kittens, two of them were born with folded ears, and one was acquired by William Ross, a neighbouring farmer and cat-fancier. Ross registered the breed with the Governing Council of the Cat Fancy in Great Britain and started to breed Scottish Fold kittens with the help of geneticist Pat Turner. The breeding program produced 76 kittens in the first three years – 42 with folded ears and 34 with straight ears. The conclusion from this was that the ear mutation is due to a simple dominant gene; if one parent provides the gene for straight ears, and one parent provides the gene for folded ears, the kittens will be Folds.
Susie's only reproducing offspring was a female Fold named Snooks who was also white; a second kitten was neutered shortly after birth. Three months after Snooks' birth, Susie was killed by an automobile. All Scottish Fold cats share a common ancestry to Susie and Snooks, the origination point assurance a lineage quality rare among pedigreed animals.
It's a minor point in some respects, but significant and worth noting that the pic posted earlier of the EKCO factory is understood to be wartime factory built by the government for any required production to be set up in.
EKCO occupied this until the end of the war, and then moved into their own purpose built premises.
The wartime factory is therefore probably long gone, and it occurs to me that the postwar factory has probably gone as well, if not just in the natural course of changes to the area, then as a result of the current M74 extension, which I note passes either through or close to the land where I would have expected this factory to be sited.
I know I was they around 18 months+ ago, and grabbed some pics of places being demolished thereabouts, but none were identified (derelicts), so I don't even know what they were, just grabbed the pics for the sake of it.
As regards production, following the end of the war, I now know for sure that the EKCO factory produced car radios, so was latterly involved in domestic manufacture.
This is an elderly Journalist called Bob Johnstone in Rutherglen.
The ECKO factory is now buried and the land is a private housing sector called Farme Castle Estate. It stretches from Riverford Road to Duchess Road in the Farme Cross area. As a boy I remember it well.
In the 1950's the area was a hive of industrial activity There was the bagmaking and despatch departments of the old co-operative society (S.C.W.S.); Alexander's Chairworks, the rear of the Clyde Paper Mill and the buried foundations of the old Farme Pit.
Towards Dalmarnock on Downiebrae Road was Crawford's stick factory and the Bolt Work plus smaller units and other buildings, etc.
Within the immediate adjacent area of the ECKO factory was the famous Farme Castle. steeped deep in Scottish history with the presence of Robert the Bruce and Edward 1 many centuries ago.
My 92-year-old brother Jack who lives in Milngavie grew up there when he stayed at Farme Cottage. Recalling those happy days Jack mentioned a nine hole golf course which he and my late father, William, spent many hours.
For more information or any other related queries I can be contacted by Email - johnstone479@btinternet.com -
Although we do have some plans of the ECKO factory, and permission to use them (honest, it's just getting time to do all the little jobs that need done), the way they were drawn means the actual location details were not included on the same drawings, so neither we, nor the ECKO historian (who is based in England and has the Scottish info only as part of the archives he's collected, and is understandably not familiar with the area) had any of the street details.
We had assumed the site had been cleared, but hadn't hazarded a guess at it being built over, but nowadays, that's almost a foregone conclusion.
The page is already tagged for update with other new info, but I'll have to try and drag it forward a bit, especially with the location now being revealed.
I wasn't trying to be sarcastic, I just remember the oft quoted line you used to get in comedies "I remember when this was all trees", the factories line is sadly true. I find the constant redevelopment of the landscape with yet more soulless 'luxury flats' or 'luxury villages' to be despairing, and wish that there was something built that the 'common man' could use instead of constantly pandering to the more money than sense brigade.
I imagine though that in the current economic climate we won't see the constant rush of construction continue on the same scale.
Additionally, while It might seem strange, I think sites like the now gone Meadowside Granaries to be impressive in their own right and to be part of the local flavour and history. Meh, it's maybe just me being a bit mad.
Hi Jade, I know you weren't being sarcastic, I simply forgot to insert a wink on my post.
Sadly, like yourself I can remember trees (where in a lot of places there are now up-market villas and suchlike) as well factories. I think we're on the same nostalgic wavelength (is that a fair starter for a new section Admin?) and it may well be the next generation or two down the line that will genuinely not know what a factory is.
As far as the countryside and 'near countryside' - and by that I mean what used to be officially known the 'Greenbelt' but which is mostly now named as 'Greenfield Release' by the local Soviets - the present and future recession should halt rampant and mainly unrestrained building activity.
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) and thinks "But it was saying 200 guineas was more than a weeks wages at the time" and something like half the average now - if we believe what we're told and that around £24,000 is an average annual salary today, giving around £400 per week.
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