Tower Bridge Business Complex - Then and Now

 For well over a century, Messrs Peek Frean’s biscuit factory played a central role in the working and social life of Bermondsey.  James Peek and George Frean founded their business in 1857.  A new factory was built in 1867 alongside the railway running into London Bridge Station.  The Drummond Road site had ample space for expansion and eventually occupied 12 acres.       

A series of highly popular lines made Peek Frean one of the largest biscuit-makers in the Country.  Peek Frean developed streamlined production methods.  It installed the first automatic biscuit making machines in 1928.  The company also claimed to be the first firm to put electric lighting in its factories, the first to bring in telephones, and the first to employ female clerks and to use typewriters.

In 1987 the company, which had become part of Associated Biscuits in 1969 and had subsequently changed owners several times, decided to switch production from the Drummond Road factory to its more up-to-date factories in Leicester and Liverpool.  The factory finally closed in 1989.

The site was converted into multi-tenanted buildings, with predominately music and media businesses.  In 2009 a section of the site was refurbished and renamed The Biscuit Factory providing creative studios and offices.

The Biscuit Factory today

History of Barley Mow Centre

During the last quarter of the 19^th century the middle classes swelled in numbers, and had cash to spare for consumer products.  To meet this new demand, manufacturers mechanised production, and so in turn were able to sell more goods at lower prices.  The business run by Arthur Sanderson was one that benefited from the virtuous circle.

Arthur Sanderson had set up in business in 1860 to import French wallpapers – luxurious and expensive goods for the top end of the market.  In 1879 he started to manufacture his own wallpapers and established a factory in Chiswick, now known as the Barley Mow Centre.  His three eldest sons joined him to learn the trade.  Arthur Sanderson died in 1882, before he could enjoy the fruits of his new enterprise.  The next generation transformed the business. 

In 1893 (the date appears on the façade of the present Workspace Group building) a substantial five-storey factory was constructed.  By 1896 there were about 250 employees, and soon after 1900 the building was extended again.

Harold was the most creative of the Sanderson brothers.  He took charge of the manufacturing side of the business at Chiswick and became the driving force behind the company’s aesthetic development.  Harold was also keenly interested in technical innovation.  In 1909 and 1911 he patented a new embossing machine that produced textured wallpapers that would not flatten when pasted to the wall; this proved to be one of the major advances in 20^th-century wallpaper production.  

By the first decade of the new century, Sanderson’s was bringing fresh colour and style to innumerable bourgeois homes, and was consolidating its position as the UK’s leading producer of wallpapers.

In October 1928 a huge fire destroyed most of the Chiswick works, hastening the decision to move away from the cramped Chiswick site.  The Chiswick factories were sold in 1931.  In 1976 Barley Mow Workspace opened with space for 200 people.  It was the first commercially developed workspace, certainly in the UK and probably in the world.

 The Barley Mow Centre now houses around 200 businesses specialising in creative industries as well as business services.        

Barley Mow Centre as it is today      

History of the Aberdeen Centre

Radio, television and radar must rank high among the most important technological advances of the 20^th century.  Significant developments in all three took place in the unassuming buildings that now make up the Aberdeen Centre on Highbury Grove in north Islington.

Aberdeen Centre stands in an incongruous residential setting behind the handsome town houses that front Highbury Grove, built from the 1820s onwards for prosperous merchants and City men.

In 1918 a factory was built for a company known as A. C. Cossor.  Cossor made its name producing experimental equipment for some of the most celebrated technological pioneers at the turn of the century, including the first British example of the Braun-type cathode ray tube.  Cossor continued to lead the market and when the first-ever TV programmes were broadcast in November 1936, Cossor was ready to meet demand with two different receivers.

As war approached, the company played a crucial role in the development of radar, which was to prove a key factor in the ultimate Allied victory.  The utmost secrecy was enforced with staff only told about the transmitter or receiver: never both.  Early research into radar took place in Rose Cottage, set in the middle of the Aberdeen Centre, hidden from inquisitive eyes.

After the war, the two Highbury factories resumed manufacturing television and radio sets, while the company explored other markets for the radar.

The centre began to be used as a business centre in the late 1980s.  The convenient location close to good public-transport links to central London makes Aberdeen centre attractive to small consultancies, public relations companies and computer businesses, and also to artists and craftspeople.

     Cossor's new five-valve Melody MakerThe Aberdeen Centre today