Fleming Way and the now demolished Garrard Factory

Image: © P L Chadwick Taken: 18 Jan 1983

Fleming Way remains, though widened to provide for bus lanes on both sides, but the Garrard factory was demolished in the 1990's. At their peak, Garrard employed 4,500 people in this and two smaller factories. They originally derived from Garrards the Crown Jewellers. Later the record deck etc business in Swindon became independent, but were eventually taken over by Plessey, who used to be a big electronics manufacturer in the town. Finally the business was taken over by the Brazilian firm, Gradiente Electronica, and for the Swindon factory this coupled with the move over to compact discs acclerated its decline. By the time his photograph was taken in 1983, production here had ceased though apparently a few other staff were still based in the premises. Image; Image In this picture can also be seen a Mini-traveller. Although these were made at Oxford, the Pressed Steel Company at Stratton (now the BMW Mini plant) used to supply the Oxford factory with body panels. Another two Mini's can be seen in this view:- Image

Images are licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0