How the London overspill brought these businesses to Bury St Edmunds

East Anglia has always been a prime agricultural area, but after the Second World War some of the urban areas here wanted to expand.

In January 1954, the London County Council offered them the opportunity not only to build but to take a working population as well.

Thus an initiative of what became known as the London overspill came into being - whole swathes of burgeoning trading and housing estates with people from the capital who found themselves uprooted from city life to rural life, in most cases a very satisfactory idyll.

The market towns of Bury St Edmunds, Haverhill, Thetford and Sudbury (Cornard) grew almost overnight in relation to their past. Whereas employment for many Bury locals was at Robert Boby, Greene King and the sugar factory, suddenly opportunities were on offer at some of the factories that moved from London, albeit with some of their own workforce.

After agreements were put in place in 1955 to provide housing, Bury Corporation set aside 32 acres off Newmarket Road and this land would become the Western Way Trading Estate.

A proposed increase of some 10,000 to the population of the town would transform the town forever (now sitting at around 40,000). ‘Bury St Edmunds, where’s that?’ was the most frequently asked question by workers relocating.

Some of the main players of the London overspill were as follows:

Though not from London, the Co-operative Bakery was the first occupant of the estate. It would become Leo’s supermarket until being demolished for Asda in 2008.

The bakery was soon followed by Dutch company Van Melle, manufacturer of scrumptious Fruitella chews. If you knew someone who worked there you certainly cultivated their friendship, for obvious reasons!

Along further was American-based company Amot Controls, which started here around 1967.

Adjacent was Vintens, a manufacturer of camera control systems originally based in Cricklewood, north-west London. It was decided to move for the sake of expansion and a site of just under six acres was purchased in Western Way towards the end of 1962.

Bury was chosen as it seemed the friendliest when the directors visited the town. All the right boxes were ticked, especially for staff to be able to commute back and forth to London when needed and still do a day’s work.

Given two years to find alternative jobs if they wanted to, apart from about 50 members of staff, whose partners had good jobs or had children settled in school, the whole workforce moved to Bury in 1964. Bury Council was very sympathetic to the move by the 132 members of Vintens staff, even providing 100 houses in the six-month resettling programme. At the end of the 1960s the company was employing many more.

Another large employer was Barber Greene, manufacturer of road making and excavating machines that were able to carry out the work in a fraction of the time it would take labourers. The company was very successful, especially in the construction of Second World War airfields. It specialised in the refurbishment of tanks and track-laying vehicles left over from that conflict.

The company, now known as Barber Greene Olding, moved to Western Way in 1962, purchasing a large site for £500,000.

The next industrial estate was Eastern Way. In the 1950s, the borough set aside 40 acres for part of it.

Some 10 acres, which adjoined the Ipswich to Cambridge railway line, was earmarked for ABM (Associated British Maltsters). The building of its large office block started in 1960, with silos in 1961 and the malt dispatch block in 1964, to be finished in 1966 and full production started later that year. ABM was taken over by Pauls Malt Ltd in July 1987.

There have been a number of companies operating from this estate since its inception, some now gone; Bayer UK, a major player in the world of agro-chemicals, British Beef and Lovell & Christmas, which imported New Zealand butter.

Incidentally, parent company Fitch-Lovell had one of the earliest supermarkets in the country using barcodes, Keymarkets, which was in Mildenhall Road, Bury at one time.

Several companies have been on Eastern Way for years: ABN (formerly Dalgetys), leading manufacturers of pig and poultry feed; Eastern Counties Refrigeration, which started out behind Queens Road Post Office in 1972 and Robinson Young, which was also founded that year by David Robinson and Sheila Elton, moving to Ibson House, Eastern Way in 1982.

The first company established on the Northern Way Industrial Estate was Quality Castings, specialising in non-ferrous sand and gravity die castings. Ron Tarrant started from an old Nissen hut in Slough in 1957, making aluminium casts. His business grew successfully and a nucleus of 12 members of staff were brought to Bury in 1968.

Another successful company was R.C. Treats, which moved out of London in 1971. This essential oils company now employs a large workforce. Herga Electrics is still going strong on this estate.

Though not on a trading estate, Vitality Bulbs Ltd came to Bury in 1966 from Wood Green. Its large, modern factory in Anglian Way was to be airy and full of light! The company manufactured lighting systems, especially miniature light bulbs, until a management buyout led to a name change in 2004, moving away from the factory.

And what about the housing estates for the migratory workers?

The Howard Estate, named after the Earls of Suffolk, the Nowton Estate and Westley Estate had their council houses built by Direct Labour and W.J. Baker.

All three had their own shopping precincts, but the Westley did not have its own pub. The Nowton Estate had the Macebearer and the Howard the Merry Go Round, a Watney’s themed pub which had been closed when it was the target of an arson attack in 2001.

Now over 65 years later, have those ex-Londoners been assimilated? Hopefully, as Bury St Edmunds is a world away from their origins!

— Martyn Taylor’s latest book, Bury St Edmunds Through Time Revisited, is widely available.