Princess Royal Colliery and Lydney Mill? (General)

by MPGriffiths , Thursday, September 12, 2013, 08:52 (4085 days ago) @ downunder

Portrait of Gloucestershire by T A Ryder - printed - 1966

'In the churchyard at Lydney there is a small memorial stone which bears a pathetic epitaph:

'Here a pretty baby lies,
Sung asleep with lullabies
Pray be silent and not stir
The easy earth that covers her'

Not far from the church there are the remaining buildings of the Tin Works - the tall chimenys have been pulled down. This was once a busy place making tin-plate, but the coming of newer and more efficient methods of production brought the closure of the works.

Luckily for Lydney and the surrounding district new industries have come to the town in recent years.

Early in the last war the Ministry of Aircraft Production built a plywood factory there, between the railway and the river. This used Canadian birch to make plywood to build the famous Mosquito aeroplanes and the Horsa and Hamilcar gliders used for troop-carrying.

After the war, in 1946, the factory was taken over by a private firm. It is now the largest factory of its kind in the country and employs some six hundred men and woman. Other works have come to the Lydney Trading Estate - as it is called too. There is a factory for remoulding and retreading tyres and another which makes Latex foam cushioning used in car seats and the furniture trade amongst them. One interesting feature of the Lydney Trading Estate is the fact that all the buildings on it, covering more than 300,000 square feet, are centrally heated from one boiler - this was the first place in England where this economical system, an American idea, was used. There is one large canteen for all the many workers on the site.'