English Electric Stafford by Night : colour plate advert : issued by the English Electric Co. Ltd. : in : Stafford, an industrial survey : Stafford Corporation : Allison & Brown Ltd. : Stafford : 1932

            In the difficult trade years of the late '20s and into the 1930s, many British municipalities set about attempting to help drum up trade and advertise not only existing industries in their area but also the attraction for potential new businesses to locate and invest in their area. This 1932 guide to the county town of Staffordshire, is a good example of the genre; a short history of the town, a description of its services and amenties and adverts for the various companies already in business. The town was in an interesting geographic situation as, although it was traditionally an administrative and market town, it had some important trades that had grown up especially when the West Coast Main Line came to town in 1837. It was also situated between two of the biggest industrial areas in the UK with the Staffordshire Potteries a few miles north and the Black Country to the south, a large part of which was also within Staffordshire.

One of the most striking adverts in the survey is this splendid fold out colour plate showing the works of the English Electric Co. Ltd. at night that appears to be by one Fred (Frederick?) B. Kerr. The plate is very much in a German industrial art style, even to the representation of the neon "EE" symbol or logo above the roof of the busy, illuminated night time factory at work. I know in Germany such signage existed; I am more reticent about the existance of such a sign in real life in Stafford at the time but ...

English Electric were one of the major players in the UK's heavy electrical engineering world alongside the GEC and the AEI group of companies. They were formed in 1918 when a group engineering and electrical companies amalgamated and these included Dick, Kerr of Preston & Kilmarnock, Williams and Roberts of Rugby and the Siemens Brothers Dynamo Works of Stafford; it is this latter works that we see here. The company, that had extensive railway and tramway interests as well as heavy electrical equipment, did not fare well in early years and by 1930 the company underwent a dramatic restructuring that was quietly underwritten by the massive US Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company with whom they then had links around technological developments and research. Oddly, Westinghouse had been the parent of British Westinghouse in Manchester that existed from formation in 1899 until the Americans sold out their final interests in 1916/17 when it effectively became Metropolitan-Vickers. As seen here, their major works were in Preston, Bradford, Rugby and here in Stafford.

English Electric prospered from the reorganisation and moved into many allied fields such as domestic appliances, railway locomotives, computing and aircraft production. The were merged into GEC in 1968, a year after the former had acquired the other great name AEI as part of a government backed industry wide reorganisation.

Taken on: November 25, 2025

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Sets appears in: • Stafford, an industrial survey : 1932 • Everything Electrical more » • English Electric • Trade catalogues and brochures • Some old advertising « less

Groups appears in: • industrial culture • Vintage Advertising more » • Industrial Architecture/ Archaeology UK • That Old Timey Feeling • INDUSTRIAL LANDSCAPES & INDUSTRIAL STRUCTURES OLD AND NEW. • Advertising through the years • PLANET EARTH BACK IN THE DAY • Vintage Electric UK • Industrial and Trade Catalogues • IndustrialWorldWide « less

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