Series: John Laing Photographic Collection Project Albums

Description

This series consists of 142 albums and files of mounted black and white prints documenting the progress or completion of various building and civil engineering projects conducted by John Laing Plc within England.

The albums include images of airfields such as Filton and work carried out by the firm for the RAF and Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE); power stations, such as Berkeley nuclear power station and Plymouth and Portishead ‘B’ power stations; the firm’s extensive work in Carlisle and the surrounding area in Cumberland such as Carlisle’s electric power station, the Uldale Reservoir, Willowholme sewage works and schools; factories such as Patons and Baldwins knitting factory at Darlington, Adhesive Tapes Ltd, and Walls’ ice cream factory in Gloucester; industrial structures such as the cement works at Shoreham, Ford’s foundry at Dagenham and Coryton Oil Refinery (5 albums); roads and motorways such as the M1 and the Maidenhead Bypass, and inter and post-war housing developments, including examples of their ‘Easiform’ and ‘Jesperson’ building methods. Some of the earliest albums in the series illustrate the construction of the Bank of England by Holloways between 1926 and 1940 (Holloways was acquired by Laing Construction in 1964). In addition there are albums documenting iconic projects such as Coventry Cathedral and the Bull Ring shopping centre, Birmingham. Also included are general albums documenting significant projects based in the UK and abroad.

The prints within the albums are generally arranged into themes or types of project, e.g. ‘Aerodromes’, ‘Factories’, ‘Housing’, ‘Oil Refineries’, ‘Power Stations’, ‘Dams’. In some cases there are several albums for one project, e.g. Coryton Oil Refinery. Most of the prints are captioned within the albums and the negative numbers tend to be recorded next to the print. In this way, the albums could be used as a visual subject index to the three series of black and white negatives (JLP01/6, JLP01/7, JLP01/08).

Content

This is part of the Collection: JLP01 John Laing Photographic Collection

This Series contains the following materials:

Photograph Album: 176

Rights

Contact Historic England Archive