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Trico factory, Great West Road, 1970s

The earliest newspaper reference I have found to the Brentford factory is in the Tamworth Herald, 22 October 1932; the reporter had visited the Motor Show at Olympia and was taken with a screenwiper on the Trico-Folberth stand:
'The wiper moves across the windscreen instead of in an arc as is usual and appears to give a cleaner sweep. There are two, one working on the passenger's side, and the whole of the area of the screen is wiped completely. When not required the two wipers, by an ingenious arrangement, meet in the middle and then slide over to tuck themselves out of the way at the side.' The cost: 65 shillings or £3.25 - which seems a huge amount...

The Situations Vacant advertised in the Birmingham Daily Post, 24 July 1939, were mostly local but a few were for jobs further afield, incuding Guildford, Leicester, Peterborough and this job with Trico-Folberth:
INSPECTOR, Chief, thoroughly experienced, age 30-40, light Engineering Factory; excellent opportunity. Write fully, career, present job, salary required. - Trico-Folberth, Ltd., Great West Rd., Brentford, Middlesex.

A later reference highlights the slow recovery of the building industry five years after WW2 ended: Western Morning News, 19 May 1949
U.S. FIRM HAS SENT 'PREFAB.' FACTORY
The Trico Products Corporation said yesterday in New York it has shipped a prefabricated factory to Britain because the British Government denied its application for plant expansion owing to shortage of materials.
The announcement said the two-acre unit is being installed in London for Trico-Folberth Limited, a Trico subsidiary at Brentford, Middlesex.

wikipedia informs 'The Trico business relocated to Pontypool, South Wales in 1992 and the building was demolished. The site, together with the adjacent site, Maclean's toothpaste factory (then owned by Rank Audio-Visual) to its east, was to be used for the UK headquarters of Samsung. The 1997 Asian financial crisis prevented this, and the site now houses the headquarters building of GlaxoSmithKline, also known simply as "GSK".

The first photo features a fire escape meeting viewed by pigeons; the second picks out the Trico wiper logo: Googling brings up some other images including women campaigning for equal pay outside the factory.

Full list of Peter's photos

Published September 2016