Drive south-west and in Guildford, Surrey, you’ll come across the premises of
the Dennis Brothers, England’s first purpose-built car factory. Completed in
1901 it produced the debut Dennis car, an 8hp model. By 1915 Dennis had
moved factory and instead of cars was making the fire engines and buses that
it’s now famous for. The Grade II listed building has subsequently been a
shoe factory, sweet warehouse and, since 1998, a pub.

Farther north, although not listed by English Heritage, Fort Dunlop in
Birmingham has been recognised as a site worthy of preservation by its local
council. Built in 1916, it’s still an imposing structure by the M6 motorway
and became the world’s largest factory, employing 3,200 people. Even as late
as the Seventies it remained the largest tyre factory outside the United
States. It was closed in the Eighties and has been redeveloped into a hotel,
shopping centre and office space. During the renovations, engineers
discovered that the steel frame behind the concrete walls had moved just 2mm
in the nine decades since it was built.

Far less salubrious are the abandoned Rolls-Royce factory offices in Derby.
The site on the city’s Nightingale Road was originally built in 1912. As you
would imagine of Rolls-Royce, it was once a grand structure and through the
urban decay of boarded up windows the Portland stone around the entrance
hall is still visible. Inside, the boardroom with its wood panelling
apparently survives, as does the imposing staircase. The factory was
designed to build the Silver Ghost but following the First World War it
became irrevocably linked to aero engine production while the motor
operation was transferred to Crewe.

Rolls-Royce doubtless had the grandest products of its time but the most
hi-tech in its era was the Clement Talbot Motor Works in west London. Built
in 1903 on behalf of the Right Hon Charles Chetwynd-Talbot, 20th Earl of
Shrewsbury, it housed the Clement Talbot Motor Works until the Rootes Group
took over Talbot in 1935. Car production was switched to aircraft and when
Rootes moved up to Coventry after the war the building became Thames
Television studios. Now it survives as Ladbroke House, an office space on
Barlby Road W10, surrounded fittingly by houses on Humber Drive, Hillman
Drive and Sunbeam Crescent.

This isn’t the only listed legacy to Sunbeam. Automotive House in
Wolverhampton is another of England’s early car sites. Situated on Upper
Villiers Street, the office block was built in 1905 to serve the nearby
Sunbeam factory. But the company struggled in the harsh post-First World War
economic climate and in 1920 joined forces with Talbot and the French
Darracq firm to make the unfortunately titled STD company.

While the Automotive House sign once inscribed above the door is no longer
visible and the Sunbeam name ceased to grace cars in the early Eighties the
building is still a place of worship, though not to the car industry. It’s
now the Guru Teg Bahadur Sikh temple.