Report - Pine End Works, Lydney - April 2014

Hector Rex · Apr 3, 2014

Visited with WhoDaresWins

I had a brief scout around this place a in February, the weather was awful, my pictures almost as bad and i was only there for about 30 minutes so no report ensued.. However, i earmarked the place for a proper explore at a later date and here we are. Visited on a wonderful sunny afternoon with some fantastic rays of some peaking through the broken skylights. There are a lot of large empty spaces on the site, but a few hidden gems were found in various places.

clebby posted a good report on the place back in 2009 with some great history and old photos: http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/industrial-sites/43878-pine-end-works-lydney-10-10-2009-a.html

I'm going to be lazy and pinch his history too

Pine End Works occupies a 14 acre site in Harbour Road, a couple of miles away from Lydney, next to the Severn Estuary. It was commisioned and constructed by the Government in 1940, and it was built to produce technical aircraft and marine plywood for wartime requirements. It was known as a "shadow factory", meaning it was built in secrecy tso as to keep manufacturing goods vital to the war effort, when factories in other, more vulnerable locations had been destroyed by bombing. To preserve secrecy it was known as "Factories Direction Ltd", and it continued to be called this long after the war ended until it was taken over by two of the countries largest timber producers, William Mallison and Sons Ltd. and Gliksten Plywood Limited. It's name was changed to "Mallison-Denny (Lydney) Limited" after a change of ownership.

During the war it was used to produce wooden aircraft panels for the Mosquito fighter-bomber and the Horsa assault gliders used in the D Day landings. In the 80s three inch thick rubber and grit surfaced plywood made at Pine End was used in a refubishment of Tower Bridge. It also supplied plywood to the Admiralty, the MoD, British Rail, vehicle manufacturers and boat builders. Something known as "Hydroboard" was produced at Pine End as well. It was a "chemically impregnated densified and compressed plywood" used in nuclear shielding in power stations.

This was my first daytime explore with my DSLR so I hope you like my shots.