Brookeswood

It's funny the things that stick in your mind. I can remember watching Play School one afternoon when I must have been very young. It was the 'though the windows' bit and there was film of a mechanised production line in a factory. (Possibly making sausages). My mum said, just in passing, "Oh, I love seeing machines like that." but that memory has always stayed with me. 

And I have found that I am the same: I can be quite mesmerised by watching machines at work. So, I wasn't going to turn down the invitation from Brookeswood to go and see their factory, which arose as part of their sales process. Not that it's fully automated by any means; an awful lot of the work is done by hand but it was fascinating to walk around, following the process from the delivery of wood through to the completed doors and windows. 

It reminded me of when I was first shown around our office in Kendal before it was developed. The site is where the K shoes factory was based and we were in our old office, which used to be the factory canteen. One afternoon, the landlord took me up to the old factory floor, which was a huge cavernous space.

It had that Mary Celeste feel, as though one day everyone had left, leaving everything where it was for the next day's work. Despite the fact that the factory only closed a year before we moved onto the site, the workroom seemed quite archaic; there were tramlines set into the floor, a physical manifestation of the workflow, as the shoes would be trolleyed from point to point as they were assembled. It seemed a shame that this was all going to be cleared out.

Indeed, the next time I went into the space, it had been divided into three, the tramlines carpeted over and the walls whitewashed. It was beautiful and we took one of the end sections, overlooking the river. There are no ghosts in our office but sometimes, if I arrive early in the winter-time, I find myself imagining the people clocking in for work, occupying the same space as me, just a little further back in history.

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Reading: 'Vinegar Girl' by Anne Tyler.