Swindon Museum and Art Gallery artefact of the week: Plessey commemorative knight

This handsome fellow was crafted by workers at a company that played a significant part in the modern history of Swindon.

Plessey, an Ilford-based manufacturer of radio components, dipped a toe into Swindon in 1940 when it opened a factory in Kembrey Street, Gorse Hill. The war in Europe was driving a host of new industries, and suddenly companies such as Shorts, Marine Mountings and Vickers-Armstrong were expanding within Swindon rapidly to support the war effort.

Like them, Plessey, which was at the cutting edge of electronic communications, was able to draw on the expertise and skills of ex-railway workers and new migrant workers and flourish as it produced the hi-tech products the allies demanded.

Between the outbreak of war in 1939 and 1941 Swindon’s population had increased by 16,000, and the growing workforce was becoming highly skilled in new technologies. After the war, although Plessey cut its UK workforce from 10,000 to 7,000, the axe didn’t fall on its Swindon operations, and instead it began to invest more heavily in our town. By the mid 1950s there were 2,300 people working for Plessey in Swindon, mainly at one of its factories on the brand new Cheney Manor Industrial Estate, and by the end of that decade Plessey had become Swindon's largest employer, with a payroll topping 5,000.

In the 1970s, a time of considerable economic and political upheaval in the UK, Plessey’s emerging semi-conductor division gave it the edge. Though semi-conductors had been invented in the late 1940s, it was now that the silicon chip revolution really took hold, and began to change the world. The “chip” is the most obvious symbol of technical revolution associated with Plessey, and laid the ground for some of the high-tech companies, such as Intel, Motorola and Raychem, to establish major presences in our town.

Plessey was subject to a hostile takeover by GEC Siemens in 1989 and by the 1990s it had been broken down into several entities worldwide, though the

original Plessey Semiconductors site at Cheney Manor continued to operate under the Zarlink Semiconductor name until it was sold to MHS Industries in early 2008.

So why the knight?

He certainly wouldn’t have been standard production from a company that was at the forefront of the electronic age. During the 1960s it was claimed that pretty well every household in the UK owned at least one time that was made in Swindon – thanks to Plessey. If you had a radio or a TV, you almost certainly had a Plessey component inside it.

In fact, he was a gift from Plessey to one of its directors, Geoffrey Leach, who had been with the company for almost 30 years. He retired in 1982, and during his three decades of working in Plessey’s most productive period he had contributed to many parts of the business.

His daughter donated the plaque to the museum in recognition not only of her father’s loyalty and long service, but in acknowledgement that we all in Swindon – and far beyond – have been touched in some way by the innovation that was Plessey.

You can find out more about Swindon’s story at the Swindon Museum and Art Gallery. It is open from Tuesday to Saturday from 10am to 5pm.

To back the bid or give feedback on the plans for a new museum and art gallery, complete the form at www.swindonmuseum.org.uk/contact/ or email info@swindonmuseum.org.uk