Millars’ Machinery office building

This building is situated on London Road, just after the roundabout junction with South Road.  It is included as representative of the building style commonly used in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, both for offices and schools, with a steel framework, continuous glazing and coloured panels.

Millars’ Machinery was a large engineering firm based at Thorley Works, London Road, from 1922 to about 1987, with premises stretching a long way behind to the railway line.  It specialised in making plant for concrete making (large and small scale), sorting and grading operations in quarries and hot and cold road asphalt.  One of the largest mixers built was a 28NT Stationary concrete mixer, for use at Stansted Airport, having a capacity of 28 cubic feet.

Millars was taken over in 1970 by the Enfield building machinery group, Braham, Patterson & Behan, to become Braham Millar.  The company went into liquidation in 1987 and the Thorley works closed.

It is now mostly a light industrial estate (Twyford Business Centre), but the 1960’s office block fronting onto London Road still stands, divided up into smaller units.

The site was first developed in 1902 by the general and hydraulic engineers, Featherby’s Ltd, a company founded in 1898 by Harry Featherby, after he took over the engineering workshop in Apton Road of George Ingold, a hydraulic engineer, artesian well sinker and pump-maker.