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IT was the tip of an period when the final remaining chimney at York’s Redfearn glassworks was demolished in 1986.
Staff had been making glass on the positioning by Fishergate – the place the Novotel sits now – for nearly 200 years.
Our photographs at present take us again to the Eighties and the final years of the plant, which closed for good on December 23, 1983, costing the roles of 300 employees simply earlier than Christmas.
Fishergate glassworks first opened in 1794 by Hampston & Prince to make flint glass and medicinal phials.
The York Flint Glass Firm was arrange in 1835, and in 1930 was integrated because the Nationwide Glass Works (York), which turned Redfearn Nationwide Glass in 1967.
By 1970, Redfearn Nationwide Glass was the third largest glass manufacturing facility within the nation, blowing greater than 28 million pint milk bottles a 12 months at its vegetation in York and Barnsley, with 3,000 staff between the 2 websites.
However by the Eighties, the corporate was loosing cash and struggling to compete with the rise in non-glass containers. Folks had stopped having recent milk delivered to the doorstep and recycling their glass bottles. Grocery store buying and cartons of milk had been changing into the norm.
In 1983, Redfearn chairman John Pratt stated that the corporate had misplaced £1 million in six months from October 1982 to March 1983, and stated value competitors, the rise of non-glass containers and the recession had been responsible.
The manufacturing facility had three chimneys for a few years, however they had been changed by a single 180ft chimney, to ship emissions increased into the sky, chopping air pollution.
In 1982, an extension was added, taking it to 235ft – making it the one construction in York taller than the Minster.
The chimney was introduced down on April 20, 1986, following the demolition of the remainder of the manufacturing facility, and the Minster regained high spot within the metropolis after the four-year interruption.
What are your reminiscence of the York glassworks. Share your tales and photographs in our nostalgia group in Fb, Why We Love York – Recollections – click on right here to affix at present.
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