Wimsol

[haggiles1947]

Can anyone remember the old Wimsol factory at the end
of Pitt Street, Parkwood? What ever happend to it.?
I know they used to make bleach.

[parkwoodgirl]

i LIVED AT 41 Harcourt Street straight across the road from Wimsol. You are quite correct they made bleach. My uncle Harry Perrin was a manager there before he was called up for the 2nd war. I left Kly., long ago, but I gather from other members that Parkwood does not exsist any more. I assume Wimsol would go the same way as the houses. there used to be a washing machine factory 'Acme' at the end of Pitt St and Bradley's Brass Foundry down the 'muck hill' we used to slide down the hill on shovels getting covered in red dust - many a smacked backside from my gran!!!!!!!!

[Admin]

Evening Parkwood Girl.....Parkwood does exist.......although the streets below Parkwood Street are somewhat depleted....the ones above exist.............the one down to Pitt Street - Grace Street is still there.....and odd bit of Alpha Street. They have built new houses on the land occupied by the lower terraced houses.

I worked at W & S Summerscales as a school leaver, in the offices ....... this is probably the firm you remember....we later became Goblin (BVC) Ltd - British Vacuum Company ? correct me anyone if that is wrong...I still remember their head office no.....Ashstead 6121.....no sure of the spelling of the exchange........

I have an invite to a viewing of the Wimsol film at Bradford Museum of Photography (not sure of the new name for this) will inform you all when official dates come through, as members will be welcome - or so I am given to understand. This film will be amongst others of the same period.

Jan

[barcrofter]

In the 1950's there was a firm in Cross Roads who made bleach, I am sure it later became Wimsol. I will make some enquiries. The building is now occupied by Elsfield Patterns. The address is 7 Halifax Road, Cross Roads, but we used to access it from what we knew as Saltaire which is a branch off Bingley Road.

Jan, did you know a chap at goblin called Charlie?

[fsharpminor]

I remember Wimsol well, there was also another bleach around called 'Lanry'.
Now I'll put my chemist hat on. Bleach is Sodium Hypochlorite. The Wimsol and Lanry would be quite dilute solutions in water.
I suspect the local so-called bleach 'makers' (Most towns had one) simply bought the hypochlorite as a powder from the then ICI Mond division (probably made at Runcorn) , made the dilute solution, bottled it and also made good money. ! It was in the early 70's that the thick bleach we know today appeared. 'New thicker Domestos' was launched by Lever Bros in approx 1972, soon followed by the various 'own label' supermarket brands, who used a slightly different thickening system to get round Levers patent.
I was involved in selling the main active thickener (a product called amine oxide) to Levers , and others. I also supplied the main active ingredient when Lever launched Comfort fabric softener, also about 1970 The chemistry of fabric softeners has now changed from the original types because these old ones were not deemed to be sufficiently biodegradable in these modern times. But the softening effect of the new ones is not as good. I'm still involved in some of these and related markets, including a new 'sachet' version of Comfort, whih I dont think is available in all areas yet.
(Sorry I got carried away ! )

[barcroftlad]

Apr 18, 2010 20:54:13 GMT barcrofter said:

In the 1950's there was a firm in Cross Roads who made bleach, I am sure it later became Wimsol. I will make some enquiries. The building is now occupied by Elsfield Patterns. The address is 7 Halifax Road, Cross Roads, but we used to access it from what we knew as Saltaire which is a branch off Bingley Road.

Jan, did you know a chap at goblin called Charlie?

You describe it well Barcrofter. I can't remember the number of times we sat on that sloping roof just "Kalling" !
Mrs G. I think you might have told me before-you must have lived pretty close to the Holdsworths. I remember Wimsol's well now that it has been mentioned but it is not something I would have recalled otherwise. Cheers.

[kellytica]

I think it may have been Kleenzall manufactured by Greenwoods at Crossroads

[barcrofter]

Thanks for the memory jog Kellytica, I knew about Kleenzall, but thought that was earlier. I knew Alan Greenwood in the 1960's through his wife Frieda Hall.

[fsharpminor]

I mentioned Lanry as well as Wimsol in an earlier post.
The two at one time merged, and then became part of the Jeyes Group round about 1970. This part of Jeyes business was then taken over in 1979 by McBrides (The biggest supermarket 'own label' producer of detergents, cleaning and personal care products).
As my father lived also for a time in Harcourt St, I will ask him if he remembers the Wimsol factory. Of course it could be that the Cross Roads factory was Lanry, and later the two merged as above.

[barcrofter]

I have asked a man who has lived in Cross Roads all his life and he says the factory was Kleenzall.

[parkwoodgirl]

I have a photogragh of me on the back of my sister's tandem when I was about 7 - before the war Wimsol is directly across the street. You are correct Bill I knew all the Holdsworths, they lived five houses down from us in Harcourt St., Todd was about my age Kenny was the eldest followed by Peter. his twin sisters Olive and Betty were my friends, though a couple of years younger than me.

[barcroftlad]

Apr 21, 2010 20:59:22 GMT parkwoodgirl said:

I have a photogragh of me on the back of my sister's tandem when I was about 7 - before the war Wimsol is directly across the street. You are correct Bill I knew all the Holdsworths, they lived five houses down from us in Harcourt St., Todd was about my age Kenny was the eldest followed by Peter. his twin sisters Olive and Betty were my friends, though a couple of years younger than me.

Gladys you have me wondering now. I didn't know the older lads but I always thought the brother I knew was called Arthur. The twins are same age as me and we used to play together a bit when we were in the 9-11 age range, then we moved back to Cross Roads, but I met up with the girls again in mid teens.

[gemma]

I found this website by chance:

www.yfaonline.com/assetDetails.cfm?film=1175&keyword=&sortby=&decade=23&by=decade&start=11&fromSearchValue=fromBrowseBy

It's worth having a look at all the other films in the archive as well but I came across this one and thought I'd post it for all to see. It's quite long (about 20 mins) but quality is good.

[parkwoodgirl]

Hi Bill - Todd was Arthur's nickname, the only place he was called Arthur was at school! He was the youngest of the three Holdsworth brothers .

[barcroftlad]

Apr 29, 2010 20:42:51 GMT parkwoodgirl said:

Hi Bill - Todd was Arthur's nickname, the only place he was called Arthur was at school! He was the youngest of the three Holdsworth brothers .

Whew! I haven't quite lost my marbles then. Thanks Gladys.

Gemma-thanks for your little gem. That is a real classic. Cheers.

[haggiles1947]

Yeah Gemma very good. Those women in the film were working hard. Wonder how much
wage they got in their pay packet? Like the ending. LOL

[fsharpminor]

Very interesting (as I am still in chemical industry today). I note safety precautions are very minimal, there were ladies filling bottles with no eye protection at all. Their gloves are also flimsy, -should have been gauntlets stretching further up the arm. I also think the chlorine smell would have been horrendous, with open vats of bleach in evidence.

[gemma]

I have to confess that I didn't actually watch more than 30 seconds of the film ... I should though!

[Andy Wade]

You should, it's a right eye opener, and it's in colour towards the end too. A day trip to Blackpool in two buses. Might be worth trying to identify those buses.

[Admin]

This is one of a number of films made by companies in Yorkshire, big and small, aiming to promote and market their goods. Other similar films include the CEAG factory in Barnsley in 1931, Wormald & Walker Blanket Mills in Dewsbury, from 1932, and Waddington’s Piano Factory in Scarborough, also from the 1930s. Often these would employ local professional filmmakers. In this instance it was very much a home made production, with the owner himself, Mr T Wimsol, heavily involved in making the film. It also differs from the other films in showing not only the production process, but also the marketing of the products. Wimsol was later taken over by the well known Jeyes Fluid company before in turn being taken over again by McBride, both leading domestic competitors of Wimsol.

Mr T Wimsol was obviously also concerned to portray his firm as being a family works, showing an outing to Blackpool. In this regard the film makes an interesting comparison with another similar promotional film made just after the Second World War, Parkers Mill, Bingley. This too shows the works outing to Blackpool, although in this case as part of the annual Wakes Week; which, as a chemical rather than a textile works, Wimsol’s may not have participated in – see the Context for Saturday Morning Out (1951-65) for more Wakes Weeks.

What really marks this film out though is the advertising and marketing aspects. In the aftermath of the austerity of the Second World War, and with rising living standards, products that were once almost exclusively for the more wealthy were now being bought by the more affluent working class. This film, made just at the beginning of the rise of TV, prefigures a major boom in marketing. Advertising through newspapers and billboards, and later cinema and radio, had been around for a long time. The branding of products was also something that goes back to the Victorian age. Names like Hoover become almost synonymous with the product itself, a vacuum cleaner – some examples of these can be seen on the History of Advertising trust website, References.

The film shows the still fairly primitive advertising ploys of the time: this was later to become much sophisticated during the 1950s, when advertising agencies, and the 'the Chicago School of Advertising"sprung up in the US – their world is portrayed in the TV series Mad Men, set in the 1960s. Nevertheless, the appeal to the housewife has remained ever since, even if it may have become a little more subtle – though not by much! The advertising of household products for cleaning chimes in with the huge growth in the chemical industry, especially of man-made chemical products. The breakthrough in the development of detergents for all-purpose laundry uses came in 1946, when the first detergent with a ‘builder’, an ingredient which helps the surfactant to work more efficiently. Phosphate compounds used as builders in these detergents vastly improved performance.

New social standards on health and hygiene were being introduced towards the end of the Second World War and in the post-war period, as with the Our Towns Report of 1943 which placed an emphasis on this, and the Dudley Report on the Design of Dwellings. This last had a relatively large input from women, or at least consultation, through women’s organisations such as the Society for Women Housing Managers. These Reports concerned the layout of housing and the provision for toilets, space etc, rather than the use of cleaning products, but it all added to the new modern ethos of raising standards of hygiene. There was even a report of the Council for Scientific Management in the Home, which came out in the same year that this film was made.

The typical focus on women in the adverts, as seen in this film, can certainly be criticised for reinforcing stereotypes – as it extensively has been – but it did reflect the reality of who took responsibility for the home. It was also a time of the, near, universal use of what is called ‘white goods’: vacuum cleaners, washing machines, refrigerators and similar household items which made for a cleaner lifestyle. It also made for much less domestic servants for the middle class: the national Institute of House Workers was by 1951 only a third of its pre-war size. At trade fairs household cleaning was becoming a big industry with model houses set up to show customers where to clean in their house with the Wimsol product. The Ideal Home Show, formerly Exhibition, goes back to 1908 when the Daily Mail set it up. It re-started in 1947 after a break because of the war – the show that year launched the first microwave oven.

1951 was the year of the Festival of Britain, introducing a more modern and technologically driven world. Cleanliness was a key component of this. In her excellent book, Alison Ravetz notes that the Festival had a giant sized exhibit on the housefly, and the massive use of DDT in the 1950s nearly wiped it out (p. 120). Products like those of Wimsol’s have contributed to a situation where cleaning the house takes much less time: as Ravetz also states, “Towards the end of the century it may be said that the ‘dirty’ home of earlier years has more or less disappeared, notwithstanding the huge amounts of TV advertising time devoted to cleaning and laundry preparations.” The vogue for a more minimalist house has helped to diminish the need for so much cleaning: houses in the 1950s were much more cluttered places, as a tour through the Geffrye Museum in London will show. There has now also been a reaction to the excessive use of potentially harmful chemicals, with the development of more environmentally friendly products.

The film provides a glimpse into the new world that emerged after the war, one which today tends to be taken for granted. The ideal home and an ideal lifestyle, with the ideal products to make it so, became an ideal for almost everyone in this period. It was a change that did not go unnoticed by cultural commentators at the time. One such, the Institute for Social Research established in Frankfurt in 1923, tried to come to grips with all these changes: in the economy, politically, psychologically and in the general culture. Its writers tended to be critical of these changes as introducing a pernicious, and all pervasive, ‘culture industry’. Two of their main figures, Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno, writing just on the cusp of these developments, in the chapter of their 1944 book, ‘The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception’, describe advertising as the culture industry’s “elixir of life”.

References

Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, Verso, 1997.
Stéphane Pincas, A History of Advertising, Taschen, 2008.
Alison Ravetz with Richard Turkington, The Place of Home: English domestic environments, 1914-2000, Routledge, London, 1995.
History of Advertising Trust
Soap and Detergent Association