On the night of November 19, 1955, a Rushden factory blazed like a firework until only four walls and piles of rubble remained. It was the town’s most serious fire for many years.
On that same site in Beech Road a new factory, manned by the old staff, is now producing a million shoe socks (500,000 pairs) a week.
To achieve this rapid recovery for the old-established firm of H. T. Mackness, Ltd., work on the site and elsewhere has been almost continuous. What remained of the old four-storey building was cleared away together with two adjoining cottages, and the laying of bricks for the new and mainly single-floor works began last May.
More Urgent Problem
A still more urgent problem was to maintain production, and from December 12, 1955, this was solved by hiring premises in Station Road where apart from the preparation of leather, the firm was able to continue its main activities.
Occupying much more ground than the old one, the new factory, including the first floor office portion, provides between nine and ten thousand square feet of floor space.
Lattice girders give an unsupported roof span of 78ft, and other features are equally modern. For example apart from doors and their frames there is no woodwork.
Production lay-out caters ingeniously for the easy flow of more than one “stream.” Nothing is carried by hand, everything moves along on trolleys.
New ideas have been applied wherever possible and especially in questions involving the drying of leather. One drying unit looks like a huge filing cabinet, and each section, though containing a frame on which a skin of leather is stretched, can be drawn out or pushed back as easily as a book on a shelf.
Hot Air Circulates
Nearly all the machines and fittings are new. Unit heaters which blow hot air down from above are used throughout the factory.
Mackness’s process light leather from the “crust” state to the finished skin, many of the skins, and socks of cork, leatherette and plastics, are sold to boot manufacturers. Socks made from lambswool, latex foam (with nylon) cork lino and Wellington felt, with “reversible” and over-socks, go to wholesalers and thence to the retail shops. Arthur Sanders, Ltd., of Rushden, was the main contractor for the building.
