Tag: Servis

October 31st – Passing down the Darlaston Road to Wednesbury over Kings Hill, you realise that the area is changing. While it’s still very industrial, a couple of the old, large factories here have been replaced by new build housing.

The old Exidoor factory that made panic bolts was lost to apartments some years ago, and over the last couple of years, a pleasant enough, but unremarkable estate has grown on the site of the former Servis domestic appliance factory pretty much next door.

Servis was a household name, started by nearby power press manufacturer Wilkins and Mitchell who are also now gone; they made passable washing machines and the like which were functional, and often very innovative (The Servis Quartz was the first ever electronically controlled automatic washing machine) but suffered from poor quality and reliability.

Gradually outsold and outclassed by competitors due to the traditional British twin failures of lack of investment and corner cutting, Servis fell from UK ownership to various international owners before finally collapsing.

The works, which once even had it’s own brass band, fell silent, was demolished, the ground reclaimed, and now houses sprout from where the ground once shook under the blow of heavy presses. 

Such is the story across modern Britain. We are in the middle of great change.

February 24th – Darlaston is changing right now. In its parks – Victoria and Kings Hill – spring his here, and the first signs of a green summer are just seeping into the landscape. Daffodils, crocuses, primroses and snowdrops dapple the lawns and beds, and everything seems just a shade more alive.

I actually saw a honeybee today. It’s not yet March.

In the parks though, the peace is uneasy; a susurration of labouring diesel engines, the whine of hydraulics and the rupturing of concrete as nearby, the land the old Servis factory stood on is reclaimed for new housing. So much concrete on site to be pulverised, an army of fascinating machinery is working away at it.

Change is good. Chase is interesting. But the change for the greener lifts me the most.

January 19th – In Darlaston’s Kings Hill, the former Servis domestic appliance factory site is soon to be transformed into housing. Once employing thousands, this ground was cleared after the company went bankrupt and lofty promises of new retail and leisure developments were made. But permission was granted for houses, which in fairness, we do need. 

A few months ago, surveyors marks appeared on the nearby pavements and roads; then ground inspection bores were made. Now the heavy plant and high vis are arriving, ready to move rubble and earth and create a new neighbourhood.

Soon, you’ll never know Servis were ever here.

October 13th – Passing through Kings Hill, Darlaston today I noted activity on the site of the old Servis washing machine factory. This site – derelict for years, and once posited as the site of a new retail and leisure park by a prominent, diminutive Walsall Councillor – last year had a new housing estate approved for it. Like the Exidoor factory nearby, industry is being replaced in this area by houses.

I’m sure they’ll be nice, but it’s hard not to lament the loss of jobs and occupation.

Still, the drilling rigs are on site, and a surveyor has clearly been very thorough in marking out the subterranean hazards that lie beneath, judging by the spray-paint hieroglyphics all over the paths and road nearby.

January 26th – Passing through Kings Hill in Darlaston whilst nipping into Wednesbury, I noted that the former Servis factory site – nothing but a pile of rubble for a few years now – was subject of a planning application for 250 homes. 

Which is good, really, because we need them. But…

Servis was a big employer in Darlaston for many years, and was originally part of Wilkins & Mitchell, who made power presses and other machines. Servis stuff wasn’t great quality, and they didn’t modernise, despite pioneering electronically controlled washing machines. In the 1990s the company ran into trouble, and was bought by Italian white-goods giant Merloni, themselves crashing in 2008. Since then, the brand has re-emerged under a Turkish badge-engineering parent company.

The factory was razed, and lay pulverised as a testament to the economic rough seas Darlaston was enduring; as the factory was carried to dust, Councillors and regeneration wonks pronounced this site would very soon see a retail and leisure renaissance. 

There was soon to be an election, and one must suspect this was the usual electorate-buttering bullshit; the rebirth never came, and like the Exidor factory up the road, it’ll now become homes. 

Kings Hill – once the beating industrial heart between Darlaston and Wednesbury – is slowly becoming reclaimed by housing.