published on 22/07/08
The story of Lancashire’s world famous aircraft industry started in the unlikely setting of a factory building tramcars.
In 1897 a Scottish company Dick, Kerr & Co Ltd bought a disused factory in Strand Road, Preston, to make electric tramcars and quickly became the largest producer in the country.
It was in 1917, when the writing was already on the wall for the future of trams, that the company diversified into the production of aircraft fuselages for the Felixstowe F.3 and F.5 flying boats.
A total of 132 were ordered but at the end of the war the contract was cancelled with only 14 completed. Not deterred however, the company pressed on with its aircraft production and built a Fairey Atalanta in a government hanger next to the River Ribble from 1919 – 1921.
At the same time the company merged with three others to form English Electric and in 1922 built a Wren powered glider which took off from Ashton Park in Preston.
All the while production of tramcars had continued and it was just as well because, at the end of the Kingston contract, aircraft production ceased. English Electric was booming, however, and it started producing diesel locomotives in the Preston factory.
Then, as war loomed, the company became a ‘shadow’ aircraft manufacturer able to build other companies’ designs for the war effort. At its peak in 1944 80 aircraft a month were being turned out from English Electric’s Salmesbury factory.
In 1944 the company took the strategic decision to break into the aircraft market and a design team was formed in Corporation Street, Preston. Its first venture was the successful Canberra high altitude jet bomber followed by the iconic and highly successful Lightning jet fighter.
English Electric took over the redundant US Air Force base in Warton in 1947 for use as ‘an experimental flying facility’ as the runway at Salmesbury.
In 1960 the company merged with Vickers and Bristol Aircraft to form the British Aircraft Corporation the forerunner of today’s BAESystems. The rest they say, is history.

Read the full article at Lancashire Business View