Factories
The Dudley factory is still in existence as part of an unconnected private business. The Coseley site remained in the automotive business as a parts supplier until being forced to close due to financial problems in 2005, and was demolished three years later. However, the newer phase of the factory that was built during Bean's years as an industry supplier was sold off and demolished in 2003/04, and the land (actually located over the border in Tipton) was occupied by new houses within a few months. One of the streets on this new estate, Thunderbolt Way, takes its name from a former Bean product. A large collection of Bean cars is to be seen at the Bredgar and Wormshill Light Railway.
On moving to the Coseley site, Bean built a block of offices on Sedgley Road West on the Tipton side of the border with Coseley. However, these were purchased by Tipton council who opened them as their municipal offices on 7 March 1935, a use which lasted for the next 31 years until Tipton council was abolished and the bulk of the town was placed under control of West Bromwich council. The building was then used by Dudley College until 1993 and has since been used by a number of different ventures.
The address Bean Road (Dudley DY2) has long existed for a residential street within 200 yards (180 m) of the Dudley factory, while Bean Road (Coseley) provides an access to the former Coseley factory site, and the nearby Bean Drive is a cul-de-sac off Thunderbolt Way in Tipton.
Read more about this topic: Bean Cars
Famous quotes containing the word factories:
“All great art, and today all great artlessness, must appear extreme to the mass of men, as we know them today. It springs from the anguish of great souls. From the souls of men not formed, but deformed in factories whose inspiration is pelf.”
—Alexander Trocchi (1925–1983)
“She saw in the rainbow the earth’s new architecture, the old, brittle corruption of houses and factories swept away, the world built up in a living fabric of Truth, fitting to the over-arching heaven.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“This is not only a war of soldiers in uniform. It is a war of the people, of all the people, and it must be fought not only on the battlefield but in the cities and the villages, in the factories and on the farms, in the home and in the heart of every man, woman and child who loves freedom.”
—Arthur Wimperis (1874–1953)