Gate

This pair of gates were located at the main entrance of the Firestone rubber tyre factory in west London designed by the architects Wallis Gilberts & Partners. The Firestone Tire [sic] and Rubber Company of Akron, Ohio was one of several manufacturing firms that opened modern factories along the Great West Road in the interwar period. Known as the 'Golden Mile' the road became London's main arterial route to the west when it opened in the 1920s. It was one of a network of new ‘A’ roads built to connect London's growing outer suburbs to the rest of the UK during the 1920s and 1930s. Carving through largely undeveloped land these new transport networks enabled long established London firms such as Heinz to leave their cramped premises in inner London but also encouraged new industries, particularly large American manufacturing companies to build imposing factories along the routes. Neighbours to the Firestone were Gillette manufacturing razor blades and Macleans manufacturing toothpath while a few miles north was the Hoover factory, also designed by Wallis Gilberts & partners. As well as mass producing affordable consumer products these factories encouraged the growth of suburban communities by offering a range of work opportunities to local people. The modern style of the factories and roads represented the modernisation of London's manufacturing industries but also dramatically transformed the landscape and atmosphere of London's outer suburbs. As the novelist, J.B. Priestly noted of the Great West Road in 1933 ‘Being new, it did not look English. We might have suddenly rolled into California’.
The Firestone factory finally closed its doors in 1979 with the loss of 1,500 jobs. The 51-year-old factory was regarded as outdated, its production line designed for cross-ply tyres rather than the more modern radials.
Six months after closure, the impressive building, was controversially demolished by property developers. The loss caused the government to rush through legal protection for London's other industrial landmarks from the 1920s and 1930s including Battersea Power Station and the Hoover factory.