Development and Engineering building Southend-on-Sea

By Chris Poole January 2007

While most of the early pioneering work was being done at Malmesbury, at Southend E.B. Thompson was busy capitalising on the good relations forged between the Ministry of Supply at Harwell and TRE at Malvern, (who were the first Nuclear Instrument design authority) to win the award in 1955, to design and manufacture the control room instrumentation system for the Dounreay Fast Breeder Reactor being built near Thurso in the North of Scotland.

It is believed that the project leader for building this system was W.E. Thompson (no relation to E.B. Thompson) working under the direction of Peter Harvey -- Chief Engineer.

The award of the Dounreay contract allowed EKCO to move into a whole new field of expertise and there soon followed a contact to supply control room instrumentation to Denmark's first reactor to be built at RISO.

This work however showed up a chronic lack of space within the existing research and development laboratories, which had to be shared with the commercial teams (T.V. and Radio etc.) therefore in early 1956 work began on building a new 4 story Development and Engineering block behind the existing R&D building.

Early view of Development and Engineering building just after footings were completed

Photograph taken from roof of R&D building - Bob Hubbard collection

In early 1957, the building was complete and an overhead corridor linked this building with the existing Research and Development building was also built thus facilitating easy access between the two buildings without going outdoors.

With the building work complete, the various teams began moving into the building and this greatly facilitated the wiring up and fitting out of the various modules for the Dounreay reactor.

To celebrate the finishing off of the building, a grand opening ceremony took place on the 3rd May 1957.

To see the official opening invitation and agenda for the day, click here

The opening was also filmed and this film can be viewed by clicking here

To see Bob Hubbard's story of working in Dev and Eng, click here

This building remained in use by the Nucleonic teams for the whole time it was under EKCO ownership and today it still stands although the overhead corridor was taken down in the 1970's. Currently (Jan 2007) it is empty awaiting new tenants.