History: The early onset of urban sprawl in Basingstoke

Eventually, workers at Lilly’s drug manufacturing site in Kingsclere Road, which employs 430 people, were told of plans to shut down the plant in June 2007.

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The closure plans were being blamed on a lack of demand for the types of medicines being produced at the Basingstoke plant, which manufactures tablets and capsules, and the increasing importance of injectable medicines.

Following the closure of the plant, there was a controversy over the development of the factory land in Basingstoke.

Eli Lilly and Company open their new UK Headquarters in 1939

An Aerial view of the Eli Lilly site in Basingstoke in 2000

Interestingly, there was a similar disagreement half-a-century ago, when the Houndmills Industrial Estate was being created along the Kingsclere Road.

But to tell the full story of the matter, we must go back over a century to the 1880s, when Kingsclere Road and Sherborne Road were just narrow lanes.

A builder, allowed to construct several roads of private houses between Sherborne Road and Vyne Road, was criticised in expanding the town northward “with no thought of those poor folk who will have to trudge through the railway bridges, where they may get attacked in the darkness of the night”.

In those days, there were no electric lamps to illuminate the passage. (This would have been before the bridges were extended to take four tracks of railway lines in 1904, as only two tracks were laid when the railway was built in 1839.)

With little to disturb the peace, the new roads were a residents’ paradise, apart from the distant hoot of the trains further down the road.

However, within a few years, the ominous “rumblings” of a future industrial area occurred when a firm called Tagart, Morgan and Coles was allowed to open up on the west side of the Kingsclere Road to provide wood for a variety of purposes, including building.

Building was certainly the operative word for within the period between 1900, when the firm opened up, and 1930, more buildings arose along the road on both sides.

In 1913, the leather works of Percy Fisher was constructed next to the timber yard.

Then, in the 1920s, the east side saw the beginnings of the housing estate which was built up Kingsclere Road and along Lancaster Road and Merton Road.

In 1938, Eli Lilly added to the industrial firms on the west side, but a halt to any further development was caused by the six years of the Second World War.

Founder Colonel Eli Lilly pictured in 1885

During the war, the white building was covered in Camouflage paint

In the 1950s, the huge complex of the Lansing Bagnall industrial truck firm was built on what was originally the Merton Farm land.

It was this that started the growth of the Houndmills Industrial Estate.

Among the many factories and warehouses that arrived in the following years were Sainsbury’s and Macmillan, and the Town Development Scheme of the 1960s brought even more firms to that area.

This increase brought about far more traffic on the roads than they were built for, but the construction of the Ring Road on the west side of the town brought a certain amount of relief to the Kingsclere Road and Chapel Hill areas. Even so, there were still high vehicles trying to drive under the railway bridges in Chapel Street and Vyne Road, with the result of traffic chaos on both sides as they became jammed under the brickwork.

There is some consolation that the plan to build a large railway locomotive works, on the site that later became the goods yard in 1904 (and is now known as Victory Hill), was not carried out, as the Chapel Hill bridge would have been even more congested with vehicles.

This would have seen the land known as Brewery Meadow and Parsonage Field transformed into a vast area where locomotives were built in large sheds. The air would have been filled with the noise of metal being shaped into the parts needed to complete the work.

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For several years, the rumour that this factory was to be built encouraged the nearby Roman Catholic Church to be rebuilt to hold more people, as the workmen building the plant would be mainly Irish labourers who were of that religious persuasion.

So, in 1902, this new church was built on the corner of Sherborne Road and Burgess Road from the designs and at the expense of the Very Reverend Canon A J Scholes.

The new church could seat 200 people.

Kingsclere Road, looking south, before the housing estate was built, showing the Roman Catholic church (Image: Newsquest)

Then came the news that the locomotive works was going to be built at Eastleigh!

Nevertheless, the church was to enjoy its future years, drawing its congregation from all over the north Hampshire area as well as from the extra people brought to the town by the Town Development Scheme of the 1960s.