Boughton Road

BR57

BR57 was originally built as BTH's Research Centre. With the consolidation of BTH into AEI it was opened as the AEI Research Centre in 1960. The company produced an Open Day booklet which detailed much of the work that the research centre was involved in. 

From the foreword:

"The Research Laboratory was first set up by the British Thomson-Houston Co., Ltd. in 1924, under the leadership of the late Mr. R. C. Clinker, and combined earlier experimental and development laboratories. In 1929 the late Sir Hugh Warren became Director, being succeeded in 1945 by the present Director, Mr. L. J. Davies, C.B.E.

The work of the Laboratory at first dealt in large part with the chemistry and application of insulation materials, and problems connected with thermionic emission, high vacua, and radio valve physics and circuitry. Then later came pioneer work on discharge lamps, and talking films, investigations into the whole field of lamps and lighting, work on acoustics, and many special studies on electrical and mechanical engineering problems.

During the war, all work was switched to the many problems of the times. In particular an effort of some note was that on centimetric crystal valves, magnetrons, and particularly radar. Much expansion took place during the war and immediately afterwards, the work on electronics and semiconductors occupying many buildings, mostly of a temporary type, scattered over the Works' areas. The decision was taken to bring all research activities at Rugby to one site in new buildings specially designed for research. The present building, completed during 1960, is the first part of this plan.

In 1959, BTH became AEI (Rugby) Ltd. In the work that we do at Rugby close liaison is maintained with the other research and development laboratories of Associated Electrical Industries."

Anecdotally the story is that the company was desperate to get into the building and the west section was built first with its own middle plant room and then continuing to the east with the remainder and the executive block, library & ground floor presentation room. 

The building structurally was built on 4 ft interval modules and 6 per expansion joint which gave the building great flexibility for internal partitions and served the company well in future expansion and changes.

(Thanks to A.M Wigley for the information and the open day booklet).

BR57A

By the late 1970s there was a need to expand the building. This had been allowed for in the original plans, and construction commenced in late 1978.

Construction was by Needs of Bristol and they took about 18 months to complete as the whole ground required deep piling, much to the annoyance of some of the workers in the BR57 side. The building was completed in April 1980 and the Metals Engineers of BR56 ground floor west moved at the end of April 1980, with the Drawing Office moving over a week later on the w/e of 3rd May 1980. The GEC Electrical Projects Construction Manager was Ian Ferguson of BTH/AEI, the Head of Heavy Plant. 

(Thanks to A.M Wigley for the information)

The end of a building - Demolishing BR57/57A.

In May 2023 GE Power Conversion Rugby consolidated its two sites on Boughton Road and Leicester Road by moving out of Boughton Road into the Leicester Road site. 

The building stood empty (with some vandalism) until demolition commenced in August 2025. This was effectively completed by November 2025. 

The site will be developed into housing. 

Bill Boumphrey put together some of photos of the building and its demolition and continues to update it as the site is converted into housing. The progress of demolition is shown in the gallery below.

Boughton Road West Side redevelopment

in 2007 the western part of the Boughton Road site was under development. As part of the redevelopment an archaelogical  survey was commissioned by the site owners, St Modwen and performed by Wessex Archaeology. The result of this survey can be found on their web site.