Sutton Engineering Company

The Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre (WSHC) has a record of a planning application from 1943 relating to the construction of an Engineering Plant Repair Works for the Sutton Engineering Co.

The requirement was for the building of a light engineering workshop to the south of the Sutton Benger – Christian Malford road; the workshop was needed in order to centralise plant repairs for various workshops, farm machinery, etc; some of the justification was that the machinery had to be repaired to support the ongoing Second World War effort.

Despite the fact that the workshop was deemed essential to support the war effort, the Rural District Council turned down the planning application for a number of reasons, including its ‘unsuitability in terms of location and access’. The reasons for rejection were written both on the location diagram and on the workshop plans. One of the notes in the paperwork points out that the proposed site would conflict with the planned / proposed A420 by-pass to the south of Sutton Benger (which was never built).

Roughly the same site was eventually used for buildings to support a gravel pit, and as the location of facilities to support the ‘North Eastern Sewerage’ project.