The company was founded in 1826 as a partnership between members of the Pilkington and Greenall families, based in St. Helens, Lancashire (at the time!). It was for many years the biggest employer in the northwest industrial town. Other notable firms in the town were Beechams, the Gamble Alkali Works, Ravenhead glass, United Glass Bottles, Triplex, Daglish Foundry, and Greenall's brewery.
Between 1953 and 1957, Alastair Pilkington and Kenneth Bickerstaff invented the float glass process, a revolutionary method of high-quality flat glass production by floating molten glass over a bath of molten tin, avoiding the costly need to grind and polish plate glass to make it clear.
The distinctive blue-glass head office tower block on Alexandra Business Park, completed in 1964 during the Modern Movement by Fry, Drew & Partners, was used as the firms world HQ.
In the continuing march of progress and decline of UK industry Pilkington was acquired by the Japanese firm Nippon Sheet Glass in 2006, which valued the business at £1.8bn. In 2015 the sale of the former St. Helens HQ was agreed, with the 125 remaining staff looking to be transferred to the Lathom facility, near Ormskirk.
The design of this site is a hark back to a time when employers cared about the wellbeing of their staff, and architects planned buildings in such a manner, with the site sitting in a mini modernist utopia. The canteen building is a bright open space overlooking the lake with two floors accessed by cantilevered staircase. There are two landscaped airing courts at opposing ends of the rooms, running through both floors.
Here are a couple of excellent archive pictures of the site from Ribapix (somewhere you can spend hours lost in old modernist canteens of yesteryear!):
Now most people are lucky if they get to work in a windowless box like a robot for 12 hours a day.
Shouldn't Throw Stones - The View of a Night Watchmen is a body of work produced by artist/ photographer Kevin Casey, who had been working as a security guard at the former HQ. He has documented his role as a Night Watchmen and the working life of the employees that remained, and collected archive materials from the glass industry left onsite. Casey ran an exhibition in 2018 and the accompanying book and film are well worth a look.
Shouldn't Throw Stones - Art Installation/documentary from LBM - Lens Based Media on Vimeo"
Between 1953 and 1957, Alastair Pilkington and Kenneth Bickerstaff invented the float glass process, a revolutionary method of high-quality flat glass production by floating molten glass over a bath of molten tin, avoiding the costly need to grind and polish plate glass to make it clear.
The distinctive blue-glass head office tower block on Alexandra Business Park, completed in 1964 during the Modern Movement by Fry, Drew & Partners, was used as the firms world HQ.
In the continuing march of progress and decline of UK industry Pilkington was acquired by the Japanese firm Nippon Sheet Glass in 2006, which valued the business at £1.8bn. In 2015 the sale of the former St. Helens HQ was agreed, with the 125 remaining staff looking to be transferred to the Lathom facility, near Ormskirk.
The design of this site is a hark back to a time when employers cared about the wellbeing of their staff, and architects planned buildings in such a manner, with the site sitting in a mini modernist utopia. The canteen building is a bright open space overlooking the lake with two floors accessed by cantilevered staircase. There are two landscaped airing courts at opposing ends of the rooms, running through both floors.
Here are a couple of excellent archive pictures of the site from Ribapix (somewhere you can spend hours lost in old modernist canteens of yesteryear!):
Now most people are lucky if they get to work in a windowless box like a robot for 12 hours a day.
Shouldn't Throw Stones - The View of a Night Watchmen is a body of work produced by artist/ photographer Kevin Casey, who had been working as a security guard at the former HQ. He has documented his role as a Night Watchmen and the working life of the employees that remained, and collected archive materials from the glass industry left onsite. Casey ran an exhibition in 2018 and the accompanying book and film are well worth a look.
Shouldn't Throw Stones - Art Installation/documentary from LBM - Lens Based Media on Vimeo"
