Abandoned Arran Austin

Born in November 1866, Herbert Austin first set up his car plant in Longbridge in 1905, with vehicle production commencing the following year. During WW1, the factory was turned over to the production of armaments for the war effort, but there were not enough houses to accommodate the workers needed, whose numbers swelled from 2500 employees in 1914 to 22,000 by 1918. Herbert Austin thus imported and had assembled prefabricated Cedar wood bungalows from Michigan in the USA in 1916 to create Austin Village. Initially these buildings only had a licence for 15 years, but this kept being renewed and indeed they still survive today, having achieved conservation area status in 1997.

In 1919, following Ford’s lead, Austin adopted a one-model policy, in the form of the Austin 20 with a 3.6 litre engine. Unlike