Bourne Textile Services

Bourne Textile Services

The new company sign

Bourne Textile Services owes its origins to Ernest Stroud, an engineer, who moved to the town from Quorn in Leicestershire in 1932 and set up the Bourne Hygienic Laundry on a small site at the corner of Manning Road and Recreation Road. Over the past 80 years, the company has changed its name several times to reflect the evolutionary nature of the service sectors in which it operates but still concentrates on what it knows best, that is washing and cleaning.

The introduction of the domestic washing machine and selective employment tax in the 1960s and 1970s forced the company to look elsewhere for business growth and it was then that a relationship was formed with a Bristol-based company, Brooks, to develop an emerging market in providing a linen hire service to hotels and restaurants. This part of the business traded as Bourne Textile Services and eventually over 350 customers in an area from Brighton to Burton-on-Trent and all points eastwards. Over 650,000 pieces of linen were processed each week and such was the demand that new laundry premises were planned to give additional capacity in a still expanding but competitive market.

Eighty thousand garments were handled each week at the Manning Road site by Brooks Bourne Services, a company jointly owned by Brooks Service Group and Bourne Services Group. This processing unit specialised in servicing industry and, especially more recently, the food sector by providing their laundered garments on a rental basis. Bourne Contract Support Services also had their head office on the site and were established in 1991 with Mike Taylor, the managing director. The backbone of the company provided cleaning services to the Ministry of Defence and to other large industrial and office premises over a wide area.

In the summer of 2008, Bourne Textile Services as it had become known, re-located to a new four-acre site on the Cherryholt Road industrial estate at a cost of £800,000 which included major investment in new washing machines and tumble driers. The business was then stand alone, having entirely separated from Brooks which went into administrations in 2006, and employing more than 300 people, making it one of the town's biggest employers, with the prospect of further jobs being created in the future. The company retained the office block at the Manning Road site but planning permission was granted for residential development on the surrounding land with Larkfleet Homes building 43 houses there in a development that has since been completed and occupied.

The company's operations now provide a laundry and washing service for Bourne and the surrounding areas, also supplying textile services to the East Midlands and East Anglia while their hotel linen retail market supplies some 350 hotels with approximately 28,000 bedrooms in the Midlands, South Yorkshire, East Anglia, North London and the Home Counties.

Until recently, Bourne Textile Services was still owned and managed by the Stroud family with Ernest Stroud's late sons, Basil and Stuart, and his grandsons, Hedley and Norman, all of whom had been involved in managing and developing the business at some stage over eight decades. But in March 2014, the company was sold for £22 million to the Johnson Service Group, a British organisation dating back to 1780, which rents and dry cleans uniforms and other textiles. Hedley Stroud, grandson of the founder, resigned as chairman and managing director after 33 years with the company although most of the senior management stayed on together with the workforce of 350.

The Recreation Road offices

The former headquarters of Bourne Textile Services in Recreation Road, vacated in the summer of 2008 for new premises in Cherryholt Road as part of a major relocation project costing £800,000. The old site has now been developed for new housing.

Photo courtesy Bourne Textile Services

Bourne Laundry circa 1934

The two pictures above show the original premises of Bourne Laundry circa 1938. The site was previously used as a wood yard by Charles David Whatton, a timber merchant who also ran the sawmills in South Road. The photographs below show some of the vehicles in the transport fleet used by the company in those early days with Teddy Taylor and Arthur Ball in the bottom picture.

Photo courtesy Bourne Textile Services

Photographed in 1957

The founder, Ernest Stroud (centre), with sons Basil (left) and Stuart, in the new boiler unit which was installed in 1957.

A NEW WATER BORE FOR THE LAUNDRY

The Bourne Hygienic Laundry Co Ltd had its own borehole at the Manning Road premises but rapid expansion resulted in the firm applying for permission to sink a second borehole although there were objections from the Bourne and Spalding Urban District Councils and Kesteven County Council and so a public inquiry was called for Tuesday 26th April 1960.
Mr Geoffrey Lane, appearing for the company, told the hearing that the laundry had started from humble beginnings in 1932 and now served between 4,000 and 5,000 customers in Spalding, Oakham, Stamford, Bourne and Grantham, as well as the Royal Air Force stations at Wittering, Cottesmore and North Luffenham. It employed 105 people, one twenty-fifth of the town's working population, and had added extensions costing £3,000 in the past year and other investment amounting to £3,500 on stock was now being planned.
The new borehole was needed because it was not economical to enlarge the diameter of the existing one. The pipe was made of mild steel and would not last indefinitely. To use the public water mains would cost the laundry at least £430 a year, probably nearer £1,000, whereas to sink a new shaft would cause an initial outlay of £600 and cost £10 a year to maintain. The inquiry ended unexpectedly after a ten-minute adjournment during which time agreement was reached that the laundry should have its new borehole provided the old one was closed after three months.

Aerial view in 1965

An aerial view of the premises in Manning Road taken in 1965. At this time, the firm was known as the Bourne Laundry and Cleaning Services Company Limited, employing 108 people with eight large and four small vans. The company had shops in Bourne, Sleaford, two in Peterborough (Broadway and Millfield), Oakham, Stamford, Market Deeping, Whittlesey and Spalding. Welfare of workers was high on the firm's agenda, running a social club with various attractions including an annual dinner dance and children's party, draughts, darts and table tennis competitions and annual outings such as a trip to the Blackpool illuminations.

Council visit in 1969

The picture above shows the chairman of Bourne Urban District Council, Mr John Wright, accompanied by his wife, Christine, visiting the laundry in 1969 to see some of the latest equipment that had just been installed. They were shown round by Basil and Stuart Stroud, sons of the firm's founder, Ernest Stroud. At that time, the company employed more than 600 staff with shops in eight towns in the surrounding district. Basil and Stuart Stroud were both talented engineers who were responsible for many innovations at the laundry plant including a prize-winning gas press developed in the 1930s (pictured right). Stuart died in 2004, aged 78, and Basil in 2006, aged 92.

See also Basil and Stuart Stroud

PHOTO ALBUM

Photographed in 2014 by Hedley Sroud

The company today with the dry cleaning and chefswear unit in Cherryholt Road (top), the 60,000 sq feet first laundry on the Cherry Holt Road site which was completed in 2007 and the new 30,000 sq ft laundry completed in July 2013 and (below) the company's fleet of lorries.

REVISED MARCH 2014