There was a time when London was one of Britain's great manufacturing cities.
Behind factory gates from Woolwich to Dagenham, thousands of ordinary Londoners built cars, aircraft, buses, records, biscuits, tyres, ships, vacuum cleaners and even the machines that powered the city itself.
But these factories built something else too: Britain's working class.
A Friday pay packet. A house with a garden. A union card. A works football team. A trade passed from one generation to the next. For millions of families, the factory wasn't simply where someone worked — it was the centre of an entire way of life.
Then the machines began to stop.
In this episode of YESTERDAY'S WORLD, we revisit 20 London factories that once employed entire communities before falling silent.
From Ford Dagenham, the Royal Arsenal and AEC to EMI Hayes, Hoover, Peek Freans, Battersea Power Station and Bryant & May, these workplaces helped shape modern London — and their closures transformed the neighbourhoods around them.
London lost roughly a third of a million manufacturing jobs during the 1960s, almost half a million in the 1970s and another third of a million during the 1980s. Markdown colado (2)
Some of the buildings survived as flats, shops and offices. Others were demolished completely. But behind every silent factory were thousands of people whose lives had once depended on the gates opening every morning.
Did you, your parents or your grandparents work at one of these London factories?
Tell us their name — and where they worked — in the comments.
Subscribe to YESTERDAY'S WORLD for more stories about Britain's lost factories, manufacturers, industrial towns and workplaces.

0:00 A countdown of twenty London factories that built the British working class and eventually closed down.
0:51 Siemens Brothers
2:45 Peek Freans
4:54 Truman's Brewery
6:50 J. Lyons and Company
8:58 Hoover factory
11:03 Lesney Products
16:20 Firestone factory
18:17 Kodak
20:07 EMI
21:54 Hawker
23:47 Guinness brewery
25:32 AEC
27:47 Thames Ironworks
31:39 Beckton Gas Works
33:38 Whitechapel Bell Foundry
35:35 Battersea Power Station
38:43 Ford Dagenham
41:00 Royal Arsenal
44:25 Bryant and May

I take you inside twenty London factories that built communities, transformed British working life, and eventually fell silent.

I explore the people and products behind places including Bryant and May, Ford Dagenham, the Royal Arsenal, Battersea Power Station, EMI, Kodak, and the Thames Ironworks. Along the way, I uncover the strikes, inventions, football clubs, housing estates, and working-class victories that grew around them.

This is a story about factory jobs, social security, industrial decline, and the promise of a better life that shaped generations of Londoners before disappearing plant by plant.

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