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The large electrical factory at the lower end of Church Way opened in 1959, and closed in 1985. During these years it was a very large employer in the town.
The origins of the firm who built the factory go back to the local estate of Chilton Lodge, before
the Second World War.
There were many bright entrepreneurs at this time. Locally, two very bright young students at the De Havilland Technical School, the Hon. A.H. Dalrymple and Mr "Reggie" Ward
(son of the Hon. Sir John Ward of Chilton Lodge) were two such entrepreneurs.
Along with their woodworking instructor at De Havilland, Mr. Fred Luscombe, they went on to design their own aircraft, the Chilton Monoplane, and they formed, on 18th May
1936, Chilton Aircraft, using a specially constructed wooden building on the Ward's estate at Chilton Lodge. The first prototype made its inaugural flight on 16th April 1937.
In 1941 they went over to manufacturing small machined metal parts for the war effort, under sub-contract to larger firms. Having started in 1938 with two men and a boy, by
1945 it was employing around 250 people working shifts around the clock.
Chilton aircraft went on to make a large number of monoplanes, and sailplanes, but with the death of Andrew Dalrymple on Christmas Day 1945, aircraft manufacture came to an
end at Chilton.
The firm switched to a rapidly expanding electrical business, including electric shavers, circuit breakers, hair clippers, and the first-ever spin dryers in the UK.
Their most successful product was their famous bathroom shaver socket, of which 2,500,000 were made and exported world-wide.
By the mid 1950s the buildings at Chilton Lodge had become totally inadequate, and a new factory was built in Hungerford.
Chilton Aircraft became Chilton Electric Products, which occupied the new factory building in July 1959.
At its peak in the mid 1960s there were over 400 people on the Chilton group payroll.
Glen Culver kindly contacted the Virtual Museum in Oct 2011 with the following information:
"My
Dad sold these [Portable Spin Dryers] door to door, in Toronto Canada during the early 1960s. He has since left this world , but his elder sister , my Aunt thought I my like it.
I took
these photo's today Monday Oct 10th.
Oh, I believe my Dad acquired these units through the Arrow Sewing Machine Co. Ltd. on Vaughan Rd. in Toronto. They are also no longer in
business.
PS Believe it or not, I dared to plug it in ..... It works like a dream!!
Glenn Culver
In 1969 it became Ottermill Chilton, and in the mid 1970s it was taken over by the Westinghouse Corporation.
During the mid 1980s they transferred all the manufacturing to Ireland, and sadly the factory closed in November 1985, the site being sold for housing
(Cherry Grove).
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 "Chilton Factory c1980w")
 "P9116202w")
 "P9116203w")
 "188-P6072126w")
