11-83-50 Aylesford Paper Mills

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Aylesford Paper Mills, near MAIDSTONE, is a huge industrial site, home to a huge number of workers, in a self-contained operation. It is typical of the kind of post-war large enterprise that provided jobs for life in a family atmosphere. In 1958 Martins Bank opened a sub branch there for the exclusive use of employees of Albert E Reed and Co Ltd and their associated companies.

Our friends at Barclays tell us that the building was leased from Albert E Reed and Co., for an initial period of twenty-one years. In fact, the time it was used by both Martins AND Barclays as a sub-branch, doubled to FORTY-TWO years, with the doors closing for the final time on 7 April 2000. Nowadays the whole site is used for other purposes including a studio complex for the production of television programmes and films.

This Building in Service: 25 March 1958 until 7 April 2000

Image (ca.1958) © Martins Bank Archive Collections – Jeremy O’Keeffe

Image © Barclays 1968

It is also home to a major newsprint recycling company, maintaining the link with paper production. We were delighted – having been on the look out for an image of this little building for more than fifteen years – when we were contacted by Jeremy O’Keeffe, who provided the wonderful image above, which he found in his fathers’ papers. He told us:

“My Father worked initially as a Trainee and eventually as a Qualified Architect for Reed Paper Group at Aylesford in Kent in the early 1950's including during the 1953 Coronation”.

Jeremy believes his father to have been involved in the design, official consents and construction of the sub-branch building. The image on the left is an aerial view of the Albert E Reed and Co Ltd factory at Aylesford, Kent, produced in 1958 and is the copyright of AERO Pictorial Limited® and their successors.