CURIOSITIES FROM THE KODAK FACTORY IN ENGLAND

The last Kodak factory in England closed its doors in 2016, ending more than a century of industrial history. But beyond cameras, emulsions, and reels of film, the Harrow site was filled with peculiarities that now seem like echoes from another age.

Opened in 1890, it was Kodak’s oldest plant outside the United States. At its peak in the 1950s, the factory employed around 6,000 workers and sprawled across 55 acres (22 hectares) — practically a city within a city.

With the rise of digital photography, however, Kodak’s fortunes began to falter, and Harrow’s commercial viability declined throughout the 2000s. Sections of the site were demolished, sold, or leased. In 2005, film production ceased entirely at Kodak’s UK plants, with 600 jobs lost at Harrow alone. Still, some 1,400 employees carried on working there. The company even considered moving its UK headquarters to Harrow, but in the end, the decision was made to remain in Hemel Hempstead, albeit at a new site.

One detail that always caught my attention in the Harrow factory was the segregation of the staff canteen. There wasn’t just one dining hall for everyone: there were three.

• The workers’ canteen was a classic industrial dining hall, with long queues, self-service lines, and the inevitable metal trays sliding across the counter as one chose between simple, practical menus.

• The superintendents’ dining room offered a halfway house — more comfortable, more formal, but still functional.

• And then there was the directors’ dining room: tables laid with white cloths and proper napkins, where waitresses served full meals at the table. Wine and beer could even be ordered, at subsidized prices.

Three rooms, three menus, three very different ways of eating — all under the same roof. A reminder that Kodak in England wasn’t just a factory, but a reflection of the social hierarchies of its time.

Post Scriptum: An american reader, formerly worker in Rochester, wrote me: 

England and the French factory at Chalon served alcohol at their cafeterias and when I visited Chalon in 1999, that was still the mode. Beer and wine were available for any and all, and when I asked about this, my French counterpart told me that no one took advantage of this because they would be reported and could lead to termination.

In Rochester, there were also three dinning areas within the east side of Kodak Park - much like what was in Harrow. This made sense, because the mid-dining room, where full-scale restaurant quality meals were served at very low prices, was required for taking potential new hires to lunch as well as having team celebrations for performance. The high-end dinning, which was located in the managers building, was set up only for management and their invitees, because during the lunch time, managers could openly discuss issues / topics, etc. without the fear of information leaking. George Eastman, himself, set this up as far back as 1904 but at that time his managers lunch area was in a different building apart from the cafeteria building.

I was fortunate enough to have one chance of dinning in the managers dinning area as part of the celebration of bringing the Kodachrome 200 film to market. The others I frequented occassionally (and of course) including my factory interviews / tour day when I was on-site interviewed for a position there way back in the mid-80's