 For
a heavy engineering works the Park had many advantages—accessibility
by rail, road and water, ocean port facilities at the Manchester and
Salford docks, and nearness-to coalfields and to an abundant supply
of labour. Accordingly it was from Trafford Park Estates Ltd. that
the Company bought a tract of land of about 130 acres around Waters
Meeting Farm on the Bridgewater Canal—perhaps only unchanged
feature of the landscape.
Like
many enterprises of American origin, the works was planned on a
colossal scale. Here were to be no small beginnings and gradual
extensions, but rather a complete factory laid out from the start
for the manufacture of steam and gas engines, steam turbines, and
every product of electrical engineering. The designer of the Pittsburgh
works was called in, and the planning and estimates were supervised
by Americans who had had exactly similar experience.
For
the building work British labour was to be employed. A Manchester
contractor was engaged to lay the foundations, a London contractor
to erect the steelwork, but neither was able to predict a completion
date. In August 1900 when the first clerk of works, J. Marple, was
engaged, the site contained only the old farmhouse, hedges and ponds,
wooden huts, and contractors' railway lines round which the architect
rode on his pony.
Meanwhile
orders were accumulating, and at the end of the year delivery commitments
left only eighteen months for the completion and equipment of the
main buildings. Against this, the contractors and subcontractors
foresaw a period of five years before the shops would be ready to
operate.
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