Planer Associates Ltd
Planer Associates Ltd was founded in 1953 as a technical consulting company, specialising in manufacturing processes and factory facilities. Over the years it has advised and helped set up many industrial companies and divisions - mainly in the UK but also in Europe, Japan and the USA. Today it is a family-owned company principally engaged with industrial property for manufacturing and technical use.
Background
Since 1955 the company has owned property on Windmill Road, which lies between Sunbury and Upper Halliford near London’s Heathrow airport. Even until the 1950s there was little development in the area and gravel-working had left many large pools around Upper Halliford and Charlton. The land was semi-rural, with many market gardens and glasshouses. Even a ‘halt’ at Upper Halliford along the Victorian railway to Shepperton was not formalised until 1944, when it was set up to serve the factories of the Sunbury Industrial Estate in World War II. After the 1960s the small station was renamed Upper Halliford and a regular service to London Waterloo was implemented. Extensive industrial and housing development, the construction of the nearby M3 and M25 motorways and the expansion of Heathrow airport have dramatically changed the scene in recent years
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Sunbury Cross and Staines Road East and West, around 1955
History of The Area
In the 14th century a windmill stood at Upper Halliford, later to be replaced by another at Lower Halliford, toward Shepperton, and of course it is from these that the road gets its name. Upper Halliford Road and Windmill Road gained importance after Walton Bridge was built in 1750 opening up new routes southwest. Tradition has it that the word ‘halliford’ originally describes the ford that crossed the river Ash before Gaston Bridge was built.
The earliest evidence of human settlement in Sunbury were Bronze Age funerary urns dating from around the 10th century BCE. The name 'Sunbury' is first found in one of the Anglo-Saxon charters, around 960 AD, and is written as ‘Sunnanbyrg’ which means 'Sunna's burgh’ or fort. By 1086, in the Domesday Book, it has become ‘Sunneberie’ with five ploughs, meadow for six ploughs, cattle pasture and twenty-two households plus a priest.
The area grew gradually through the Middle Ages and the ‘Three Fishes’ public house in Green Street is one of the oldest pubs in Surrey, built in the late 16th century. In the early 1700s Huguenot refugees allegedly settled in Sunbury and gave their name to ‘French Street’. The 1852 the Metropolis Water Act made the London water companies move their intakes above the tidal limit at Teddington to reduce epidemics of cholera. Three major water companies established works and pumping stations at Hampton, nearby and Kempton Park Pumping Station has been supplying fresh water to London since 1906. It is now operated by Thames Water and is home to the original triple-expansion steam engines. These water pumps when fully operating needed huge amounts of coal and coke, which came on barges up the Thames for Hampton, and by the London South West Railway to Kempton. The Queen Mary Reservoir was constructed between 1914 and 1925. Since the 1960s both industrial and residential development has greatly increased and is now served by the M3, M4 and M25.
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