Grey & Dunn Biscuit Factory Demolition by Drone

Gray Dunn & Company was founded in 1853 and soon found favour with Queen Victoria, who issued it with a Royal Warrant. Despite its original factory burning down after just thirteen years it was rebuilt in 1882 with the distinctive and dominating concrete framed south block added in 1934. The company maintained a landmark presence on Glasgow’s Stanley Street throughout its history, a veritable array of household named goodies rolling off its production lines all the while.

In the first of a series of changes of ownership, local biscuit kings the Bilsland brothers acquired the company in 1912, while Rowntree’s took it over in 1978. Rowntree’s were subsequently swallowed up by Nestle a decade later, but in 1997 the operation was subject to a management buyout that saw it return to private ownership. It wasn’t exactly a smooth operation and even at the time of the takeover, the factory was recovering from a major fire on its wafer production line. By 1999 the company was courting financial disaster and handed a £1.75million rescue package from the Glasgow Development Agency. It wasn’t enough to save it and in January 2001 the receivers were called in, with 86 people immediately handed their P45.

Despite optimistic efforts to find a buyer, 148 years of biscuit manufacturing at Kinning Park ground to a halt that June when the remaining 129 devastated staff left. Generations of the same family had worked at Gray Dunn and the camaraderie between the workforce reportedly remains to this day as they reconvene at intervals to enjoy social get-togethers and reminisce.

The intervening years haven’t been kind to the factory buildings, once the pride of Glasgow manufacturing, now an embarrassing ruin at the gateway to the city. Back in 2008 plans were put forward to transform it into offices and self-storage space but nothing came of them, and now the low-rise buildings to the rear have been demolished. All the steel framed windows in the south block have been wrenched out leaving the brickwork falling away into the street.