CTP Gills Cables/Packington Hall, Staffs Jan 2017

mookster · Jan 22, 2017

Oh boy did it feel to get my exploring shoes on again. I alluded to suffering some health issues at present which has made me feel very disinclined to explore anything but lately I've been feeling a little better so thought what better use of my time during a miserable January than to go on a little day trip. It was most successful with three explores done and I had a jolly good time, albeit still feeling quite rubbish.

This is a place I'm surprised hasn't been featured more often on forums such as this, and it was that which worried me as to whether it was even still there. A planning application was approved in June last year for demolition of the factory buildings and construction of new houses as well as conversion of Packington Hall, an 18th century manor house which forms the frontage. It looks like workers had got as far as taking up most of the upstairs floors of the house before downing tools and leaving, and so it sits to this day.

Little bitta history....

Packington Hall in Staffordshire, England was a country mansion designed by architect James Wyatt in the 18th century. Originally built for the Babington family, it became the home of the Levett family for many generations. The Levetts had ties to Whittington, Staffordshire and nearby Hopwas for many years.

Packington Hall is located approximately two miles from Lichfield, and was likely built for Zachary Babington whose daughter Mary Babington married Theophilus Levett, town clerk of Lichfield. From Theophilus Levett the home passed to a succession of family members, including MP John Levett, the Rev. Thomas Levett, who was the vicar of Whittington, and Robert Thomas Kennedy Levett, DL, JP.

The last member of the Levett family to reside at Packington Hall was Rev. Thomas Prinsep Levett, son of Col. Robert Thomas Kennedy Levett, and graduate of Clare College, Cambridge, and a longserving clergyman at Richmond, North Yorkshire and Selby Abbey. Rev. Thomas P. Levett died at Frenchgate, Richmond, in 1938. Rev. Thomas Levett's brother Robert Kennedy Levett attended Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and also chose a career in the ministry. Another brother, George Arthur Monro Levett, went up to Christ's College, Cambridge after Clifton College, and became a land agent in Kent.

Packington Hall was subsequently sold to the Bowden cable manufacturing company CTP Gills Ltd., which manufactures parts for automotive companies. The company occupied the home in the 1940s when its factory in Birmingham was bombed. CTP Gills was sold in 2006 to Suprajit, an Indian engineering firm. In 2007 Gills Cables Ltd vacated the property and moved to a smaller factory in Tamworth.

Having been sat for almost a decade now it's in a bit of a mess but most of it looks like natural decay, granted there are the usual broken windows and metal fairy stripping but other than that it's pretty solid for the most part, although parts of the upstairs floors (or whats left of them!) are slanted worryingly to one side.

This is one of those strange residential/industrial mixed sites like the now demolished Frith Park, better know as The Acid House, down in Surrey. Peculiar but rather cool as well.