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A licence to manufacture the Futuro was granted to around 30 companies throughout the world. The sole UK recipient was Waterside Plastics, in the mill town of Todmorden, West Yorkshire. The company had evolved from Fielden Brothers, a major textile concern run to a benevolent ethos. Almost 2,000 people had once been employed in 11 of its mills. The commitment to the Futuro (and to similar projects such as “Sharky the unsinkable sloop”) was a gallant but doomed attempt to leave a legacy. The company folded in 1979.
The surroundings in Todmorden – all narrow, sooty streets and factories chiselled into the steep Pennines – could not have been more incongruous. The town’s mayor, Donald Rigg, arranged for a prototype of the house (the only Futuro ever manufactured in the UK) to feature in the 75th anniversary of Todmorden’s borough charter, in 1971. That summer, it was mounted on land outside a medical centre and used as a ticket office for celebratory events. Hundreds turned out to see it paraded through the streets by lorry and then put in place by crane. It looked as if the locals had captured a spaceship.
My parents had a photo of me, my older brother and my sister stood beside that very UFO which was taken around 1973 I believe. My dad's old business partner used to live over that way and we passed it quite regularly. In my memory it was a sort of pale lilac colour.
I haven't seen it for years but it's in an album at their house.
Holy thread resurrection Batman!
I've no idea why but that was at the top of the page when I replied. I hadn't noticed it was months old.
It’s a sign...
I thought this was a thread about old Orange Bikes...
I wonder if it still exists or if it was the inspiration for the Halo?
GRP was rather overused in the 70s and 80s and I have sometimes come across villages made from GRP capsules in Africa where somebody thought it would be a good way to make instant affordable homes or colonies for AIDS patients or even, in Lagos, a hotel for air crew. I can't imagine they make very nice homes, too hot, damp and stuffy with an air-conditioner throbbing away, the sound magnified by the shell. I see them as the same kind of failed experiment as the all-plywood Africar.