CWS Pelaw Factory
of Pelaw, Gateshead
Part of the Co-operative Wholesale Society (CWS)
1902 Pelaw Drug Factory and the Pelaw Cabinet Works commenced
1936 Permission secured for new factory.[1]
1998 'The Pelaw factory was run by the manufacturing side of the Cooperative Workshop Society, the CWS, and traded for 91 years. Pelaw's three-and-three-quarter acre site was the largest to be built in the region at the time showing the importance of the Cooperative movement in the region at the time. The CWS Newcastle directors leased the site for 999 years at an annual charge of 2d per square yard - an unpopular move with many delegates at the time. Everything from boot polish, beds and bedding, clothes and furniture was made at Pelaw and the factory was also a printworks. Demand Work at the drug factory began in May 1902 and the factory was formally opened in January 1903 The factory's heyday between the two world wars. At one point the boot polish was in such demand that millions of tins were being made annually and distributed across the country. It all started to go wrong in the 1960s with changes in the global economy meaning more competition The latter part of the decade saw three of the factory's units cease trading The first casualty was the food packaging department closed in 1967 The quilt factory went the next year and in 1969 the furniture production shop was shut down The clothing factory survived until 1975 and the print works was the last to go in 1993 sustained by its quality of work What now stands on the former site of is a mixture of houses and a small industrial estate although the shell of the printing works is still standing.'[2]