In the late
1920s, author Aldous Huxley was looking for ideas for his new novel. Inspired by the utopian works of H.G.Wells, he
was thinking about something similar, yet different. In his quest for an alternative angle, he
paid a visit to the banks of the Tees and the much talked about industrial wonder of the day – namely, the
chemical works of Brunner Mond at Billingham.
Until the First
World War, Billingham had been chugging quietly along on the coat-tails of the
Industrial Revolution, with its many small-scale industries and its modestly
low-profile. Demand for raw materials
for explosives during WWI, however, led to the construction of a new plant in
the town dedicated to the production of synthetic ammonia. Several hundred acres at Grange Farm were
just what the planners were looking for, and construction began in 1917.
However, the war
ended before the plant was finished, and the site was taken over by Brunner
Mond in 1920. Synthetic ammonia was
still produced, but was instead directed into the manufacture of
fertilisers. In 1926, the company merged
with other firms leading to the birth of Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd (ICI ) – after which the
complex boomed.
In walked Mr Huxley and he was transfixed. Being
almost brand new, it was on the cutting edge of industrial technology, and the
author is known to have taken copious notes of the equipment and processes he
saw. The introduction to one of the more
recent editions of his resultant novel, Brave
New World, that great dystopian vision of the future, states that the
Billingham visit was his inspiration.
As if evidence
is needed, Mustapha Mond, a character in the book (and Resident World
Controller of Western Europe, no less), takes his surname from Sir Alfred Mond,
one of the founders of Brunner Mond/ICI .
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