page_title: Courtaulds Red Scar Works Preston
section_title: Buildings on site
hierarchical_section_title: Courtaulds Red Scar Works Preston / Buildings on site
caption_attribution_description: English: This is Courtaulds Red Scar Works in Preston UK before closure. These are the chimneys and Boiler House along with a train of caustic soda tanks unloading
context_page_description: Red Scar Works was built in 1939 by Courtaulds and produced rayon. It was located in Ribbleton Preston off Longridge Road. The closure of the works was announced in November 1979 and the issue raised in the UK Parliament House of Commons by the constituency MP. At the time of closure approximately 2600 people were employed there but there were approximately 4000 at its peak. It was the largest rayon producing site in Britain. Two main products were manufactured with one being tyre cord by a process known as CSPT - Continuous Spinning Process Tenasco. Two main denier of this product were manufactured. The other product was a general textile called Bright. A range of deniers of this were produced in a range of colours. The trade name for the coloured product was Duracol. At the time of closure, one reason given by management for the closure was the rising popularity of steel belt radial tires thus reducing demand for tyre cord.
  The factory was connected by rail as a branch of what was the Preston and Longridge Railway. The plant had its own power production facility. The main raw materials brought in by rail were coal, sulfuric acid, sodium hydroxide, carbon disulfide and wood pulp.
context_section_description: The site had its own power station which was coal burning and a boiler house and turbine room housing Parsons Peebles turbines. This resulted in two cooling towers and two large power station chimneys which were very visible points on the Preston landscape. The cooling towers were very close to the Preston By-pass, now part of the M6 motorway. As well as a laboratory there was a textile testing room, boiler house, turbine room, box spinning, CSPT, effluent plant, acid recovery, zinc recovery, churn room, mixing room, dialyzer house, maintenance workshop, offices, cake ageing rooms, coneing, cakewash, carbon disulfide mixing arc, steeping room, mercerizing room, condux mill passage, fume scrubbing and viscose alley containing east and west viscose ageing and storage caves
caption: View of Courtaulds Chimneys with Boiler House visible in background and a caustic soda tank train delivering
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