Pye, Cambridge Technopark

History of Pye, newmarket Road

1938

Pye, gas mask factory

Later the Pye building was subdivided and became the Technopark.

1967

Jean Weston [Whitehill Road] joined Pye Telecommunications as a telephonist. She reminisced in ‘Memories of Abbey and East Barnwell’: They manufactured radiotelephones and walkie-talkies for the armed and police forces at home and abroad. Dr Westhead was the MD. At this time, before the birth of the Science park, Pye’s and Marshall’s were the two main employers in the area. Pye’s provided a bus service to and from the outlying villages. There were a lot of people working on the factory line, working on printed circuit boards. A trolley would come round to provide break time refreshment. There was an enormous brown teapot on the trolley, which must have been very heavy to lift. There was a canteen for the ordinary workers, with an executive restaurant divided off. The food was extremely good plain home cooking with lovely puddings! The cook lived in Newmarket Road in one of the houses now part of the Grafton Hotel. The factory situated on what is now the Techno Park had two storeys then. There was an air raid siren on the roof, and as a child I remember it used to be used to let the staff know it was lunchtime, and again when lunch was over.

In ‘Memories of Abbey and East Barnwell’ Janet Howard and Jean Secker recalled: Pye was a good local employer. Marshall’s Pye’s had the nursery school built so that the children’s mothers could go to work for them. So only people who worked there could take their children there. After the war it became council property, so any children could go there.