Thursday, April 29, 2010

This is Where Your MG was Born

And very likely your Austin Healey and perhaps your Morris Minor van, too. This is Abingdon - the birthplace of MGs up to 1980. Yes, I know that there were cars built in Oxford prior, but stay with me here.

What you are seeing in the map below is the area occupied by the MG works. Most of it was torn down to build a commerce park. As you can see, there are a lot of individual buildings here housing many businesses. There's even a new hospital on the site. Note the names of the streets - names from MG's historic past.

The only former MG building still standing is the row of units facing Colwell Drive. Google Maps has incorrectly labeled one of the units as "McDonalds". The Golden Arches is actually a bit south of the place.

The standing MG buildings were known as the 'B Block' - nothing to do with MGBs it was just called that. I think minor support functions for the factory were housed there.


View Larger Map

It is possible to zoom in on the map and 'grab' and move it as well, although I recommend hitting the view larger map link above.

Next up: The Jaguar Browns Lane site.

No comments:

Post a Comment