When the cooling tower at Ardeer Nylon Works collapsed

[Aileen Shaw]

Hi
My dad worked in Monsanto from about 1970 and he was made paid off when the factory closed in mid 1979, I remember going over to Drybridge many times with him.
Aileen

[rab]

hi jd
when they started putting the pile in for the tower they lost them and had to move over as they were above a mine shaft also when it was getting built half way up it develop a bulged and i,c.i wanted it pulled down and rebuilt but holist and i.c.i came to an agreement i think the year it came down was 1972
rab

[Aileen Shaw]

Hi
I was doing my nosey through Google and found information about "The Nylon Plant" incase anybody is interested similar to our wwwhiddenglasgowdiscussion.
Cheers
Aileen

[ianbaintn]

I remember quite clearly driving past the cooling tower that morning on my way to the "Glen" in Kilmarnock. My father worked for the Cementation Company who drilled the Pile foundations. During the construction of the cooling tower they tried to correct some irregularities which created a visible bulge in the finished tower. My Dad predicted at the time that the tower would collapse and of course it did. Just one of the many mistakes made by ICI.
They should have never neen allowed to leave the area contaminated and it would not have been tolerated by todays environmental standards.

[eraho1959]

i remember it well, it was a part of the local landscape, you could see it from almost anywhere in the three towns.
i remember leaving my house in links road ( i was 14 )to go to adams ave shops for ma maw before going to school and thought " somethings not quite right " but couldnt put my finger on it...later in the day as the news filtered round i found out. the tower was the first thing you noticed when leaving the house and yet it had never registered that it wasnt there.

[Harvey]

I was six when the cooling tower collapsed & I remember everyone talking about it. One thing that has always puzzled me, is after it collapsed the Nylon Plant continued production for at least another seven years, so it seems they didn't need to spend a fortune & considerable time constructing it from 1967/68!
Apparently the "Temporary" wooded structures built in the aftermath of the collapse that took a couple of weeks to build by joiners, were perfectly adequate for the purpose, you'd think that some engineer might have pointed this out to ICI back in 1967, thereby saving the company a fortune!

[bonzo]

73 if I remember correctly? I was 7 at the time, so we're about the same age Harvey. At the time we stayed on New st and the cooling tower was the view from our living room window. Got up that morning and ma maw was looking out the window saying it's gone!! Didn't really understand. Also remember a big helicopter landing on thistle's park, I was at glencairn and we all ran to the windows to watch it.

[tapnagol]

It was said at the time that the bulge , created by an engineering miscalculation was in no way contributory to the collapse of the tower, as it was virtually a solid structure of shuttered concrete. The fault being identified quickly, and corrected. What to me was fascinating is that the wooden structure replacing the tower and constructed in a fraction of the time, operated as efficiently as the original and as I assume at a fraction of the cost. From what I saw of it it occupied in area, no more than the base of the original. The question being, why was the original construction deemed necessary in the first place.

[tapnagol]

It was said at the time that the bulge , created by an engineering miscalculation was in no way contributory to the collapse of the tower, as it was virtually a solid structure of shuttered concrete. The fault being identified quickly, and corrected. What to me was fascinating is that the wooden structure replacing the tower and constructed in a fraction of the time, operated as efficiently as the original and as I assume at a fraction of the cost. From what I saw of it it occupied in area, no more than the base of the original. The question being, why was the original construction deemed necessary in the first place ?.