Cowley Works (Morris Motors / Plant Oxford)
From a 1912 conversion of a military training school into Britain's largest car factory — and on through Morris Motors, the British Motor Corporation, British Leyland, Rover, and BMW. The single most important site in twentieth-century Oxford.
The Cowley Works is the single most consequential industrial site in twentieth-century Oxford. From a disused military college on the city's south-eastern edge, William Morris built the largest integrated car plant in Europe; through it passed the Bullnose, the Morris Minor, and — eventually — the modern Mini. Production has continued on the site, under successive owners, for more than 110 years.
1913: the Military College
The works opened in 1913 in the former buildings of the Oxford Military College at Cowley, which Morris had taken over the year before. The first car assembled there was the two-seat Morris Oxford "Bullnose", built almost entirely from bought-in components — including engines and axles imported from the United States.
The outbreak of the First World War turned the nascent car plant over to munitions. Among the products were 50,000 minesinkers for the North Sea Mine Barrage — the design would be revived at Cowley for the same purpose in the Second World War.
1924: the biggest in Britain
After the war, car production resumed and rose sharply: 400 cars in 1919, 56,000 by 1925. By 1924 Morris had overtaken Ford to become the UK's largest car manufacturer, holding a 51% share of the home market; by 1926 the works accounted for 42% of British car production.
In 1926 Morris persuaded Edward G. Budd of Detroit to enter a joint venture, the Pressed Steel Company, which built a large new factory directly opposite the Morris works at Cowley with a bridge connecting the two — a partnership that would still be supplying bodies to the British car industry forty years later.
In 1932 Morris appointed Leonard Lord managing director. Lord modernised production methods, introduced a proper moving assembly line, and built out what Wikipedia describes as "Europe's largest integrated car plant".
War work, and the iron lung
In the Second World War the plant was turned over to aircraft repair and the production of Tiger Moth pilot trainers, alongside new minesinkers based on the First World War design. Cowley also produced the Morris C8 "Quad" artillery prime mover, which towed the 25-pounder and 17-pounder guns — some 10,200 were made — and the 15-cwt CS8 light truck (21,319 made).
Between the wars, in 1938, Morris saw a Both iron lung in use in London during a polio epidemic. He commissioned an improved design that could be produced using car-assembly techniques, and arranged for approximately 1,700 Both-Nuffield respirators to be made at Cowley, which he donated to hospitals across Britain and the British Empire — at roughly one-thirteenth of the cost of the American equivalent.
Morris Minor to BMC
In 1948 Cowley launched what is probably the most famous Morris car: the Morris Minor, designed by Alec Issigonis — the same engineer who would later design the Mini. The Minor was the first British car to sell a million units.
In 1952 the Nuffield Organisation merged with its old rival the Austin Motor Company to form the British Motor Corporation, bringing the Morris, MG, Riley and Wolseley marques under one roof. The Morris name remained in use until 1984. Through the long decline of BMC into British Leyland and Rover, much of the Cowley complex was demolished; the surviving portion was acquired by BMW.
Plant Oxford
Part of Morris's original manufacturing complex at Cowley is now BMW Group's Plant Oxford, where Mini production has been based since the marque's relaunch in 2001. The site is a working factory — there is no general public access — but its presence on the eastern edge of the city, three miles from the medieval centre, is the reminder that for most of the twentieth century Oxford was as much a car town as a university town.