Hawker Siddeley Power Transformers was a major British engineering plant on Fulbourne Road in Walthamstow, London. It produced custom-built industrial power transformers, tapchangers, and electric motors for electricity networks around the world. The site’s origins date back to 1905, when the Fuller-Wenstrom Electrical Manufacturing Company sold Swedish electric motors. After moving to Walthamstow, it became ASEA (Great Britain) in 1910. Industrial activity at the Fulbourne Road site began in 1919 under ASEA and Fuller Electric. The factory later became part of the Hawker Siddeley Group. At its peak, the plant was a major local employer, providing well-paid engineering work for more than 1,000 people.
The factory was well known in Walthamstow for the huge Pickfords heavy-haulage trucks that carried its finished transformers. Transporting these vast units required careful planning and often meant removing traffic lights, laying metal sheets over cattle grids, and reinforcing underground pedestrian subways with acro props to bear the load.
In June 2003, the last transformer built at the factory—a 107-tonne, 240 MVA unit—left for Scotland. Escorted by police, its journey temporarily halted local traffic. The factory officially closed in June 2003, bringing more than a century of industrial manufacturing at the site to an end. After the factory closed, the site was demolished and redeveloped as housing, a secondary school, and council offices.
