Place Name
Industrial heritage. Named after the Glacier Metal Company, which was based just off the Ealing Road, and had its origins as the Glacier Antifriction Metal Company founded in 1899 in St John’s Wood. The factory in Alperton made bearings for Morris Motors in the 1930s. Writing in the Wembley History Society Journal, Richard Graham, a former employee, explained: “The origins of The Glacier Metal Company Limited were in a partnership of two Americans, Cuyler W Findlay and A J Battle. The partnership became a limited company called Findlay Motor Metals Ltd but later renamed Glacier, apparently because Mr Findlay had been to Switzerland in 1901 and remarked on the similarity of molten whitemetal to the appearance of a glacier: whitemetal is a term for various alloys, either tin-based or lead-based, used in the lining of plain bearings.” The factory closed sometime in the 1990s.
