Holden Retirees Club

GMH Finsbury Plant (Adelaide)???

The Plant that never was!

(By Neil Pogson)

In my researching I kept coming across some photos on the excellent South Australian State Library site of the "GMH Finsbury Plant".  This tweaked my interest as I had never heard of it. It looked to be a large factory site, which was even more puzzling, as a GMH Plant of that size would surely attract some attention and be remembered by ex-employees?

So, I spent many hours researching the GMH Finsbury site on every resource I could think of, without any result.  This, to me, confirmed that GMH Finsbury was the Factory that never was!

But, there were these 25 or more photos on the trusted web site, taken in 1944, all clearly labelled as "GMH Finsbury Plant". 

At the time those photos were taken (1944), Finsbury was an Commonwealth Government owned ammunition plant, set up to supply the Armed Forces with ammunition of many sorts. Construction was begun in mid-1940 and produced the first 25 pounder Cartridge in February 1941.  Finsbury originally consisted of around 25 buildings, said to be growing to around 50 by War’s end. The Plant became so big that it never achieved more than 50% capacity output, and that was just before the end of the war.  So logically, it could not have been GMH Finsbury in 1944, as it was still owned and used for Munitions by the Australian Government.

I have a valuable contact at the StateLibrary, so I enquired where their descriptions of the photos came from.  The answer was that “The descriptions for all of the BRG 213/207 photographs came from an index book titled ‘Black and white photo register 1939-1946’ which accompanied the negatives by Darian Smith.  It contained lists of descriptions alongside his original index numbers which were on the original individual negative packets. The descriptions for the BRG 213/77/50 photographs came from the typed descriptions on the backing pages which you would have seen.”

I was also sent a document which mentioned GMH and Finsbury.  However, on reading the lengthy document, I found that although there were 14 mentions of GMH, none of them said that GMH actually did anything at Finsbury.  

I then found a PhD thesis on Finsbury Plant history, which included a list of every user of that site until 1990s, but did not include GMH.

I saw that the notes on those SASL albums said the collection included some photos of suppliers to GMH (Horworth Bagshaw Plant, Joyce Bros, Kelvinator, for example) so many of the factories shown there were not actually part of GMH.

 By then, I was convinced that the Finsbury photos (while they were part of the GMH photo collection) were not actually of GMH premises.

I had also spent a considerable time trying to find a mention of GMH Finsbury in Trove as well as the various other Libraries, but was not successful. Also, on our website there are a number of books about the GMH activities in WWII, even listing the items made by each plant.  Finsbury does not feature at all - only Woodville, Birkenhead and Beverley Plants in SA, all of which are well known.

My contact at the SASL then sent me a copy of a typical page from the GMH issued Index to the photos. I thought it significant that in the index page there are photos listed such as “Front view of GMH Woodville Port gate”, while the others are just “Views of Finsbury Plant” without the GMH qualification.

I was then advised that another set of additional BRG 213/207 Holden photos was now up online, and there were more “Finsbury Plant” photos in amongst them, including some aerial shots and a number of interior shots.

However, looking at those many new interior shots of ‘GMH Finsbury’ just reinforced my belief that the GMH in the name was a complete misnomer.  There was no signage or logos anywhere that pointed to GMH.  Furthermore, there was no sign anywhere of any motor vehicles, either as parts or assembled, in any of the photos.

The clincher came when I finally found two important references to GMH and their intentions re Finsbury.

The first was a January 25, 1946, Adelaide Advertiser report that J.R. Holden confirmed GMH was in negotiations with the SA Government over the possible use of Finsbury Plant for the New Australian Car project. If that was agreed, all the equipment then being installed at Woodville would be moved to Finsbury.

This was followed by an Adelaide News article on 4 February, 1946, which quoted L.J. Harnett as saying that “the anticipated transfer of the GMH Plant at Woodville to Finsbury would not be made”. Woodville was to be expanded instead.

Recently another letter has come to light from L.J. Hartnett to J.R. Holden on15 February 1946, advising that New York had vetoed the Finsbury move, and that J.R. Holden' responses to the press should be much more positive that GMH were well advanced with preparations for manufacturing an Australian Motor car at Woodville.

So, GMH NEVER used Finsbury Plant at all.

The SASL has now removed the GMH part of the titles on the many photos of Finsbury Plant.

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