In 1937, the Steetley Chemical Company purchased a former fuller's earth and refractory clay works at Baynards near Cranleigh in Surrey. A large factory was built and was linked by private siding to the nearby Horsham to Guildford branch line.
Steetley used the site chiefly for agrochemicals but other lines pursued at various times included polishing compounds, batteries and during the war, munitions.
In 1989, Steetley ceased its chemical operations at Baynards, deciding instead to exploit the rich clay seams still present on the site for brick and tile manufacture. A large factory was built to the south of the former chemical plant, which was subsequently demolished.
By this time the site had become contaminated with a potentially deadly cocktail of zinc, ammoniacal nitrogen, organo-phosphates, potassium bromide, cadmium, mercury, lead and dieldrin (an organochlorine insecticide now banned in the UK). In 1990 the Baynards Site was declared biologically dead. Something needed urgently to be done to stop the pollution of surrounding watercourses and farmland so a treatment plant was opened to the north to purify an estimated 80,000 cubic metres of poisoned water in the large lagoons around the edges of the site.
Steetley was taken over by Redland Plc in 1992 but the Baynards site was then disposed of as part of an agreement with the Office of Fair Trading and became a private concern.
Brickmaking was for a time relatively successful and in 2003 it was proposed to extend the firm's mineral license to March 2047. Unfortunately it was not to be and the works closed soon after for reasons unknown. [continued on next page]
