The Whitley plant, situated in Whitley

Whitley, Coventry

Whitley is a suburb of southern Coventry in the West Midlands of England.-Industry and commerce:Whitley is the home of the Whitley plant, which is the Engineering Centre and Headquarters of Jaguar Cars Limited...

, Coventry

Coventry

Coventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the county of West Midlands in England. Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 11th largest in the United Kingdom. It is also the second largest city in the English Midlands, after Birmingham, with a population of 300,848, although...

 in the West Midlands

West Midlands (region)

The West Midlands is an official region of England, covering the western half of the area traditionally known as the Midlands. It contains the second most populous British city, Birmingham, and the larger West Midlands conurbation, which includes the city of Wolverhampton and large towns of Dudley,...

 of England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, is one of the engineering centres of Jaguar Land Rover

Jaguar Land Rover

Jaguar Land Rover is a British automotive company owned by Tata Motors of India. It develops, manufactures and sells vehicles under the Jaguar and Land Rover marques.-History:...

 and the headquarters of Jaguar Cars. The facility is a fully integrated design, research and development centre and is used for the design and development of Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles.

History

The site now occupied by the Whitley plant was originally an airfield, built during the First World War.

In the early 1920s the site and its associated buildings were bought by Sir W.G. Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft Co. Ltd.

Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft

Sir W. G. Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft Company, or Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft, was a British aircraft manufacturer.-History:Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft was established as the Aerial Department of the Sir W. G Armstrong Whitworth & Company engineering group in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1912, and...

  From 1923 until the end of the Second World War a series planes, including the Armstrong Whitworth Siskin

Armstrong Whitworth Siskin

The Armstrong Whitworth Siskin was a British biplane single-seat fighter aircraft of the 1920s produced by Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft. The Siskin was one of the first new RAF fighters to enter service after the First World War; it was noted for its aerobatic qualities.-Design and development:The...

 and the Hawker Hart

Hawker Hart

The Hawker Hart was a British two-seater biplane light bomber of the Royal Air Force , which had a prominent role during the RAF's inter-war period. The Hart was designed during the 1920s by Sydney Camm and built by Hawker Aircraft...

 biplanes and the Armstrong Whitworth Whitley

Armstrong Whitworth Whitley

The Armstrong Whitworth A.W.38 Whitley was one of three British twin-engine, front line medium bomber types in service with the Royal Air Force at the outbreak of the Second World War...

 bomber were built at the site.

After the Second World War, Armstrong Whitworth concentrated its guided missile work at the plant, including the development of the Sea Slug

Sea slug

Sea slug is a common name used for several different groups of saltwater snails that either lack a shell or have only an internal shell, in other words this name is used for various lineages of marine gastropod mollusks that are either not conchiferous or appear not to be.The phrase "sea slug" is...

 surface-to-air missile. In 1968 Hawker Siddeley Dynamics, who had by then absorbed the Armstrong Whitworth company, closed the site with the loss of 2,260 jobs. Work being carried out at the site on the Nike-Ajax and Sea Dart missiles was transferred to Hawker Siddeley Dynamics plants in Hatfield

Hatfield, Hertfordshire

Hatfield is a town and civil parish in Hertfordshire, England in the borough of Welwyn Hatfield. It has a population of 29,616, and is of Saxon origin. Hatfield House, the home of the Marquess of Salisbury, is the nucleus of the old town...

, Cheadle Hulme

Cheadle Hulme

Cheadle Hulme is an area of the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport, in Greater Manchester, England. It is southwest of Stockport and southeast of the city of Manchester. It lies in the Ladybrook Valley on the Cheshire Plain, and the drift consists mostly of boulder clay, sands and gravels...

 and Lostock.

The Rootes Group, by then owned by Chrysler Europe

Chrysler Europe

Chrysler Europe was a division of the Chrysler Corporation that operated between 1967 and 1979.-Formation:In the 1960s, Chrysler sought to become a world producer of automobiles. The company had never had much success outside North America, contrasting with Ford's worldwide reach and General...

, purchased the 187 acre site from Hawker Siddeley Dynamics in 1969 for the purpose of centralising all its design and engineering teams onto one site. From 1970 Rootes used the site for the design of all their new trucks and cars. In 1978 Chrysler sold its European operations to Peugeot, and the Whitley plant was taken over by Peugeot-Talbot. By 1985 Peugeot had moved all its design and development activities to Paris and the newly-privatised Jaguar Cars bought the plant and following a refurbishment, established its engineering centre there in 1987.

In 2005 Jaguar Cars moved its headquarters to join its engineering centre at the Whitley site, after scaling down its operations at its Browns Lane plant.

Environment

The Whitley plant is surrounded by green land, and a lake, woods and the River Sowe

River Sowe

The River Sowe is a River in Warwickshire and West Midlands, England. It is a tributary of the River Avon, and flows into it just south of Stoneleigh....

 are nearby. These would be under threat if the plant was expanded. Some of the former playing fields of Whitley Abbey Comprehensive School

Whitley Abbey Community School

Whitley Abbey Community School is a comprehensive school in Whitley, Coventry, England. It opened on 13 October 2000 and replaced the former Whitley Abbey Comprehensive School built in the 1950s, which was one of the first comprehensive schools in Coventry....

were sold by the council to Ford who owned Jaguar at the time.

The associated expansion of the Whitley facility and the building of a new industrial park in the surrounding green fields and woods is a controversial local issue.