Chesterford Park Research Station was a

crop protection Pest control is the regulation or management of a species defined as a pest; such as any animal, plant or fungus that impacts adversely on human activities or environment. The human response depends on the importance of the damage done and wi ...

research centre in Essex. It is now a science park with biotechnology companies.

History

The 808 acres of the Chesterford Park Estate was put up for sale in June 1950, owned by Werner Göthe since around 1930. Pest Control Ltd of

Bourn Bourn is a small village and civil parish in South Cambridgeshire, England. Surrounding villages include Caxton, Eltisley and Cambourne. It is 8 miles (12 km) from the county town of Cambridge. The population of the parish was 1,015 at t ...

in south-west

Cambridgeshire Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East of England and East Anglia. It is bordered by Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfor ...

, bought the Little Chesterford Park site in 1952. The Bourn site made crop spraying equipment. Fisons bought Pest Control Ltd in early 1954. Elwyn Parry-Jones was the site's first technical director, who died in July 1965. In September 1964, the site started research work with Boots. Genetic resistance by insects to insecticides was increasing in the late 1960s. By the late 1960s, the site had around 220 staff. From the 1970s, the director of the site was Charles Edwards. By the late 1980s, there were around 500 staff. The site is accessed via the B184 from junction 9 of the

M11 motorway The M11 is a motorway that runs north from the A406 road, North Circular Road (A406) in South Woodford to the A14 road (Great Britain), A14, northwest of Cambridge, England. Originally proposed as a trunk road as early as 1915, various plans ...

Ownership

Boots and Fisons joined divisions in 1980 to form FBC Limited. In 1982 Fisons sold its fertiliser division to a Norwegian company for £50m. On Monday 18 July 1983, Boots and Fisons sold FBC Ltd to

Schering AG Schering AG was a research-centered German multinational pharmaceutical company headquartered in Wedding, Berlin, which operated as an independent company from 1851 to 2006. In 2006, it was bought by Bayer AG and merged to form the Bayer su ...

West Germany West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...

for £120m with the sale completed on Wednesday 14 September 1983. In late 1993, Schering's chemical division looked at merging with another German chemical company Hoechst, which formed AgrEvo on 3 March 1994. In July 1999, AgrEvo UK looked at closing the site due to Hoechst merging, to become Aventis. The site briefly became part of Aventis CropScience UK. On 12 October 2001, Aventis CropScience was bought for 7.25 billion euros. In 2000, Aviva Investors acquired the park, planning to develop it further alongside its joint-venture partners, adding new buildings and infrastructure to accommodate tenants as their operations expand. In 2017, Uttlesford District Council purchased a 50% share in the park, making them joint owners alongside Aviva Investors.

Construction

New buildings were opened on Tuesday 2 October 1956 by Sir William Slater. The new buildings included a Medical Laboratory for tests on laboratory animals. The buildings were built by Prime Ltd of Cambridge. The site was around 240 acres - there was 90 acres of woodland and a 139-acre farm. In 1967, a new animal health unit opened, with a £30,000 pig unit, and £30,000 building for a dairy herd. In the late 1970s, a £4.5m building was built. The new centre was opened on Tuesday 24 April 1979 by Scottish biochemist

Alexander R. Todd Alexander Robertus Todd, Baron Todd (2 October 1907 – 10 January 1997) was a British biochemist whose research on the structure and synthesis of nucleotides, nucleosides, and nucleotide coenzymes gained him the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 195 ...

, who won the 1957

Nobel Prize in Chemistry The Nobel Prize in Chemistry () is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outst ...

. A 400kv

transmission line In electrical engineering, a transmission line is a specialized cable or other structure designed to conduct electromagnetic waves in a contained manner. The term applies when the conductors are long enough that the wave nature of the transmis ...

runs north-south through the east of the site, on the 4ZM

Walpole, Norfolk __NOTOC__ Walpole is a civil parish in Norfolk, England. The parish includes the conjoined villages of Walpole St Andrew and Walpole St Peter. Walpole Highway and Walpole Cross Keys are separate civil parishes. The parish covers an area of , and ...

Burwell, Cambridgeshire Burwell is a village and civil parish in Cambridgeshire, England, some 10 miles (16 km) north-east of Cambridge. It lies on the south-east Fen Edge, edge of the Fens. Westward drainage is improved by Cambridgeshire Lodes, Cambridgeshire lodes ( ...

Stocking Pelham Stocking Pelham is a village and civil parish in the East Hertfordshire district of Hertfordshire, England. It is located on the border with Essex, around 6 miles (10 km) east of Buntingford. The village is one of the three Pelhams, alon ...

route.

Research

From 1954, it conducted research on TCA, which it sold under the tradename ''Tecane'' Insecticides had radioactive tracers to test uptake by insects. In 1942, the herbicide DNOC -

dinitro-ortho-cresol Dinitro-''ortho''-cresol (DNOC) is an organic compound with the structural formula CH3C6H2(NO2)2OH. It is a yellow solid that is only slightly soluble in water. It is extremely toxic to humans and was previously used as a herbicide and insectici ...

was found, but it was harmful to humans. In 1956, the site found a way to reduce the harmful effects.

MCPA MCPA (2-methyl-4-chlorophenoxyacetic acid) is a widely used phenoxy herbicide introduced in 1945. It selectively controls broad-leaf weeds in pasture and Cereal, cereal crops. The mode of action of MCPA is as an auxin, which are growth hormones t ...

was found in 1945, but DNOC was better, as MCPA had resistance. In February 1958, a team under Dr Pfeiffer discovered TCB. The site researched pesticides, known as

, by Fisons Pest Control. The pesticide Rogor (

dimethoate Dimethoate is a widely used organophosphate insecticide and acaricide. It was patented and introduced in the 1950s by American Cyanamid. Like other organophosphates, dimethoate is an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor which disables cholinesterase, an ...

) was developed there, as well as Banlene and Carbyne. Fison's other site was Levington Research Station, in Suffolk, which was for fertiliser products. In April 1977, the site won a Queen's Award for Industry, for the ''Norton'' herbicide, made at a new £3.5m factory in

Widnes Widnes ( ) is an Industrial city, industrial town in the Borough of Halton, Cheshire, England, which at the 2021–2022 United Kingdom censuses, 2021 census had a population of 62,400. Historic counties of England, Historically in Lancashire, ...

, with 350 workers, which opened in October 1976; it was awarded on Friday 8 September 1977. Gateway to Chesterford Research Park - geograph

Animal research

Environmental toxicity was tested on rodents such as mice, rats, and hamsters, and on rabbits, ducks and chickens, by radioactive tracers. Various types of insects were kept. In the late 1950s, it conducted research around £250,000 a year.

Recent

Restroscreen Virology opened a clinical trials laboratory on the site in 2014.

Visits

The Duke of Kent visited the site on the morning of Tuesday 23 January 2013

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, later Philip Mountbatten; 10 June 19219 April 2021), was the husband of Queen Elizabeth II. As such, he was the consort of the British monarch from h ...

visited the Fisons Pest Control site on the afternoon of Friday 18 October 1963, initially travelling by aircraft, and later personally piloting a red-coloured helicopter; he had visited Shell in Kent in the morning, and the day before he had visited the

ICI #REDIRECT ICI {{redirect category shell, {{R from other capitalisation{{R from ambiguous page ...

plant protection research centre in

Berkshire Berkshire ( ; abbreviated ), officially the Royal County of Berkshire, is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Oxfordshire to the north, Buckinghamshire to the north-east, Greater London ...

. The Duke met

James Turner, 1st Baron Netherthorpe James Turner, 1st Baron Netherthorpe (6 January 1908 – 8 November 1980), was a British peer. Turner was the son of Albert Edward Mann Turner of Anston, Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ) is an area of Northern England which was History of Yorkshir ...

, the chairman of Fisons, and Sir John Carmichael, the deputy chairman.

Occupants

The research park is occupied by a

AstraZeneca AstraZeneca plc () (AZ) is a British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company with its headquarters at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus in Cambridge, UK. It has a portfolio of products for major diseases in areas includi ...

and

Illumina, Inc. Illumina, Inc. is an American biotechnology company, headquartered in San Diego, California. Incorporated on April 1, 1998, Illumina develops, manufactures, and markets integrated systems for the analysis of genetic variation and biological funct ...

, among others.

References

{{reflist

External links

UK Science Park Association

Chesterford Research Park
1952 establishments in England Agricultural organisations based in England Agricultural research institutes in the United Kingdom Chemical research institutes Crop protection organizations Environmental toxicology Horticultural organisations based in the United Kingdom Mycology organizations Pesticides in the United Kingdom Research institutes established in 1952 Science and technology in Essex Science parks in the United Kingdom Toxicology in the United Kingdom Buildings and structures in Uttlesford