The end of 180 years of history was marked yesterday as staff of Lucy's factory in Jericho, Oxford, gathered for a farewell party.

Ron Warburton and Max Laitt look at old pictures of Lucy's

The canalside works was festooned with balloons and a band played as current and former employees reminisced, helped by a display of photographs.

The name Lucy was once on many of Oxford's manhole cover and lampposts, and the factory covered a vast swathe of land both sides of the canal.

The iron foundry on the Port Meadow side closed some years ago and was replaced by modern housing.

Lucy's continued to make electrical switchgear on the other side of the canal, but much of the work was outsourced to Dubai and the rest has moved to a new manufacturing facility at Thame, with the old factory demolished to make way for housing.

At its height after the Second World War, the Jericho works employed 800 people, but fewer than 200 will move to Thame.

Managing director Richard Dick said: "It's sad, but it is not suitable for modern manufacturing."

Max Laitt, 74, one of the younger pensioners at the party, posed for photographs beside a Victorian dist- ribution pillar which he restored when he worked at the factory.

He said: "I rebuilt it as a bit of history. They would have been on all the corners, distributing power to different streets in Oxford."

Also at the party was 93-year-old Stan Tombs, who recalled walking to work from the other side of Oxford during the General Strike in 1926.

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