Last car on Albert Looms scrapyard crushed

The last car has been removed from a Derby scrapyard with a 104-year history and crushed.

After more than a century of trading, Albert Looms announced it was closing in May to an outpouring of support from customers.

The seven-acre Spondon site began to wind down, with the final members of the public allowed on site at the start of July.

With the clear-up of the Megaloughton Lane site taking place since then, with Albert Looms' remaining stock being sold off “as a job lot”, the last car - a cream-coloured Austin - was lifted off the yard and flattened on Tuesday.

Steve Kirk, operations manager at Albert Looms, said: “It’s strange, hard to put into words how it feels. The word surreal might fit, seeing the yard just as seven acres of land now.

“Pretty much everything is cleared, but there’s still lots to do. Being busy stops me thinking about it too much.

“We’re still here though, everyone gets made redundant in August, and all the staff that wanted to find jobs have walked into a job, but we’re still doing the last bits.

“We know it had got to happen, and it’s happened in the right way, to the right timings, which has been good.”

Albert Looms began business in 1920, originally trading in demolition work and dismantling rolling stock from the railways - with a direct rail link to the yard from Chaddesden Sidings.

The move into car dismantling and parts took place in the early 1970s.

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