Bestobell Man was commissioned in 1936 from stone mason Kitey Harris and depicts a fire fighter wearing a F53 heavyweight suit. The statue is carved out of Portland Stone that came from the Worth Matravers quarry in Dorset.
Most of the statue was carved off site but was then transported to outside the Bells Asbestos factory on the Farnham Road. Here the carving of the legs and feet were completed.
In 1988 the statue was returned to its location on Farnham Road following an outcry where Bells Asbestos had planned to move the statue to their new works in Dorset. The statue sat outside the Slough Chamber of commerce, near the Adelphi when the Farnham Road site was redeveloped but was soon removed and held in storage and was moved to Slough Museum in 2022.
Bell's Asbestos and Engineering Limited was founded in the late 1870s by John Bell, who pioneered the manufacture of engine packings and jointings using spun Canadian asbestos. Its head office moved from Southwark, London, to Slough in 1929 where the company signed a 21 year lease on four factory bays at the Slough Trading Estate. Around the same time the company traded under the name Bestobell.
In the early 1930s the company formed a division known as Bell’s Heat Appliances where they launched the Swedish designed AGA cooker into the UK market.
By the 1970s it was the oldest surviving firm of its kind, producing a wide range of industrial products using asbestos and many other materials, and with numerous branches at home and overseas.
It was a most successful company for many years producing fire protective equipment for fire fighters, welders and steel workers, They produced insulation panels that gave sound and heat protection for use in aircraft construction and coach builders. A fire tunnel was built at the Slough works to test the suits.
In wartime, the company continued to provide the fireproof suits in support of the war effort. In 1941 the Duchess of Kent visited the Bestobell works in recognition to the support that the company had been providing. The works had a number of underground shelters all named after London areas such as Leicester Square and Piccadilly. An air-raid watch tower had been fitted to the factory roof. If anything was spotted then a call was made to the company secretary who sounded the alarm klaxon. The company also had its own fire brigade at this time that included the first all-girl trailer pump crew.
Bells supplied the air ministry with firefighting clothing along with Asbestos flying suits, helmets, gloves, and boots.
In 1946 the company moved its head office to Stoke House in Stoke Green
In 1951 the company Ronald Trist joined the Bells family of companies. Trist had been formed in 1904 to construct boiler controls. In 1916, they had developed the HILO boiler water level alarm.
In 1956 the Bells aircraft division was formed as a spin off in activities within BA&E. By 1964 the company had started to produce components for the Concorde aircraft that included flexible duct connectors. In all, 3000 individual components were built into Concorde.
The company also owned another Slough Estate based company called Sunway Blinds ltd that distributed and installed Venetian Vogue blinds.New Paragraph