Thursday 12 July 2007

Headland House

NUAW Headland House,

Grays Inn Road, London


The new office building of the National Union of Agricultural Workers (NUAW) was opened on August 26, 1966 by George Woodcock, General Secretary of the T.U.C.

Mrs. Mollie Gooch unveiled a special plaque in the Edwin Gooch Memorial Library in memory of her late husband Edwin Gooch, C.B.E., J.P., M.P., President of the Union for over 30 years. This Library has been furnished by subscriptions from the membership and friends through-out the country.

Present was Edwin Gooch's son, Michael, the architect who designed the new Headland House and who has had oversight over its erection, the Mayor of Camden, Councillor O'Connor, and representatives from each of the Union's county committees, the National Farmers' Union, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Labour Party and the T.U.C.

The new building consists of basement, ground and five floors on the same Gray's Inn Road site as the former building which had been occupied as Headland House since 1922.

The first office of the Union was a bedroom of a small cottage at Gresham, Norfolk, occupied by the Union's founder, George Edwards, and from where he cycled and walked about the county in the hard task of enlisting members and establishing branches.

In 1910 the Union moved to Wensum House, near Fakenham, Norfolk, and from thence to London in 1918, occupying then only a small part of the site on which the fine new building now stands.