In March 1958 Unilever had approached Gloucester Corporation for a site of 20-30 acres, to employ around 400-500 people.

[4] Previously Unilever made ice cream in Edinburgh, Godley, Greater Manchester,[5] and London, but could not keep up.

A cold store next door, with the area of a football pitch, would hold 750,000 gallons of ice cream, at the time that would be worth £1m.

[8] The Edinburgh plant at Craigmillar would close in October 1962, but the cold store would remain, to supply the seven depots in Scotland.

[10] The site was built to supply 25 million people in the west and north of England, and Wales.

But despite much reservations by Unilever management on the increased cost of production, Magnum became the UK's best seller in one year, and has been for thirty years; without that intervention and innovation from Mars UK, the Unilever Magnum product would not have needed to have been developed.

[20] In the 1960s there was a two-storey office and production buildings, and a cone and wafer factory called Embisco.

It is around a mile west of junction 11a of the M5, and situated to the east of the main Cross Country Route railway.