Contractor accommodation for Atherstone

Atherstone's position near the middle of England has drawn big operators since the 1960s. 3M arrived in 1964, TNT in 1987 and Aldi in the 1990s, setting up head offices or national distribution centres in the town. The British Home Stores warehouse closed in August 2016 after 40 years and is now a Royal Mail regional sorting office.

Sites of that size need fit-out, racking, maintenance and shutdown crews. The A5, the old Watling Street, was taken out of the town centre by a dual-carriageway bypass in 1963 and now carries the freight past the town, close to the M42.

The Coventry Canal runs through Atherstone with a flight of eleven locks and the West Coast Main Line stops at the town's station, built in 1847, so canal and rail crews work here too.

Sullivan Heights is about 14 miles by road from Atherstone, Stoke Lodge and Stoke House about 15 miles and Humber Hub about 15 miles. Every crew gets a whole house: a door of its own, parking for the vans, a washing machine for the workwear and an invoice addressed to the contractor.

Eighteen workers can share Stoke Lodge and Stoke House, two neighbouring new-build homes billed together.

Atherstone has long been a working town. By the late Tudor period its metalworkers, locksmiths and nailers fired their furnaces with local coal while tanners and shoemakers worked the leather from local herds.