Rolls-Royce has marked a major milestone in the development of its new Goodwood extension. In a formal ceremony, members of the company’s Board of Directors signed the final steel beam to be installed in the building’s internal structure, before it was lifted into place at the structure’s highest point.
The signing ceremony comes just four months after chief executive Chris Brownridge signed the first of 437 steel columns, each standing up to 13m high, marking the beginning of the building’s structure. The new 40,000m
2 building will support the marque’s expanding Bespoke and Coachbuild capabilities and house a new Exterior Surface Centre.
With the full steel framework now in place, attention now turns to the next phase of the project, which includes cladding the structure and integrating it with the existing facility via a 30m, 20-tonne steel bridge, delivered and installed as a single assembly earlier this year.
The ceremonial signing evokes an earlier Rolls-Royce tradition, in which supervisors would initial completed body panels or mechanical components with a chinagraph pencil before passing them to the next stage in assembly. This practice itself echoed Sir Henry Royce’s own insistence on personally inspecting and approving every new component – often requiring near-daily, 400-mile round trips between the company’s original factory in Derby and Sir Henry’s home, ‘Elmstead’, in West Wittering.
Just a few miles from the marque’s present-day home at Goodwood, Elmstead served as both a retreat and a workspace for Royce, who would test, refine and sign off designs there – a legacy that continues on the very same Sussex roads still used today by the marque’s test and development team.
Costing over £300 million, the landmark new extension represents the largest single investment in the Home of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars since it launched in 2003. Once completed, it will further strengthen the company’s economic contribution to the UK, which currently exceeds £500 million annually.