Unlike all other industries in Westbury, the cement works was on the east side. This was because Blue Circle was granted permission to extract chalk in a quarry on the top of the escarpment and to dig out clay from the bottom.   These are the constituents of cement.   So it seemed reasonable, at the time, to site the works beside the raw materials to be extracted.   So an ugly factory was in the midst of a beautiful area.   It was justified at the time by the local employment provided.

But, making of cement here has now ceased.   Hardly any people are employed on the east of Westbury, compared with some three thousand jobs on the west.

Lafarge laid off the Westbury cement makers and said: 'the wet cement-making process used at Westbury is more energy-intensive than the process used at our other UK plants', which implies that cement will not again be made at Westbury.

It had been assumed that the ugly cement works would go after its use ran out.

Yet as part of the Wiltshire (County) Council eastern Westbury bypass scheme, a new access road was still to be built to the now run-down cement works site.

This would have made the site a permanent feature.   The A350 bypass would have been near to the cement works site.   W(C)C's eastern highway over the adjacent railway was to be 8.5m high.   Lorries would have been seen for miles.

Eastern bypass supporters, who derided the environmentalists for not including the cement works in the campaign against spoiling the White Horse Escarpment and the Wellhead Valley, were left effectively supporting the perpetuation of the cement works site as an industrial estate as part of a Wiltshire Council concept.

All along, some saw a new road as a strategy to fully develop the eastern side.

Whilst the existing industrial area and railway station on the west are neglected.