Leicester storey of Walker's Oxford Street factory in Leicester. In the early days the potatoes were sliced by hand and cooked in an ordinary fish and chip fryer. In 1971 the Walker's crisps business was sold to Standard Brands, an American firm, who sold on the company to Frito-Lay. Walker's crisps makes 10 million bags of crisps per day at two factories in Beaumont Leys, and is the UK's largest grocery brand. The Beaumont Leys manufacturing plant is world's largest crisp factory. Meanwhile, the sausage and pie business was bought out by Samworth Brothers in 1986. Production outgrew the Cobden Street
Swithland Wood and The Brand private, and are not part of the Swithland Wood public woodland, although they are part of the designated SSSI. Swithland Slate has been a traditional local roofing material since Roman times. Swithland gives its name to a line of 'slate' outcrops found along the east side of Charnwood, from Hallgates and Little John, through Swithland Wood and The Brand, up to Woodhouse Eaves. All these locations have old slate quarry pits, as does a corresponding outcrop on the other side of the Charnwood anticline at Groby. Swithland Wood had been quarried for many centuries for small-scale slate production. Many of