Abbots Langley, The Ovaltine Dairies c.1960

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In 1865, George Wander, a Swiss chemist, devised a new malted barley nutritional drink called Ovaltine. The company bought Parsonage Farm at Abbots Langley and Numbers Farm at Kings Langley in the 1900s, and the Ovaltine model farm was established at Langley in 1929. It was modelled on the farm created by Louis XIV for Marie Antoinette. By the 1950s, Ovaltine employed 1,400 staff at Langley - the lives of few local people were not influenced by the company or its suppliers. The poultry farm kept one of the largest flocks of laying poultry - over 50,000 White Leghorns - whilst the dairy farm at Bedmond Road boasted a herd of prize-winning pedigree Jersey cattle. By the late 1960s, demand for the product had dropped and parts of the farm had fallen into disrepair; in 1975, the 185ft Ovaltine chimney, which had been built using a quarter of million bricks for £7000, was demolished at a cost of £8000.