GLAXOSMITHKLINE was originally founded in 1889 by two entrepreneurs, Silas Burroughs and Henry Wellcome.

The business partners refurbished a disused paper mill and named it Burroughs Wellcome and Co.

The factory equipped with the latest technology, quickly became famous for manufacturing pharmaceutical products.

In the early days the majority of products were derived from plants.

Large parts of the site were covered by a ‘materia medica’ farm which grew crops of deadly nightshade, foxglove, henbane, thornapple and aconite.

Primary production methods on the site were geared to extracting ingredients from the plants.

With advances made in organic chemistry in the 1930s, synthetic compounds began to be increasingly used at the site.

Mr Wellcome picked Tabloid as a brand name for the company’s compressed medicines and in 1884 registered it as a trademark.

For many years it was stamped on every tablet manufactured at Dartford.

A notable landmark in the company’s history was the manufacture of Insulin on a large scale at Dartford in 1923.

This was the first production of Insulin in Britain.

In 1924 the company became the Wellcome Foundation Ltd.

In 1995 Wellcome Plc merged with Glaxo Plc to become Glaxo Wellcome.

And in 2000 Glaxo Wellcome and Smith Kline merged to form GlaxoSmithKline.