IT was once said that if you walked down any street or lane in Barnard Castle that you would bump into someone who worked at the Glaxo pharmaceutical site in the town, or at least someone who knew somebody else who worked there.

That, sadly, is no longer the case, as cutbacks in the workforce have taken their toll on the town's largest employer.

It will now employ only a few more than 1,000, after the now merged drugs giant GlaxoSmithKline announced further cuts in its UK workforce yesterday.

It has also been said that if Glaxo ever shuts down, then the town of Barnard Castle would die, with no other major employers to take up the slack.

Looking on the black side, as people will no doubt do in the present circumstances, it appears the question is not so much, if the plant closes, but when.

Glaxo's success in Barnard Castle was built on the growth of drugs like penicillin and, in later years, the top-selling ulcer drug Zantac and Imigram for migraine sufferers. Its biggest seller now is the cold sore cream Zovirax.

In fact, the Dales plant has an illustrious and heroic history. During the D-Day landings during the Second World War, more than 80 per cent of the penicillin used on injured soldiers came from the County Durham factory.

The countryside of the Durham dales may seem a strange, out-of-the-way sort of place to build a penicillin factory but, in fact, it was the perfect location. The company was attracted there by the clean country air, available land and workforce, and the factory grew to become the life blood of the town.

That was especially the case after the war, when soldiers returning from active service depended on it for their livelihoods. One story reported in the town's newspaper, the Teesdale Mercury in May 1946, illustrates one especially significant example.

BarnEY lad and boot and shoe repairer, Jimmy Howson, was wounded in the elbow while on active duty, reported the Mercury. He began to go downhill until doctors injected him with a yellow liquid which saved his life.

"What was that drug," was Jimmy's first question when he began to get better. "Oh, that's pencillin," was the reply.

Jimmy knew the effect of the wound would mean he would not be able to work as a cobbler again. Worried for his livelihood and that of his wife and eight-year-old child, Jimmy applied for and got a job at the new factory being built in the town.

He was one of the first 300 people to take up employment with Glaxo - making the wonder drug, pencillin.

In fact, the ample supply of labour was the one reason which clinched the choice of Barnard Castle for the new factory. There was also an ideal site for the plant, a former sawmill at the top of the town. Work began on the site in the autumn of 1944. The factory was designed by architects, Wallis, Gilbert and Company, and built by Taylor Woodrow.

It cost £500,000, equivalent to more than £10m in today's terms. It covered almost 100,000 sq ft, and took two million bricks and 700 tons of steelwork.

At the time, it was estimated that the factory would, at most, employ between 200 and 300 people. But the workforce grew and grew and it is still the biggest Glaxo plant in the UK and among the top six in the world.

During its first few years, the relationship between the town and the factory was an unsettled one. It was feared by the townsfolk, many of whom had retired there because of its rural charm, that the new factory would open the floodgates to more industries. They were worried that it would not fit in with the general look of properties and would drive down their value. However, measures such as painting the sides and roofs of the factory green to harmonise with the surrounding countryside were implemented to take the heat out of the situation.

The other problem with the factory was that it pushed up wages in the area, meaning that many of the middle-class families in Barnard Castle lost their servants to better-paid jobs at the plant.

But the working classes loved the increased spending power it gave them. It was also welcomed, for the same reasons, by local shopkeepers. The conditions at Glaxo were also a stark contrast to those in the other, more traditional jobs in the dale, in the fields, quarries and mines. But, as well as bringing a better life to ordinary working people in the dale, the Barnard Castle factory was responsible for much of the innovative research which has transformed the health of mankind.

It not only pioneered the production of penicillin, but also new antibiotics, like streptomycin, now used in virtually every hospital in the world.

The factory gradually became the envy of Glaxo's other operations, producing large orders for export. At its peak, it was sending out ten million vials of penicillin a week to countries like Morocco and Tunisia.

To compete in the increasingly competitive worldwide pharmaceuticals industry, Glaxo looked round for an international partner and found SmithKline Beecham. While that merger, completed a year ago, helped to create one of the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies and ensure a bright future for both partners, the resulting worldwide review of operations has been blamed for the latest job losses at Barnard Castle.

But as Dave Wardle, 50, a shop steward who has worked at Glaxo for 32 years, says: "Even with the latest job cuts, the Barnard Castle site will still employ around 1,100 staff and will be among the top five or six Glaxo sites in the world.

"There will probably be enough people taking voluntary redundancy at the end of the day to ensure that all those who want to stay can do so. There are plenty of people who have already expressed an interest in taking early retirement."

So, although the cuts at Glaxo may give Barney a nasty cold, it is to be hoped that the condition will not be fatal.