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Rosemary Collins discovers how Leyland Historical Society is using oral history to preserve the town’s industrial heritage
Preserving Leyland’s industrial heritage
When most people around the world hear the word ‘Leyland’, they think of the famous vehicle manufacturer Leyland Motors. “All I get is emails from Australia or Malta or wherever asking ‘Have you got such-and-such a part?’,” sighs Peter Houghton, chair of Leyland Historical Society. “They don’t realise that there’s a place called Leyland as well.”
In fact, Leyland Motors was named after the Lancashire town where it was established. Leyland and the neighbouring parish of Farington have a vibrant industrial heritage, as the home of companies including Leyland and Birmingham Rubber, BTR Industries, Baxters, Leyland Paints, four cotton mills and bleach mills.
In 2008, the society published The Industrial Heritage of Leyland and Farington, a guide to the region’s factories. To celebrate the society’s 50th anniversary in 2018, Peter came up with the idea of publishing an expanded second edition of the book, which would include more information that the society had discovered in the past 10 years as well as the experiences of factory employees.
In partnership with the University of Central Lancashire and with a £29,400 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, society volunteers found more and more people who had memories to share. Over the summer of 2018, they opened a pop-up heritage centre in an empty shop in the town centre, to spread awareness of the society and Leyland’s history, and to attract more interviewees. More than 1,600 people visited the shop in just two months.
The society was also able to connect with former Leyland factory workers all around the world, via a Facebook group called Leyland Memories.
In total, the society interviewed 260 people, who offered many intriguing memories of working customs. For example, Leyland Motors had an unusual tradition when staff members got married: “The money that their colleagues donated was kept in a ceramic chamber pot, which was placed on top of the rafters in one of the shops. The staff member had to climb a ladder – and their colleagues usually put grease on it – and get the chamber pot down.”
Peter was also able to build poignant relationships with his interviewees: “Going back 10 years or so, I used to get these emails from a nice gentleman called Bill Hawksworth. He was in his late 70s then, so when we were researching the new edition of the book, I thought, ‘I don’t suppose that he’s still alive to interview.’ But at Christmas 2018 I found out that he was still going via Facebook, although he was now living in South Yorkshire. So in January I went to Barnsley and interviewed him for three hours. He was 94, but could remember everything from when the tank factory was built at Leyland Motors in 1939. Sadly he died in July, but his children attended a talk about the tank factory that I gave in September.” The new edition of the book is available now, and the society is finishing the mammoth task of transcribing all of the recordings so far. “Once this is done,” Peter says, “it’ll all get indexed in one central database. We aim to bring out books of whatever the interviewees have been talking about, provide CDs of the interviews to schools and colleges, give talks at senior citizens’ homes – things like that.”
‘The society connected with former Leyland factory workers all around the world’