Note that Leyland UDC before 1974 did not include Farington as this was in Preston Rural District Council. So if you add in the workforces of Farington Mill, Leyland Motor’s Spurrier & Farington Works and BTR Farington numbers employed doubles to between 30,000 and 40,000 people.

So the Society appealed to the people of Leyland and their families and friends to help us establish a database of Leyland and Farington workers, be it Leyland Motors, Leyland & Birmingham Rubber, BTR, Baxters, Leyland Paints, the four cotton mills, gold thread works, bleach works, or any other factories, workshops or other manufacturing premises in Leyland and Farington.

When we brought out the first edition of the Industrial Heritage book back in 2010, it included an advert for an Oral History Project together with a leaflet to be completed. The leaflet response at the time was 45, a good start but due to circumstances beyond our control, the project was put on hold for a few years.

The Society assisted the Commercial Vehicle Museum and the University of Central Lancashire in 2014 with a joint project on Leyland Paints.

The following year the Society and the University joined forces again to research the story of the Leyland & Birmingham Rubber Company which resulted in a special talk at the Civic Centre in April 2016. Again we took details of the attendees who had worked at the factory and got another 45 people for the oral history project.

With the launch of the second edition of the Industrial Heritage book at a meeting in February 2018 which got another 27 names to the list and subsequent radio, TV and website promotion managed to attract another 12 names by post, 38 via the website and 16 from a meeting of Leyland Medical ex-employees.

When we had a temporary Heritage Centre opened for seven weeks in May and June 2018 we managed to attract over 1600 visitors and a further 60 were added to the list for the Oral History project.

From November 2018 to June 2019 a small group of members then interviewed the initial 230 from the list originally obtained, though some had sadly died in the period though as the interviews took place, other interviewees were suggested and the number continued to grow.

Whilst concentrating on the story of the factories of Leyland and Farington we have had many and varied stories on the way.

Update – January 2021 - So what a difference a year can make!!!

When I did the update last year around about this time we had interviewed 230 people which was Phase One and we were then undertaking Phase Two the mammoth task of transcribing all the interviews which turned out to be a bigger task than anticipated as the interviews rather than being the 10 – 20 minute events became the hour – 3 hour in depth chats, with some even suggesting a return bout at a later date, the average interview time being 50 minutes..

As the virus hit, our transcribers were reduced to just Mary Longton and myself so we have soldered on and I can reveal that we have now completed transcribing the 251 interviews which is due to Mary’s work on behalf of the Society and she won Historian of the Year for her great service to the Society and future generations of researchers.

Now if you have been reading closely you will have noticed it said 251 interviews not 230 as between lockdowns I managed to interview a further twenty people socially distanced outside or via FaceTime, Teams or Zoom.

You may ask what is Phase Three. Well to understand when we have and to enable future generations to use the interviews, they need to be indexed so we are currently on with this at present.

The statistics for our project have changed somewhat in the last year.

Interviewed

So far 251 have been interviewed with the remaining 35 to be continued...

Though I should point out there are a further 275 on Facebook who we haven’t approached yet.

This would make a grand total of 561.

If there is one reason why it is important to do this now, I forgot the number of people who stated whilst being interviewed, it’s a pity you didn’t interview such a person before they passed away.

A sad statistic is that in the last two years since we started the interviews, we have lost at least eight of the interviewees including William Hawksworth one of the original inspirations for the Oral History Project, Fred Jolly, Barry Holcroft and Brian Tolan but their stories will live on.

So what have we got?

212 hours of recording that’s nearly 9 days of listening pleasure.

Which when fully transcribed is equal to 3,139 pages or over 1.6 million words.

Whist interviewing the Society has also been given numerous items, some to record and return, others to exhibit at future displays.

These include a chamber pot, ties, books, magazines, badges, videos & DVDs, pay slips, employee manuals and over 3400 photographs of the factories and the workforces.

We are still looking for more to interview, we are now able to interview via Zoom, Facetime and Skype so distance and social distancing are not a problem with calls to South Africa, Australia and the United States as well as the UK being conducted in the last year.

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