Memories of industry needed for Black Country Living Museum
The Black Country Living Museum will be creating a new industrial area for visitors – telling the story of the area from the 1940s to the 1960s.
As part of its ambitious BCLM: Forging Ahead development plans, the Dudley museum will feature several well-known Black Country industries, including a translocation of part of the J H Lavender & Co aluminium foundry from Hall Green, West Bromwich.
And bosses are looking for locals who may have worked at the firm, or who remember the family.
When John Herbert Lavender founded his business in 1917, aluminium was an unusual material in Black Country foundries, which had traditionally worked with iron and steel.
However, its centuries of experience in metalworking and major engineering industry made the Black Country the ideal place for a foundry like J H Lavender’s.
The museum will be moving a small post-war building and original foundry equipment from Lavender’s site to the museum, enabling them to demonstrate the sights, sounds and smells of a real 1960s foundry.
Ninder Johal, Black Country Local Enterprise Partnership Board Member, said: “As a second generation British Asian child, I recall my father telling me stories of his time working in the foundries in Smethwick.
“He spent his working life in smoky and hot furnaces and for my children and grandchildren visiting BCLM and seeing such industries depicted will provide a legacy enabling them to understand who they are and the role their grandfather and great grandfather played in the industrial landscape of the UK.”
J H Lavender is believed to be the oldest family-owned aluminium high pressure and gravity foundry in Britain.
It was founded by John Herbert ‘Jack’ Lavender as Woden Aero Foundry, in Stafford Street, Wednesbury, in 1917 to supply components for the booming motorcycle and car industry in the Black Country and beyond. Like scores of other Black Country firms, they produced munitions during the Second World War, and continued to expand after the war.
John Herbert Lavender died in 1957 but his legacy is still very much alive as the foundry continues to produce aluminium castings for the motor industry to this day.
The museum is seeking memories of Lavender’s aluminium foundry in the 1940s to 1960s, to help its recreation.
Anyone who whose family worked at Lavender’s in the 1940s-1960s, remembered the Lavender family that period, or moved to Britain to work in a Black Country industry during the period is asked to email collections@bclm.com or call the museum on 0121 5579643.
