As part of our ambitious BCLM: Forging Ahead development plans, we will be creating a new industrial area, telling the story of the Black Country from the 1940s to the 1960s. The industrial space will feature several well-known Black Country industries, including a translocation of part of the JH Lavender & Co. aluminium foundry from Hall Green, West Bromwich.
About Lavender’s
When John Herbert “Jack” Lavender founded his business in 1917, aluminium was an unusual material in Black Country foundries, which had traditionally worked with iron and steel. However, centuries of experience in metalworking and major engineering industry made the Black Country the ideal place for a foundry like Lavender’s. We will be translocating a small post-war building and original foundry equipment from Lavender’s site to the Museum, enabling us to demonstrate the sights, sounds and smells of a real 1960s foundry.
We will also be telling the social history of industrial work in the Black Country. Faced with a desperate labour shortage after the war, Black Country businesses recruited workers from all around the world to enable their foundries, forges and factories to operate to full capacity. Like many foundries in the region, Lavender’s employed foundrymen from the Caribbean, India, Pakistan and elsewhere, providing work and a home for a generation of Commonwealth citizens. Ninder Johal DL, Black Country Local Enterprise Partnership Board Member & CEO, tells us – “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 the Museum 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.”
Lavender’s is believed to be the oldest family-owned aluminium foundry in Britain. It was founded as Woden Aero Foundry on Stafford Street, Wednesbury in 1917 to supply components for the booming motorcycle and car industry in the Black Country and beyond – famous names including Sunbeam, AJS, Norton-Villiers, BSA and Triumph came to Lavender’s for their parts. It was estimated at one point that almost every single motorcycle produced in Britain featured a Lavender casting somewhere in its construction. Lavender himself died in 1957 but his legacy lives on – the foundry continues to produce aluminium castings for the motor industry to the present day.
Did you or anyone in your family work at Lavender’s in the 1940s-1960s? Do you remember the Lavender family in this period? Did you move to Britain to work in a Black Country industry in this period? Please get in touch with us by emailing [email protected] or call 0121 557 9643, select option 3 (collections).
