Category: Forging Ahead

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).

I’m delighted to let you know that our Round 2 application to the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF) for £9.4m towards BCLM: Forging Ahead has been successful.

This follows a meeting of the NLHF’s National Committee on Tuesday afternoon and confirmation to us from the regional office yesterday.  Anecdotally, they said our application was incredibly strong, particularly our leveraging of LEP funding and our extensive community consultation.

This is excellent news and a testament to all of our hard work over the past 3 years, of which I am immensely proud.

The decision is not public knowledge at this time and due to the Restricted Period ahead of local elections on 2 May, we are under strict instructions from NLHF that we cannot make any announcements about the outcome of their decision until sometime after 3 May.

Your patience in keeping this information to yourselves for the time being is therefore hugely appreciated.

Well done all.

Andrew

Yesterday (Monday 4 February) we hosted The National Lottery Heritage Fund.  The visit forms an important part of their assessment of our £9.4m funding application towards BCLM: Forging Ahead, and if successful, will mean we can start work on the ground in the early summer.

It was terribly important that our guests from the NLHF met as many people as possible, and I was so delighted that this included staff, volunteers, members of our Community Panels, our friends from Black Country Touring, Museum Trustees, local MPs and representatives from stakeholders, including Ninder Johal from the Local Enterprise Partnership, Peter Knott from Arts Council England, and Sarah Norman Chief Executive from Dudley Council, as well as the Midland Metro Alliance. We even had a video message from West Midlands Mayor, Andy Street.

From my perspective, the day was a great success and ended with colleagues in the Bottle & Glass and a great sense of pride in what everyone had done, and is doing, to make the Museum a success.

We now have a seven week wait until a decision is made, although we will continue to take forward preparations, on the assumption that the decision is in our favour.

I especially want to thank everyone who was at the Museum today and had a role in organising, performing, directing, transporting, cleaning, catering, tech-ing, talking with and answering questions from the NLHF.  You were all terrific and can be very proud of the part you played.

Thank you.

Andrew