This page is an introduction to the more comprehensive Research Paper which is available on this website HERE The history of the Flavel family in manufacturing has been traced back over three hundred years. After that date the firm was steered by members of the family in Leamington Spa for nigh on 140 years. William … Read more
Automotive Products was the major employer in Leamington for around 40 years in the 20th century. It was generally referred to locally as AP or Lockheed although the company used many other brand names. This is an introduction to a longer history of the company which can be seen HERE Origins. The Automotive Products company … Read more
Mrs Fowler, legendary owner of Leamington’s pre-war Blue Café, was born in Derbyshire and grew up in Polesworth, where her father was Vicar of the Parish Church, and Rural Dean. In 1906, at the age of 25, she married George Herbert Fowler, an Oxford-educated mining engineer who was managing director of Arley Colliery in nearby … Read more
Living modestly in Sydenham is one of the most influential people in the county, a man who has been making an impact on the local community and on local politics for well over forty years. That man is Mota Singh. Mota was born on 23rd February 1939 in the village of 17P.S. District Ganganager Rajasthan … Read more
Mrs Margaret Mary Maitland Fowler, sometime owner of Leamington’s famous Blue Café in Bath Street, became something of a Midlands legend in her own lifetime. She was appointed OBE for her services to charity, to disabled ex-servicemen and the Red Cross. Mrs Fowler worked for the Red Cross and fund-raised for charity for most of … Read more
Among a host of anniversaries celebrated in 2016, the thought occurred to me that the date also coincides with eighty years of the first public transmissions of television pictures from Alexandra Palace in London in the Autumn of 1936. Most people know that the first person to demonstrate a working television was Scotsman John … Read more
Miss Cutter’s paternal ancestors came from Ashby de la Zouch in Leicestershire. Her father Thomas was a journeyman tailor, who went on to become a master tailor. He married Elizabeth Robbins from Staffordshire in 1855, and after the birth of their first daughter Sarah Elizabeth at Ashby, they came to live and work in Warwickshire, … Read more
The best known name for stonemasonry in this area is Pullin. The business, situated in High Street next to the railway bridge, still bears the Pullin name even though there is no longer a family connection. George Pullin started the business in 1875 in King’s Heath near Birmingham and his son, Charles inherited it. Charles … Read more
Lockheed staff magazine ‘Precision’ dated March 1951 reported: The year is 1951 the year of Britain’s great Festival, with British craftsmanship on show to the world in two great sections – the South Bank site on the River Thames at Waterloo Bridge and the 37 acres of Pleasure Gardens at Battersea. An outstanding feature of … Read more
Freedom of the Borough for Viscount Montgomery, 1947 During the hundred years of its existence, the Borough of Royal Leamington Spa awarded the Honorary Freedom of the Borough to sixteen individuals and three military establishments. Of those individuals, all were men who had had a close relationship with the town but there was one notable … Read more
The streamline cycle, shown here in an early press photograph, used a new energy-storing device calculated to revolutionise cycling by storing energy when travelling downhill and releasing it on climbing. It was designed by Ben Bowden, a well-known Leamington industrial designer and consulting engineer, to be displayed at the Britain Can Make It exhibition in … Read more
The Duggins family were originally blacksmiths in Berkswell, and Barston, but Joseph Duggins and his wife Ann came to settle in Cubbington in about 1856. Edward, their third child and second son, was born there in 1857. Copies of the Leamington Courier of the time reveal that the blacksmith’s extended family became prolific prize winners … Read more
Contact the Secretary, Margaret Rushton: secretary@leamingtonhistory.co.uk
September 9, 2026
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