The Dowty Group Archive Project

Who are we?

We are a small and growing group of people interested in the history of The Dowty Group and keen to share this with others.

The Dowty Group was formed in 1931 by George Dowty, an innovative Worcestershire-born engineer and former Gloster Aircraft Company employee. At its height, this worldwide aerospace and hydraulics business employed around 10,000 people in Gloucestershire and thousands more elsewhere in the UK and overseas.

The business remained independent until it was taken over by the TI Group in 1992. It was subsequently fragmented into a number of legacy companies under US, UK, French and other ownerships. The only company still to bear the Dowty name is Dowty Propellers, part of GE. The largest remaining legacy company in the UK is Safran Landing Systems.

Dowty Propellers

Dowty Propellers has played an important role in the development of regional transport aircraft, the creation of highly capable military transport aircraft, and the evolution of fully-amphibious landing craft.

The business originated in 1937 as Rotol Airscrews Ltd. It was formed by Rolls-Royce and Bristol Aircraft to take over their propeller interests. During World War II, Rotol Airscrews supplied wooden and aluminium-bladed propellers for such legendary fighters as the Spitfire and Hurricane, along with many other aircraft. Rotol became part of the Dowty Group in 1960.

What is the Dowty Group Archive?

Sitting in a strong room at Gloucestershire Archives, preserved safely but otherwise inaccessible, is the Archives’ single largest uncatalogued collection – the Dowty Group Archive. This charts the story of the engineering firm from its origins in George Dowty’s 1930s Cheltenham workshop, through a worldwide expansion and up to the break-up of the Group in the 1990s. As such, Dowty represents a big part of Gloucestershire’s industrial heritage. And as a major local employer it touched many lives.

 

Dowty Group Archive: annual reports 1949 and 1952 (GA ref D8347)

Part of Gloucestershire Heritage Hub

The Dowty Group Archive was deposited at Gloucestershire Archives in the 1990s but so far there haven’t been the resources to catalogue it. The ‘For the Record’ project is changing this. It will create dedicated project workspace for community cataloguing activities in the refurbished Archives’ research room at Gloucestershire Heritage Hub. And it will allow the Archives to employ a Dowty Archive project archivist between 2017 and 2019. This post holder will sort and catalogue the contents of the Dowty collection and support Dowty Project volunteers to add extra detail to the final online catalogue and improve the way the collection is packaged and labelled. All of this will be happening in part of the new project workspace.

A message from John Herring, former employee of Safran Landing Systems and volunteer for the project

As the largest ‘legacy company’ from the Dowty Group in Gloucestershire, Safran Landing Systems recognises its moral duty to help preserve important industrial heritage. So it is supporting the Dowty Archive project to make the documented history of this heritage widely available in perpetuity. As a recently retired Safran employee, I am enjoying the opportunity to oversee this activity on a voluntary basis. The newly accessible records will help the thousands of local people that either work or have worked for Dowty and its legacy companies, along with their families, friends and other researchers, to understand the impact of the business – locally, nationally and internationally.

Dowty Archive project volunteers are currently gathering the personal memories of Dowty employees and ex-employees through recorded audio interviews. They are also working with Archives’ staff to permanently preserve these records as an addition to the existing Dowty Group archive. Safran is helping to mobilise willing interview participants through its pension links and retirement networks.

We expect the Dowty Archive to grow even bigger in the future as ex-employees and Safran itself are likely to share different types of work-related records over time.

  

 

 

You can view our Gloucestershire Archives blog here at https://gloucestershirearchives.wordpress.com/

Gloucestershire Local History Association

Who are we?

GLHA is a voluntary organisation made up of around 50 local history groups, societies and organisations across Gloucestershire. It was formed in 2012, following the winding up of the Gloucestershire Rural Community Council’s Local History Committee, which had operated since 1948.

What do we do?

GLHA aims to promote local history throughout the county and to encourage as many people as possible to become involved with the history of where they live.

We are very good at helping with a range of local history enquiries and we can put you in touch with our wide network of relevant local history groups.

The Association acts as a ‘portal’ helping to distribute information about local history activities throughout the county to its members.

Our website www.gloshistory.org.uk  is home to a lot of useful information such as:

• Details of the Association’s own events and activities;
• A list of the county’s local history organisations (wherever possible with links to their own websites);
• Details of member groups’ regular meetings;
• Local history speakers;
• Tours and visits offered by a range of organisations;
• Book reviews; and
• Downloadable PDFs of all 120 articles included in the Local History Committee’s annual publication, Gloucestershire History, between 1987 and 2011.

Part of Gloucestershire Heritage Hub

GLHA has had a close relationship with Gloucestershire Archives for a considerable time: our quarterly Forums are held at the Alvin Street building and are always attended by at least one member of the Archives’ staff.

We look forward to welcoming our member groups to Hub activities and helping to spread the word about the work other Hub partners are doing also.  We encourage our members to get stuck in at every available opportunity by undertaking projects at the Archives.  We often link collections of original material more closely with the collections at Alvin Street, promoting correct care, conservation and documentation in order to preserve our finds for the future.

GLHA is looking forward to maintaining and strengthening this relationship as a partner in the Heritage Hub. We hope to get more people involved in discovering and researching local history as part of a community.

How do I get involved?

The Association organises a number of events throughout the year.  These include:

• Four Member Forums, at which representatives of member groups meet to discuss matters of common interest, and to hear a presentation from a speaker on a specific local history-based topic. These have recently included presentations on the Gloucestershire Constabulary Archive, the ‘Know Your Place West of England’ project and the Gloucestershire Gardens & Landscape Trust;
• A Summer Local History Afternoon of talks and tours hosted and organised by one of its members; recent meetings have been held at St Briavels, Lechlade and Chipping Campden;
• An annual Local History Day on a specific theme, which features a number of talks and displays on the chosen theme prepared by some of GLHA’s member groups. Recent Local History Days have focused on ‘Gloucestershire’s special houses’ , ‘The effects of World War 1 on Gloucestershire communities’,  and ‘Immigration and Emigration, to from and within Gloucestershire’.  The next Local History Day, to be held on 18 March 2017, will have ‘Gardens for food, fun and flowers’ as its theme; and
• A summer evening visit to a place of historic interest within the county; recent visits have been made to the Stroud textile mills, Sharpness docks and Llanthony Secunda Priory.

Cheltenham Local History Society history day 2016.

 

 

You can view our Gloucestershire Archives blog here at https://gloucestershirearchives.wordpress.com/

Victoria County History (VCH)

The Heritage Hub will provide a new home for VCH researchers, volunteers and the regular meetings of the Gloucestershire VCH Academy. You can read more about our activities and latest publications here:

http://www.victoriacountyhistory.ac.uk/counties/gloucestershire/news-events.  

 

 

You can view our Gloucestershire Archives blog here at https://gloucestershirearchives.wordpress.com/

 

 

Gloucester Rugby Heritage

Gloucester Rugby has a long and proud history and every corner of its Kingsholm ground has a story to tell. These accounts are revealed in a new book “Kingsholm: Castle Grim, Home of Gloucester Rugby”, which will be on special offer (£15.95 instead of £19.95) at the Club shop from the end of November. The book is the first in a series of five books planned to chart the history of the Club.

“Kingsholm: Castle Grim, Home of Gloucester Rugby” is the work of Malc King and a dedicated team of Gloucester Rugby fans, all members of the Friends of Gloucestershire Archives. It is the latest in a series of outcomes from Gloucester Rugby Heritage, a network set up in 2007 by the Friends, the Archives and Gloucester Rugby, and now a charity. Earlier successes include a website gloucesterrugbyheritage.org.uk and heritage displays in the Club’s Kingsholm premises, both funded by Heritage Lottery.

You can discover more about the Friends of Gloucestershire Archives in the Friends of Gloucestershire Archives section of this newsletter.

 

 

 

You can view our Gloucestershire Archives blog here at https://gloucestershirearchives.wordpress.com/

News from Know Your Place – West of England

Know Your Place (KYP) is the digital heritage mapping project to help you to explore your neighbourhood online through historic maps, images and linked information. The Heritage Lottery funded project runs until June 2017 and will map the historic counties of Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Somerset.

Our partners

The project is led by South Gloucestershire Council in partnership with Gloucestershire County Council and colleagues within Gloucester City Council, with support and generous match-funding from the Friends of Gloucestershire Archives and the Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, among others.

Map conservation and digitisation

Just over 1500 maps have been conserved and scanned from archives around the region, including 679 held at Gloucestershire Archives for the counties of Gloucestershire and South Gloucestershire.

Volunteer work

We have c.50 active volunteers working from home across the region who are preparing digitised map files. Volunteers have donated over 3182 hours – or 455 days – of work time to the project so far.

 

Thumbs up! Volunteers and staff at Gloucestershire Archives at training to add archival records onto Know Your Place, June 2016.

Already mapped

South Gloucestershire is already mapped on Know Your Place, covering an area of 537 square kilometres. Gloucestershire KYP and other county areas are in development and the project will map an estimated 18,190 square kilometres area in total!

This has made historic maps from Gloucestershire Archives and statutory Historic Environment Record data publicly accessible, and a variety of historic data records are now being mapped onto KYP by a range of individuals, local history groups, and volunteers at Gloucestershire Archives.

Exhibition in development

We are working with 24 different museum and heritage partners across the region to develop content for the exhibition and tour it to 12 venues from November 2016 to April 2017. Venues include Museum in the Park, Stroud; and Dean Heritage Centre in the Forest of Dean; and exhibition content for the Gloucestershire region has been offered by these as well as from Gloucestershire Archives, Corinium Museum, the Jet Age Museum and Thornbury & District Museum.

Know Your Place needs YOU!

Can you tell others about KYP? The more people that use it, the richer a resource it will become.

Can you help us map the heritage of your area? Share your research on KYP – It is quick and easy to add a record.

Further information about the project, tips on exploring KYP and a link to the map can be found on our project website: www.kypwest.org.uk.

News

Receive the latest project news and developments at www.kypwest.org.uk/newsletter/; follow us @KYPWestEngland on Twitter and Facebook; or email enquiries to: kypwestofengland@southglos.gov.uk

 

 

You can view our Gloucestershire Archives blog here at https://gloucestershirearchives.wordpress.com/