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/