Lepton Fireworks Industry

In the early nineteenth century Lepton was a small village at the edge of the parish of Kirkheaton. It consisted of the usual mixture of Weavers, Coal-Miners, Quarrymen and Agricultural Labourers. The area had several stone quarries, some of which had been worked out and it these disused quarry holes that made the ideal place to test and manufactures fireworks. Or to give them the local dialect name, “Spurt-Hole” or “Spuroil” and it was in these holes where the Yorkshire Firework Industry originated.
These small Yorkshire cottage firework industries weren’t this county’s first to manufacture fireworks that distinction goes to Charles Brock. He started manufacturing fireworks in the early eighteenth century in Islington, London. The company had factories in parts of Britain but they don’t appear to have had any roll in the Yorkshire industry. (The two industries finally became one when Brock’s company was bought out by Standard.)

Allen Jessop started the first local firework business at Lepton in 1847; he had gained his knowledge of explosives when he worked has a coal miner. Although in the 1851 census he was registered has a hand loom weaver.
He made his firework to argument his meagre income in what spare time he could get. A few nights before Bonfire night he and his wife would fill the shopping basket with his fireworks and go round selling them door to door.
The government introduced the Explosives Act in 1873 and they started to regulate the firework manufactures and this act put a stop to the small cottage fireworks industry.

 Another of the early firework manufacturer was Bob Shaw; he started by manufacturing his fireworks at Turners Quarry in 1865, this was behind Rowley Chapel and he manufactured under the name of Globe Fireworks. When he obtained his license on the 19th May 1876 his factory was said to have been No 32.
In 1871 Allen Jessop started taking the business more serious and he set up under the name of Messrs Allen Jessop & Sons. His factory was near to Shaw’s on Rowley and when he got his license on the 30th October 1876 his factory was said to be No.55.
The fireworks industry had become a boom industry, (pardon the pun) and according to the 1881 census there were twenty one people described as fireworks manufacturers but the boom years didn’t last and by the turn of the twentieth century there were only three left; Jessop, Shaw (Globe)and Jessop & Kilner.

This was a potentially dangerous industry and the authorities clamped down on the less stringent manufacturers. The Huddersfield Examiner dated 7th September 1881, reported that George & Samuel Newsome were prosecuted under the explosives act. This wasn’t the first time they had been taken to court and this time they face seven charges under the explosives act.
1: The building in which the making of fireworks was carried out within 50 yards of a footpath.
2: For not fixing copy’s of the general rules and regulations of work in the factory.
3: That the building was not constructed as to prevent exposure to Iron, and found loose gunpowder and explosive composition about the building, and in no way treated as a danger building as there was a stove.
4: Did not keep the building free from grit.
5: That they had made no provisions to provide clothing for the workers.
6: To prevent accidents occurring and minimize the danger of attending work. 7: There were five employees in the building, when only licensed for four.
The bench inflict the “penalty of the law” and they find them £11 pound and £23 pound and 6 shillings costs, and ordered all material to be seized.
The full cost would have been quite substantial because it was getting near to the 5th November and the company would have most properly ordered their supplies in for Bonfire Night calibration. This seems to have been the last straw for the company because I have been unable to find any record of them after this date.

Allen Jessop died on the 17 March1880 and the business was taken over by his sons; Elliott, Ben, Humphrey and Ely. The lads didn’t stop together for long though; Ben left the business in 1897 and set-up a new company with his nephew Harry Kilner.
Then Humphrey and Ely set up a new factory at the low side of Highgate Lane. Ben Jessop and Harry Kilner split in 1906 when Kilner built a new factory by the side of Allen Jessop Factory at Rowley and he traded under the name of the Yorkshire Fireworks Company which then became the Lion Fireworks.
Ben Jessop went into business with his son and traded under the name Ben & Able Jessop Pyrotechnics, their factory was bought by Standard in 1930.
In 1906 Alex Parret was recruited to manage the Allen Jessop factory. He was a salesman for Brock Fireworks, London; he bought the factory around 1910, but after the Great War the company started to get into financial difficulty and it was bought by Standard.
At the onset of the Great War the Lepton factories diversified and they obtained contracts to fill Mills grenades and during the 1914–1918 period they produced eleven million grenades which were transported via the Fenay Bridge Station.
Despite the obvious dangers of the industry more people have been killed in boiler explosions than in firework accidents but despite all the safety precautions accidents do happen. One of the first deadly accidents to be reported occurred at Shaw’s Factory on the 22nd October 1913 with one person dying and six other employees badly burned.
The worst accident to befall the Yorkshire fireworks industry occurred in 1944, when seven women and one man lost their lives in an explosion at the Lion factory. It is unclear what the factory was making at the time of the explosion and the papers didn’t say if the factory was involved in doing war work or not. So the explosion could have been a munitions explosion and nothing to do with fireworks.

An article in the 29th October 1937, Huddersfield Examiner gave you a bit of an insight into the fireworks industry. It had a photograph of Mrs Mary Ann Kilner and it showed her wearing a bonnet and carrying fireworks. At the time of the article she was said to be the oldest woman firework maker in the country. She recalled that as a girl of eight she would stand on a stool filling the fireworks with a chuckle and that grownups would sit on the barrels of gunpowder to do their work. She went on to say that she used to work from six in the morning until ten at night and that the young people today they are idle.
She was the daughter of Allen Jessop and the mother of Harry Kinler so she could have been look through the eyes of management and just recalling the busy times because the hours of work were as follows:

Pre 1930: 7.00am to 5.30pm with half hour for breakfast and one hour for dinner.
Post 1930: 7.30am to 5.30pm with no breakfast and one hour for dinner.
Post 1945: 8.00am to 4.30 with a tea break and half hour dinner.
At the time of the article Mary Ann Kilner would have been 87, she died a few years later at the age of 91.
Globe Fireworks closed in 1962, Lion Fireworks closed in 1970 and the Lepton fireworks industry finally came to an end when Standard shut its Lepton Works in 1987.

Standard Fireworks

Standard Fireworks became this area’s best known firework manufacturer and just like the Lepton companied it also started in a small way.

The company was started by James Greenhalgh. He was born in 1860, the eldest child of William and Ruth Greenhalgh. William was a general dealer and they lived in Gledholt Bank and like a lot of the stores in those days they would have sold fireworks when they were in season.

According to the census James started out as a commercial traveller and then a wholesale draper’s assistant. It was while he was doing these jobs that he noticed a gap in the market for fireworks. He started a wholesale drapers business with Mr. Booth and has a sideline James would sell fireworks and in 1890 he started trading under the Standard Fireworks brand name.
Has a commercial traveller he would travel all over the country to sell his wares and his son in law, Frederick Rowcliffe later recalled their early encounters; “Ruth’s father came to see us in Cambridge once or twice, her father was a man about 60 with hair and beard turned grey but some black left in his moustache.”
He worked out of his father’s warehouse in Market Place, Huddersfield and he then moved to Byram Street, Huddersfield. It would have been a bite dangerous to store the fireworks in the town centre so he acquired a magazine on Leeds Road so he could safely store his fireworks.

James Greenhalgh

He imported some of his fireworks from China and he also got two of the small old established Lepton firework makers to supply him. He also got them to print the “Standard” name on the fireworks.
The agreement with the Lepton factories didn’t last and I am unsure about the reason of split; it could have been that the factories were unable to supply themselves and Standard or they have just decided not to supply him. This gave James the push he needed and in 1910 he obtained a disused quarry at Crosland Moor and started to produce his own fireworks.
The company went from strength to strength and even the break in production when the factory was used for war work didn’t stop the company growing.
James wasn’t all about business though; he was a member of the Huddersfield Coral Society (for over 50 years), he was behind the formation of the Crosland Moor District hand bell ringers, he was a Governor at the Huddersfield Infirmary and an elder of the Catholic Apostolic Church, Huddersfield.
James died on the 20 March 1948 and the company was taken over by his son Edward.
Edward had started working for the company when he was 13. Although he was more interest in the development side he guided the company through its flotation in 1959.
Like his father Edward too gave back to the community; He was a member of the Meltham Council, he had a long association with the YMCA and he they awarded him there top honour, (the Gold Order of the Red Triangle) and he was a founder of the Huddersfield Sea Cadets.Edward died on the 14 October 1978, but the company kept growing and in 1988 they acquired Brocks which was the oldest British firework company (mentioned earlier). The company was itself bought out by Black Cat in 1998 but it is still linked with the area.