When John Herbert Lavender founded his business in 1917, aluminium was an unusual material in Black Country foundries, which had traditionally worked with iron and steel. However, its centuries of experience in metalworking and major engineering industry made the Black Country the ideal place for a foundry like J H Lavender’s. Black Country Living Museum will be translocating a small post-war building and original foundry equipment from Lavender’s site to the Museum, enabling them to demonstrate the sights, sounds and smells of a real 1960s foundry.

We will also be telling the important 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 India, Pakistan, the Caribbean and elsewhere, providing work and a home for a generation of Commonwealth citizens.

J H Lavender is believed to be the oldest family-owned aluminium high pressure and gravity foundry in Britain. It was founded by John Herbert “Jack” Lavender 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, supplying numerous famous names including Sunbeam, AJS, Norton-Villiers, BSA and Triumph. Lavender’s was so successful that in 1931 they opened a brand new modern foundry at the corner of Crankhall Lane and Hall Green Road, just over the Borough boundary into West Bromwich. Like scores of other Black Country firms, they produced munitions during World War Two, and continued to expand after the war. John Herbert Lavender died in 1957 but his legacy is still very much alive – the foundry continues to produce aluminium castings for the motor industry to this day.