George Leslie Bolton (1917-2006)
Fifth President of the Leyland Historical Society 1989-2006
It is with much sadness that I report the death on 9^th July, 2006, of our President, George Leslie Bolton.
 
In his time as a member, George filled a number of positions as a long serving committee member.  He was made a life member in 1985 and became President in 1989, making him the longest serving incumbent in the office.  George's funeral at Blackburn was well-attended by friends and Society members, a number of whom spoke affectionately of him at the service and they have kindly agreed to allow the following paragraphs to be based on their remarks.
George Leslie Bolton, the youngest of three children, was born in Chorley.  Educated at the town's Grammar School, he began work in the laboratories of Leyland Motors Limited where, rising to senior management, he remained all his working life.  He married fellow employee Marjorie Hunton in 1947 and the pair set up home in Yewlands Avenue before living for many years in Lancaster Lane.  The devoted couple's plans for retirement and travel sadly came to naught with Marjorie's untimely death in 1978.  George retired in 1981 and immersed himself in his many interests for the next quarter of a century.

George spent all his working life in the laboratory of Leyland Motors.  This was initially located in the South Works just to the north of what is, today, King Street.  During the war he moved to the Farington foundry and was actively involved in the metallurgical control of the electric arc steel furnaces which were used in the production of bomb and shell casings.  He was at the plant during the bombing raid of 1940, and having only narrowly escaped with his life from the bomb blast was appalled when the plane came back to machine gun the survivors.  In 1948 the laboratory relocated to new buildings in Farington as part of the post-war expansion of the company.
Trained as an industrial chemist and ably assisted by his wife, George played a key role in the development of the company's Chemical laboratory into a state of the art facility.  Although well-known as a historian George was also very much a man of the future.  In 1964 he was the driving force behind the acquisition of an ultra-modern metals' analyser which incorporated the latest computer technology.  The work of the laboratory demanded high levels of precision and accuracy and George was the acknowledged master of the technical report.  He was accordingly greatly respected throughout the automotive industry as the representative of British Leyland on various committees of the British Standards Institute and the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders.  One of his main responsibilities in the 1970s was the development of lubricants for commercial vehicles.  He worked closely with the major oil companies and in recognition of the esteem in which he was held he was the proud recipient of a sample of the first oil to come ashore from the North Sea.
George enjoyed wide-ranging interests:  he was a very keen Amateur Radio enthusiast (his call sign G3UDZ was worked throughout the world) and he enjoyed motor-rallying, having joined the motoring fraternity as far back as the mid-1930s.

Though George Bolton's love of local history was the chief beneficiary of his retirement years, his interest blossomed during the war years.  This was the period when Reginald Sharpe-France established the Lancashire Records Office in Preston, and, significantly, the ffarington of Worden muniments was one of his first acquisitions.  George - later, assisted by a full, if motley, complement of assistants - would spend his life in their analysis.  During these years, George copied and studied the key elements which would eventually comprise the building blocks of research hereafter.  His acquisition of a photographic copy of sections of Richard Jackson's writings (alias Dr Kuerden 1623-1704?) was to be, perhaps, his major achievement.  Like The Great Doctor, George carefully dug out his sources, set them in chronological order and wrote them up.
About this time he became a member of the Preston Scientific Society (then closely involved with E. E. Pickering and the exploration of the Roman site at Walton) and the Preston Historical Society.
The founding of the Leyland Historical Society in 1968 gave George a much closer focus for his historical interests which became centred on Clayton and Leyland.  The Society's journal - The Lailand Chronicle - came into being in 1970.
From the first volume to the 2003-4 edition he contributed thirty-four articles, nine of which earned him the 'Historian of the Year' award for best entry; and initially, with the late Peter Barrow: Vernacular Buildings, but then with William Waring: Everything Leyland; Elizabeth Shorrock: The Later ffaringtons of Worden; and others, he began to assemble the building blocks for a new History of Leyland (1990).
The building of the new Records Office on Bow Lane, Preston, and his later retirement had given the impetus for the most creative period of his research and writing.  His contribution to our journal reached a peak during the period of his editorship (1982-87).  He was succeeded in this onerous office by his friend Bill Waring and their combined tenure saw a real flowering of the society as the sort of hands-on cutting-edge research group that George had always envisaged. 
Members' publications and history classes of all kinds abounded.  In particular the series of day schools (organised by the University of Liverpool) at Worden in 1986 and 1987  —  in which George and the rest of the 'Gang of Four' played a full part - gave the society a clear lead in the field of local research groups in the County.
Apart from his Lailand Chronicle articles, George Bolton wrote three books:  The History of the Later Crooks of Crook Hall, Whittle-le-Woods; The History of Clayton-le-Woods, and A History of Charnock Hall, (in collaboration with William Waring).  He also undertook extensive work on the history of the Worden Family of Massachusetts who went over to America at the time of the Pilgrim Fathers:  Peter Worden had left Clayton-le-Woods c.1623 for the New World.  George became a member of the Worden family Association of America, writing articles for their newsletter Wordens' Past, and a book, Worden Origins.  The Worden family group, led by Col W. Worden, visited Leyland in May 1994 in the company of Peter Worden of Blackburn and George, with much success.
Clearly these will not be the last words written on this most distinguished of gentlemen in this and other journals, but perhaps George's fellow traveller, Richard Kuerden, found the phrase which best describes his life's work.  For, in George, Leyland never had a more:
'"Knoweing and welle trusted Pilot" to navigate a course through its complicated and often seeminglt intractable history.'
David Hunt  

On Saturday 14th September 2002, the last big chimney in Leyland fell. A large group of people watched as the Leyland & Birmingham Rubber Company lost its biggest asset.

Going........

The full length of the Leyland & Birmingham Rubber Company Ltd on Golden Hill Lane, with the offices nearest the camera, followed by the 1915 building and with the 1913 building on the corner with Wheelton Lane in the distance.