SecretLeeds - History, culture and architecture in Leeds

After seeing Marc Ribaud's photos of workers in the Burton's Hudson Road factory I had a look around the web for more photos and recollections of Burton's.For such a large employer the available material on line is a bit sparse.Anyway I found one photo online which was reproduced for a book dust jacket. The photo caption says " Illustation of young women workers leaving Burton's Hudson Road factory , 1934.Looking at the photo I think the majority of the girls in the picture are too young to be workers. My guess is that the photo is really a party of girls from a local school on an outing to the factory and the older women in the photo are teachers.I know from other sources that Burton's did run such trips for school girls in the 30's and 40's. As the major employer of female labour many of these girls probably did end up working there.Given that the youngest girls in this photo will be in their late 80s now i don't expect anyone to recognise anyone in the photo, but you never know, someone might recognise a much younger mum or grandma.     

I'm not an expert on the subject, but back then wasn't the school leaving age 14 or 15? A job at Burtons would have been a good job, so there would be sure to have been plenty of competition for places for schooleavers.

Sure there was quite a bit on Leodis. edit:Puzzled - next to nothing, but I know I've seen a myriad of pictures somewhere.

Unless I’ve missed something – it’s always surprised me that nothing has ever been published about the workers at Montague Burtons. The last time I was in Leeds the Local History section of the library covered every industry [including tailoring] but nothing specifically about Burtons. Also, I don’t know if this is just something that’s specific to my family [my Mam and a couple of aunts worked there] but they always called it MONTAGUE Burtons, never ever just Burtons.    

chameleon wrote: Sure there was quite a bit on Leodis. edit:Puzzled - next to nothing, but I know I've seen a myriad of pictures somewhere. Yes there are some photos of Burtons if you dig around but fewer than I expected given the scale of the manufacturing and the importance of the firm to Leeds economy. During WW2 this place was making most of the British forces uniforms, and then the demob suits.For example I found no photos of :Burtons annual works outings. I went on a few of these as a child and one trip to London involved 2 or 3 special trains from Leeds Central. Annual sports days at Hudson road site - a major event on a par with events like childrens day in Roundhay Park.Xmas childrens party in the factory. Royal visits to the factory- one of which I saw in 57/58.You often see the quote about the canteen being remarkable because it could serve 10,000 meals in 2 sittings - surely someone took a photo of the enormous canteen? Leodis is a work in progress -maybe they haven't got round to loading up the Burtons photo archive yet.    

raveydavey wrote: I'm not an expert on the subject, but back then wasn't the school leaving age 14 or 15? A job at Burtons would have been a good job, so there would be sure to have been plenty of competition for places for schooleavers. It was 14. My mother went there as a seamstress at 14 about the time this photo was taken. She spent the war in the WAAF but went back to Burtons to work in the welfare office for about 5 years in the early 50's.

liits wrote: Unless I’ve missed something – it’s always surprised me that nothing has ever been published about the workers at Montague Burtons. The last time I was in Leeds the Local History section of the library covered every industry [including tailoring] but nothing specifically about Burtons. Also, I don’t know if this is just something that’s specific to my family [my Mam and a couple of aunts worked there] but they always called it MONTAGUE Burtons, never ever just Burtons.     My mother and 3 aunts all worked at Montague Burtons at various times. I think the shops were generally just refered to as " Burtons" but the Hudson Rd factory was generally "Montague Burtons" as you say.    

have a look here for some more information and memories:http://www.bbc.co.uk/leeds/content/arti ... ture.shtml

Steve Jones wrote: have a look here for some more information and memories:http://www.bbc.co.uk/leeds/content/arti ... ture.shtml Thanks for the link Steve.I also found thishttp://www.movinghere.org.uk/galleries/histori ... urton1.htm#

Being a Harehills lad(pronounced Air ills) im immensley proud of Burtons.even more so that mi mam worked there on the mums shift as a button holer.The canteen was huge.went down past there today,it should be open for heritage days.are there any SLers with an intersest to get it open for next year?