J. Lyons & Co.
About This Site
The original owner of this website, David Lawrence, worked for J. Lyons & Co. for 26 years (1948 - 1975) in both the Teashops and Lyons Bakery, and was rather surprised that no web site appeared to exist for the company, other than the excellent one for LEO Computers.
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While developing the site David discovered a wonderful book entitled The First Food Empire by Peter Bird, who was himself a Lyons man for 25 years. Peter kindly agreed to collaborate with David and provide the historical text from the wealth of knowledge he gathered over the six years of research in preparation for the book. However, the web site still contains only a tiny fraction of the information that is available in the book.
After Peter's death, his personal archive was donated to the LEO Computers Society, who loaned it to The Centre for Computing History (CCH) in Cambridge for safekeeping. A CCH member of staff, Dr Lisa McGerty, learnt that David and Peter's website was no longer being maintained and stepped in to preserve this wonderful resource.
Acknowledgements
David Lawrence - original website creator, who joined Lyons as a 20 year old draughtsman in the New Teashop Works Department, located at 139 Hammersmith Road just opposite Cadby Hall. He moved on to R & D Supervisor and finally to Maintenance Supervisor until the downturn in the teashops finances when he moved over to Lyons Bakery where he was a Process Engineer, R & D Engineer and finally a Project Engineer, planning and installing new product lines in several Lyons Bakery plants. David left Lyons in 1975 to become freelance but continued to handle some projects for Lyons Bakery.
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Peter Bird - Author of 'The First Food Empire: A History of J. Lyons & Co', who was himself a Lyons man for 25 years.
Peter very kindly agreed to collaborate with David to provide historical text from the wealth of knowledge he gathered over the six years of research in preparation for the book. However, the website contains only a tiny fraction of the information that is available in the book.
Bob Stevenson - Webmaster of Leo Computers website.
Ian Elliot - Editor of 'Now and Then', the pensioner's magazine.
Jean Metcalf , ex-teashop management.
Will Nijsse - for writing 'Dutch' and to us 'Double-Dutch'.
Several ex-employees who gave their time to write anecdotal essays and first hand personal accounts about working at Lyons. These will be found in 'Anecdote Index' on the Home page. David Lawrence started this process with a few memories of his own. If you are an ex-Lyons person - in whatever capacity - and would like to contribute please e-mail me at XXX and give your e-mail a subject line of 'J.Lyons' to ensure it is read. All included contributions will of course be credited.
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And many sellers on eBay who kindly allowed us to use their images.
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If you believe any material on this site infringes copyright, please let us know.
