Stewarts & Lloyds was formed in 1903 by the merging of two of the largest iron and steel manufacturers in Britain: A. & J. Stewart & Menzies, which had sites in North Lanarkshire and Glasgow, and Lloyd & Lloyd Ltd, which had sites in Birmingham.
The company decided to move manufacturing to Corby in 1932 due to its historic mining facilities, transforming the small village of 1,500 people into the start of an industrial town. Thousands of workers migrated from across the UK to work in Corby. By 1950, Corby was declared a new town, with a population of over 18,000.
The particular influx of Scottish workers earned Corby the name ‘Little Scotland’. The town records the highest per-capita sales of Irn-Bru outside of Scotland, and square sausage as well as haggis pie are still sold at the local Greggs today.
Iron and steel manufacturing was fully nationalised in 1967, and Stewarts & Lloyds became part of the newly formed British Steel Corporation. In 1979, the British Steel Corporation announced plans to close Corby Steelworks.
When the site finally closed on 21 May 1980, thousands of jobs were lost, changing the town and its community forever. Today, after a period of recovery, Corby is a rapidly growing town, blending a proud industrial heritage with modern regeneration.
Corby Heritage
The Heritage Centre opened in 2011, and the collection was literally just what we had in the council offices. But once people knew I was building a collection, people started to donate.
We've got the steelworks, Corby Pole Fair, the new town history, and the original part of the town - people forget that the village has been here over 1,000 years.
It’s the stories that the objects tell. How is a drainpipe an interesting object? It’s part of the Second World War Pluto pipeline. Or a computer, from a manager at the steelworks, that looks quite innocuous but is one of the world's first computers sold to the public. It’s the fascinating stories and anecdotes.
Billy Dalziel, Heritage Officer, Corby Heritage Centre
Volunteers
Pete Bray
James Hay
Tom Rochester
Nilo Branco
Adam Cattell
Barbara Rawcliffe
Volunteer Writing
Corby Heritage volunteer Adam Cattell writes about his WORK Records experience and discoveries here.
Stewarts & Lloyds employees established many sports teams some still exist and continue to be an important part of life in Corby today. Volunteer Adam writes about them here.
Explore more..
Club Corby
7' 40", 2026
A film by Saul Pankhurst
Online in November 2026
Club Corby is a handmade animation exploring the working lives and communities that grew around one of Britain’s largest steelworks. Drawing on archive material and the oral histories of former workers and residents, the film brings together memories of labour, leisure, danger and everyday life. Playful and fragmentary, it pays tribute to these lived experiences while reflecting on how the philosophies of Stewarts & Lloyds, the family-run firm behind the works, may still resonate in Corby’s strong sense of community and collective identity.
I was conscious of the challenge of being a newcomer with limited knowledge on the town and its people, other than Stewarts & Lloyds. You come with your preconceived idea of the place and maybe the story that you might like to tell. And as soon as you come into contact with the town and the people, that completely evaporates.
I didn't know what stories would emerge from these interviews. It felt important to look at other aspects of the steelworks, because there were so many that were largely positive, and to work with the volunteers to uncover those stories and aspects of social life associated with the firm. It's been amazing working with the volunteers - quite intimidating in terms of their breadth of knowledge.
It can sound like a cliché but there's this real truth in the sense of community in the town that has been forged in part from the steelworks. What matters is capturing something of the feeling that the town has, and the way that it sees itself.
The Corby archive is in an old council building. And it's quite surreal being in there - they still have all the old council furniture. You're surrounded by boxes and boxes of archives, some of which are private donations and most of which was handed over, I believe, by British Steel, just directly at the time of the factory closures. It's an amazing place.
Saul Pankhurst
Saul is an artist and filmmaker working across documentary, animation, and collage. His work explores shifts in our relationship with industry, new technology and the touch sense, whilst adopting collaborative approaches that scrutinise both the role of the filmmaker and the complex ethical questions involved when representing the stories of others.
Saul was selected as a New Contemporaries artist in 2024, completing Film London’s Artists’ Moving Image Network Fellowship programme in the same year. He has worked with clients including Channel 4, Positive East, United Response, and Cancer Research UK. His work has been screened and exhibited at the ICA, Ann Arbor, Aesthetica, London International Animation Festival, Raindance and Glasgow Short Film Festival.
The way that I like to work is to foreground the audio and interview voiceovers. We managed to coordinate a group of ex-workers, and Stewarts & Lloyds being the size and scale that it was, everyone brought something different. In part, I wanted to capture a sense of a collective energy. Predominantly I work with stop-frame animation techniques, often paper cutouts, collage, mixed media, sometimes paints. In this case, charcoal features quite a bit. I’ve used [the company] newsletter quite a lot, cutting that up and introducing language through that newspaper.
Saul Pankhurst
Club Corby credits
A film by Saul Pankhurst
Sound design by Robby Brown
Voices: Paula Boulton, Bob Douglas, Jack Duff, Alan Irwin, Ivy Kennedy, Agris Krummins, Betty MacPherson, James Millar, Steve Purcell, Dougie Reid
Thanks: Stephen Chwaszcza, Ricky Cunningham, Ray Corby, Kate Dyer, Lola Dziarkowska, Rosie Hughes, Jacqueline Merrill, Sue Purcell, Carol Stewart
