HISTORY of LEPTON

It seems that Lepton was originally a small settlement probably based around a farm and with Anglo-Saxon origins, hence the 'ton' in Lepton.

Fairly Recent Fact: Apparently, the population in 1921 was 3134. According to Lepton Vision work the population is now around 3800.

LEPTON CROSS
Where Green Balk Lane joins Rowley Lane there once stood the
Lepton Cross which could have been a preaching cross
used by priests on their way from the mother church of Dewsbury to
Kirkburton and Almondbury. Another explanation of
the cross is that it was simply a guide post set here to mark the parting of two
important routes which led across what must have been a lonely and difficult
terrain. We shall never be certain which is the correct answer!

The shaft of the cross has long since disappeared but the base is
preserved near to the porch of Lepton Parish Church.

The beginning of Fireworks manufacture

A man called Allen Jessop is believed to be the first man to develop a fireworks business in Lepton.  He was born in Lepton on 16th September 1822 to Joseph and Martha Jessop. He married in 1851 and worked as a handloom weaver in Lepton. By 1861 he had a family of four sons and a daughter and had changed his job to coal miner where he learnt about explosives.

After experimenting with the production of 'bangers' in his spare time he and his wife progressed to selling them as fireworks from a basket, door to door. 

[Guy Fawkes Night originates from the Gunpowder plot of 1605, a failed conspiracy by a group of provincial English Catholics to assassinate the Protestant King James 1st of England and 6th of Scotland and replace him with a Catholic head of state. In the immediate aftermath of the 5 November arrest of Guy Fawkes, caught guarding a cache of explosives placed beneath the House of Lords, James's Council allowed the public to celebrate the king's survival with bonfires, so long as they were "without any danger or disorder". This made 1605 the first year the plot's failure was celebrated.

The following January, days before the surviving conspirators were executed, Parliament, at the initiation of James I, passed the Observance of 5th November Act, commonly known as the "Thanksgiving Act". It was proposed by a Puritan Member of Parliament, who suggested that the king's apparent deliverance by divine intervention deserved some measure of official recognition, and kept 5 November free as a day of thanksgiving.]

By 1871 Allen Jessop was living at Rowley Hill and being described as a firework manufacturer whilst his wife, Sarah, apparently worked for him as a firework maker. 

Circa 1986, taken from Woodlands End this part panorama captures part of the old 'Standard' Fireworks Factory (to the right - the blue doored huts) and the view across to Farnley Tyas. (Archive picture from Bob Smith's collection.)