Leyland, Lancashire
Template:GBmap Leyland is a town in the borough of South Ribble, Lancashire, United Kingdom, approximately 6 miles south of Preston. Population of the entire South Ribble area is 103,900 (Source 2001 Census), with approximately 40,000 residents of Leyand and it's divisions. It is unclear if Leyland means "flat" or "untilled land".
Divisions of Leyland
History
Notable features include St Andrew's parish church, built around 1200 and a stone cross thought to date back to Saxon times.
The town is famous primarily for the bus and truck manufacturer Leyland Motors, which between the '50s and '70s expanded and grew to own several motor British motor manufacturers, including BMC, Standard-Triumph, and Rover, culminating in the massive British Leyland (BL).
Although BL was progressively broken up in the 1980s, a series of mergers and buy-outs has seen the truck-making side of the firm survive, and the town still produces about 14,000 trucks per year, and the truck building industry is still the town's primary employer. Leyland is now home to the national maintenance and utility firm Enterprise Plc. In 1998 the American firm PACCAR took control of Leyland Trucks, and moved production of Foden (a brand already owned by the company) to Leyland from its original base in Sandbach in Cheshire.
Leyland was part of the Central Lancashire New Town designated in 1970, along with Chorley and Preston.
Leyland railway station is on the West Coast Main Line and a marker adjacent to the old Leyland Motors Spurrier works declares the halfway point on the railway journey between Glasgow and London, some 198 miles in either direction.
Leyland today
Recently, Leyland has undergone a series of redevelopments, transforming from a down-trodden industrial town. A series of retailers have moved into the area, on both the North and South sides of the town. This has seen the demolition of old factories, and their replacement with retail facilities. For example, the old BTR Factory was knocked down to make way for attractive new studio apartments and housing in 2004, with a Morrisons store Homebase being added in June 2006. After these store openings, Leyland will have a branch of three of the big four supermarkets in the country.
Leyland is the home of Runshaw College which received the best Ofsted report for any further education college in the UK in 2005.
Economically, Leyland is still far behind many other West Lancashire towns of its size such as Southport, Lytham St Annes, Ormskirk, but the rate of change Leyland is experiencing at the moment suggests that Leyland will become wealthier than Ormskirk in the year 2010, following research undertaken by Runshaw College.