John Groves was a Design Engineer at Westland for almost 50 yrs and remembers how sport played a big part in everyone's life

A lot of people used to play in various teams, football, rugby, skittles, darts. The firm had teams through the sports club and you got to know who used to go around. It was a lot more fun attached to it especially at Christmas. That was a madhouse.

Did you go to the Westland leisure club at all, the sports club?

Well, yes. It was the main focus really, because even in the old one when they had the wooden hut, it covered all the sports. We had a small rifle range, bowls, you name it, cricket, all the indoor sports. You used to have social evenings twice a week when we were youngsters, apprentices, you know. A lot of the staff used to go down. We didn’t have a disco. We had one of the blokes with an old gramophone, putting on all the latest records, down there.