At last year’s Keighley Show, the History Society was invited to visit Apsley Motors on Victoria Road in Ingrow. The owner of the business was selling up and we had the chance to take photographs of the premises which had once housed the mineral water and bottling factory founded by Smith Hoyle – S. Hoyle Ltd. The owner also wanted to hand over various documents and ledgers belonging to that company that had been abandoned in the roof space of the old factory.
The visit took place in November 2023 and it’s taken us a while to catalogue everything, but we now ready to share the photographs and documents on our Flickr site…
The last proprietor of Hoyles was my Uncle, Adrian Greenwood, who sadly died some years ago. As a child I lived in Somerset – when we returned home for visits there was always a crate of Hoyles pop at my Nana’s waiting for me! Adrian was a lovely man but I don’t think he was sorry to leave the pop industry. Once whilst refilling a soda siphon for one of the local hostelries it exploded on his hand he was lucky not to be permanently disabled by it.