06/05/2025
Former Cumberland Mk2 Leyland National 378 (KHH378W) has been named “Kenneth Hargreaves” in honour of the man that has become a legend to anybody with an interest in this famous bus. The ceremony, the grand finale of Leyland National 53, took place with Ken’s friends and family present, in front of his former office at the erstwhile Leyland National plant in Lillyhall, Cumbria. Afterwards Ken took the wheel and effortlessly guided his Leyland National round the former factory site and out onto the road!
“KENNETH HARGREAVES
Ken Hargreaves started at Leyland Motors Ltd in 1955 as an apprentice. He rose through the ranks, and was eventually handpicked for a small, elite team within the research, proving and development department at the Spurrier Works in Leyland, where he worked on the secret FPB7
project to create a revolutionary, new bus, of integral construction.
Ken was instrumental in the development and comprehensive testing of the prototype Leyland National, in all manner of conditions, including in
temperatures down to minus 30C north of the Arctic Circle in Finland.
In 1970, Ken and his family, including young children, relocated to Cumbria to become one of the Lillyhall plant superintendents under General Manager John Clarke, with Brian Gemson and Brian Humphries alongside him. He played a hands-on role, training assembly workers,
many of whom were unskilled, to build a high quality product in the world's most modern bus factory - the Leyland National.
Overseeing other projects such as the B15 Titan and Railbus, Ken became General Manager of the Lillyhall factory. He witnessed ownership transcend from being a state owned business to a management buyout and final ownership with the Volvo Corporation. A sad time came in 1993 after an extended period of plant run-down when he had the task of switching off the lights and locking all the doors.”
