Famous People Connected with Lancashire Quiz

Answer: Barbara Castle

Barbara Castle was born in Bradford in 1911 and was elected to represent Blackburn in 1944, holding the seat until she retired from Parliament in 1979. She was famous for fighting social causes and was perhaps best known for her outspokenness which sometimes matched her red hair! As well as introducing the 70 miles per hour speed limit, the breathalyser and seat belts while she was the Minister of Transport, one of her major contributions was the law on equal pay for women.

She died in 2002 and Tony Blair described her as 'one of the dominating figures of the Labour movement of the last 50 years'.

Answer: John Barbirolli

Born in London in 1899, Barbirolli had a distinguished career as a cellist and a conductor before being invited to become the permanent conductor of the Halle Orchestra in 1943. He virtually recreated the orchestra from a small nucleus of players and remained with the Halle for almost the rest of his life.

He became 'Conductor-in-Chief' in 1958 which gave him time to conduct other world-leading orchestras. However he still continued to conduct the Halle and to make many important recordings with them.

His last public concert with the Halle was on 25 July 1970, just four days before he died of a heart attack.

Answer: Royce

Frederick Henry Royce was born in Huntingdonshire in 1863 and set up his own business in Cooke Street, Hulme in 1884, making domestic electric fittings. In the 1890's he started making arc lamps and dynamos, and then decided to manufacture his own automobiles, known as Royces.

After a meeting with the entrepreneur Charles Stewart Rolls at the Midland Hotel in Manchester in 1904, the firm of 'Rolls-Royce' came into being. The rest is history!

Answer: Henry Hunt

Henry 'Orator' Hunt was born in Wiltshire in 1773 and despite his affluent upbringing he became a spokesman for the radical reform movement which was sweeping through England because of the economic depression that followed the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815.

He was invited to speak in Manchester on 16 August 1819 and although there were thousands of people at the meeting, everything was peaceful and orderly. However the local magistrates panicked as Hunt stood up to speak and ordered the Cheshire Yeomanry to break up the meeting.

In the cavalry charge that followed, eleven people were killed and hundreds were injured. Hunt was arrested, found guilty of holding an unlawful assembly and imprisoned for 30 months. The event went down in history as the 'Peterloo Massacre'.

Answer: David Sheppard

David Sheppard, who was born in 1929 in Surrey, won 22 England caps between 1950 and 1963. He was ordained as a minister in 1955 and after 11 years as suffragan Bishop of Woolwich, he became diocesan Bishop of Liverpool in 1975. He was probably one of the most outspoken bishops in the Church of England, campaigning for better housing and conditions in inner-city areas, and working with the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool to bring about religious and sectarian reconciliation in the city.

Answer: George Stephenson

George Stephenson, born near Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1781, was already famous for making steam locomotives when he was appointed as the engineer for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1826. He was faced with several difficult engineering problems which he solved: a two mile rock cutting through Edge Hill, a nine-arched viaduct across the Sankey Valley and a floating raft to take the railway line across the unstable, four mile peat bog of Chat Moss.

It was Stephenson's 'Rocket' locomotive which won the trials held at Rainhill, near Liverpool and the railway opened on 15 September 1830.

It reduced the cost and increased the speed of transporting goods between the two towns, and also became the first successful passenger railway in the country.

Answer: Matt Busby

Matt Busby was born in Lanarkshire in 1909 and played for Manchester City and Liverpool in the 1920s and 1930s. After becoming manager of Manchester United, he worked to turn the team into the best in the world and was noted for choosing young players who earned the nickname of the 'Busby Babes'.

His dreams of the European Championship were shattered when the plane carrying the team crashed at Munich Airport in 1958. Eight members of the team were killed and Busby was seriously injured. In the 1960s he rebuilt the team again and finally won the European Cup in 1967. Busby retired in 1971 but remained a director of the club until 1982.

The road which leads to Manchester United's home ground at Old Trafford has been renamed 'Sir Matt Busby Way'.

Answer: Ken Barlow

William Roache played the character Ken Barlow from the first episode in 1960 of 'Coronation Street' which is set in the fictional Lancashire town of Weatherfield. As Ken, he has been married four times (twice to Deirdre), widowed twice, divorced once, and has had 27 girlfriends! Despite all that, the public image of Ken Barlow is of a 'boring man'!

Answer: Engels

Friedrich Engels was born in 1820. In 1844, the same year that his 'Conditions of the Working Classes' was published, Engels also contributed to a journal edited by Karl Marx in Paris. After their first meeting, they discovered that they shared the same views about capitalism. Engels brought Marx to England, and they then moved to Belgium where they began writing a pamphlet together which was based on Engels' 'The Principles of Communism'.

Their combined pamphlet was named 'The Communist Manifesto' and was published in 1848.

Answer: Reginald Dixon

Reginald Dixon was the resident organist at the Blackpool Tower Ballroom from 1930 until he retired in 1970, playing the 'Mighty Wurlitzer'. He became known throughout the world through his recordings and radio broadcasts. He played with a bouncy style that became known as the 'Blackpool Sound' and earned him the nickname of 'Mr Blackpool'.