Memories of Pilkington UK live on in South Yorkshire village of Kirk Sandall

The memory of Pilkington UK – or Pilks as it was fondly known – lives on in the families of the workers who lived in Kirk Sandall, a purpose built village created for the workforce in the early 1920s.

A new exhibition, the Glasshouse Project, explores 90 years of the little-known social and glassmaking heritage of Pilks and its close ties with the garden village.

The houses were arranged around grassed squares, there were bowling greens and tennis courts, two churches and a Boys’ Club. It even had its own police force and fire brigade. The showy Art Deco Vitrolite glass made in the 1920s and 1930s adorned the bathrooms of London’s Savoy Hotel and was used to clad the Daily Express buildings in the capital, Manchester and Glasgow.

Artist Mandy Keating created the exhibition, which includes sculptural and framed artworks inspired by the site. She said: "They had everything there that the employees and their families would want. It was very self-contained - you'd never have to leave if you didn't want to.

"They had carnivals for the kids, sports, you could do swimming and shooting, all sorts. You either loved the life or hated it. Fortunately a lot of people loved it, it was a way of life. I did a talk in January and that was massively popular and people have been contacting me every since. I was really surprised by how much it's still in people's hearts."

Mandy's grandfather Dickie Keatinge worked for Pilks from the late 1940s until retirement and her father still lives on one of the squares. It’s still a nice peaceful place, she says. The factory closed in 2009.

For the exhibition she created 10 portraits including one of a great great grandmother of someone still living in the village, who came from St Helen’s, where the company started out in 1826, in a horse and cart.

She's also blown up some of the amazing black and white photographs taken by Brian Keefe, a Pilks worker who died a few years ago. "He took photos of everyday things people going about their work, also kids carnivals. There's hundreds if not thousands of photographs."

One shows a lorry taking glass to a British Empire Exhibition, another men in leather aprons in the doorway of the blacksmiths shop at the factory, which closed in 2009.

Vitrolite was developed in the US in 1900 and Pilkington was the only UK company to get a licence to make it. They stopped producing it in the 1950s.

"It was supposed to be a cheaper alternative to marble. It was very expensive unless you worked for Pilks. My granddad made a coffee table top with it. I think he made work tops in the kitchen. People who worked for Pilks had it in their bathrooms - they didn't have to go to the Savoy." The exhibition is at The Point, Doncaster, until March 31.