A
BTH Apprentice
1947/1952
by Trevor Sidaway
A
Dudley Tech junior and early days at the BTH
The reputation of the BTH was
such that it could have the pick of those young men in the area wishing
to pursue engineering as a trade or profession
(and in those days they were all young men) so they
were able to recruit from
those students who had successfully completed a full time Junior Tech course
at one of the local Colleges
and who already had a good grounding in Technical/Engineering subjects
Dudley Tech--officially the
newest College in the area
and supplied the main intake with the odd trainee coming in from the more
local Colleges and schools,
including Brierley Hill Tech and Oldbury Tech
Students were interviewed at
the end of their Junior Tech courses; there were three intakes a year,
coinciding with the end of
College terms, they were recruited in batches of three or four so that at any
time fifty to sixty
apprentices were undergoing training
complete without recording some
impressions of the seven years that I spent there
Dudley and
Built in 1936,
overlooking the Priory and in the shadow of
it
was a fine example of pre-war commercial architecture
TheAssembly hall
Atrium style, on the top two floors, it was a very impressive example of interior
design
The well equipped Gymnasium was one of my favourite
venues
and was in a prime spot on the top floor
The engineering workshop, with a good array of machine
tools,
including
four center lathes
The
Foundry, my least favourite workshop
The Welding workshop
And on the top floor , some of the girls in the Typing room
Two Year Scholarships at the Junior Tech
Two-year scholarships were
awarded to pupils from local schools from around the age of fourteen, the
normal school leaving age at that time, and
the catchment area covered a radius of about ten miles
including Wolverhampton and
Stourbridge.
Pupils from all grades of
Senior Schools, from Secondary Modern through to Grammar Schools, were
attracted to sit the exam
and I do know that some of the local school Heads were becoming increasingly
concerned that some of their
brighter pupils were being “poached” by
the College
There were three intakes a
year of about 25 pupils/intake, so that at any time there were a total of
about 150 students in Junior
Tech.—all boys-- and a total of about 50 girls in the Commercial section
of the College
The Girls were segregated on
the top floor—not a lot of fraternisation!
The students were selected after a short general knowledge examination
followed by a series of interviews
with members of staff
One interviewer I recall was a Mr Burns who later
taught me Production Engineering
In
September 1944, at thirteen, I was one of the youngest in my class and I was
overawed by the size
of
the then very modern three-storey building and its facilities, which included
tennis courts, a fully
quipped
gym, a first class library and a very impressive assembly hall
The Class of 1944
In my 1944 class, designated
class T1A, were students from
Stourbridge as well as me from Sutherland
Road, Old Hill
Pictured in
our first year, class T1A
Maurice Richards/ Eric Boon/ Alan Malpass/ Geoffrey Simmons/
Maurice Chiltern/ Donald Willetts/ Ron Forsyth
Douglas Harvey/Alan Brough/ Trevor Carter/
Peter Round/ Doug Adey/Unknown
Trevor
Sidaway/ John Rawer/ John Steventon/ John Carter/ Phillip Wixon
A full class of eighteen students
Pictured in
our second year, class T2A
Alan Brough / Maurice Chiltern / Alan Malpass / Eric Boon / Geoffrey
Simmons / Donald Willetts / Mr R V Skillbeck
Phillip Wixon /
Peter Round / Trevor Carter / Peter Tolley / Doug Adey / Douglas Harvey
John
Carter / John Steventon / Trevor Sidaway / John Rawer
Inset (left) Maurice Richards (right) Ron Forsyth
Maurice contracted pneumonia and was away from classes for about three months
On his return he was
transferred to the class following one
term behind us so he didn’t miss any lessons, he also joined
the BTH as a D.O. apprentice
As can be seen from both
photographs dress was informal, although by 1945 I was wearing the College
tie, and the most refreshing
thing was that from the outset we were treated as young adults rather than
school kids.
The quality of the lecturers
was second to none, from the head of the Junior Tech—George
Lyman—downwards
We
were taught and examined in thirteen subjects that included:
Maths
Woodwork
Physics Geography
Engineering Drawing English
Geometrical Drawing Civics
Workshop practice Physical
Education
We had a form room, on the
second floor, but many of the lectures were held in specialist workshops
and laboratories, and these
are some of my more vivid memories;
Chemistry
The Chemistry lecture room had
rows of tiered desks and in the attached laboratory we mixed our
chemicals, made our pipettes
and honed our bunsen burners skills
At our very first chemistry
lecture Mr Evans, who later taught metallurgy at
Senior Tech, gripped our
attention by a seemingly
magical experiment of turning coloured liquids colourless by mixing them
together quickly followed by a mini explosion
caused by dropping a small piece of sodium into a
beaker of water
The Drawing Office
In the Drawing Office lecture
room Mr Herbertson taught us the difference
between 1st and 3rd angle
projection and how to
construct parabolas and involute gear tooth profiles
Engineering
In the Engineering Workshop
amongst other projects I forged a double ended tyre lever,
case hardening it using a pot
of carbon powder
I put it to good use on numerous occasions with my succession of push
bikes
Woodwork
At Woodwork I managed to
complete my test piece, a hardwood tea caddy with dovetail joints, in spite
of the ongoing threat from Mr Brown—a very bad tempered lecturer—who, when he
wasn’t throwing
lumps wood at us, regularly
threatened to “bandsaw” all of our test pieces
For many years my Mom used my tea caddy as a powder compact box
Mathematics
In Maths Mr Cutting taught algebra and trigonometry in such an
enthusiastic way that you just had to
take notice and under him we
became skilled in the use of slide rules (no calculators or computers in
those days) and mastered the
use of log books
The teachers of the
non-technical subjects had some difficulties retaining our interest—we were
after
all would be engineers— the English teacher, Capt Graham, kept us awake with the pervading smell
of eucalyptus from the gums
that he chewed incessantly and Mr Parrott, the
Geography teacher and
devout Welshman, continually
threatened to floor us with a rugby tackle if we persisted in running
around the seemingly miles of
corridors
The genial Mr Hulme, the History teacher, kept us going with
tales about his favourite subject
—the Black Death—and with site
visits to the adjacent Priory ruins
The Priory in 2006
Picture of the Priory
So although
the curriculum had a core of Science/Engineering subjects, it was very broad
based and the
building blocks were being put in place for those of us who were to
choose a career in manufacturing
The only regret that I now have is that a language was not included so
that the two years I had learning,
and enjoying, French at my
previous school
But it wasn’t all study, we took full
advantage of the well equipped gymnasium and organised football
was
restarted in 1945, the first since the outbreak of WW2 in 1939, and I made my
debut as an outside left
There were two others
from my class in the team—John Carter and Eric Boon
Junior Tech Eleven 1945/46 Season
Higgins / Cotterrill /
Tony Slater / Neville Thomson / Eric Boon / Peter Homer / Mr Herbertson / Mr
Cutting
Barry Harold /John Carter / David
Moss / Raymond Skidmore / Trevor Sidaway
I recall that we played our
home games on the
out the pitch ourselves before
the start of the games
Finding a Job
My two-year scholarship ended in July1946 and together with all my
classmates I was faced with the
prospect of finding a suitable job
Normal
Engineering Apprenticeships were for five years, which included part time day
release to a
local
two evening classes studying additional
subjects as endorsement to the main syllabus
With class work and homework in
all the subjects it was quite a workload and in those days, the full
National Certificate syllabus
for normal fourteen year old school leavers could take seven years;
Two years at junior level,
designated J1 and J2
Three years at senior level,
designated S1, S2, S3 and
Two years at advanced level,
designated A1 and A2
However, having successfully
completed the coursework and final exams at Junior Tech meant that
I skipped the first three years, moving
straight into year S2 which held out the prospect of a
Higher National Certificate award
before National Service call up at twenty-one, deferred for three
years from the normal call up age
of eighteen
Taken on at the BTH with deferred Military call-up
In the late 1940's good
quality engineering apprenticeships were available in many Industries and
most of us got places at
some of the leading Companies in the area.
Following an interview with
the Personnel Manager—Mr Purdy—this included a
check on my
however, as the official
starting age for apprentices was sixteen I had to wait a few months before my
indenture documents were
signed and sealed.
They were signed on 18th
April 1947 and backdated to my sixteenth birthday on February 14th.
The agreement would delay my
call up for Military Service for three years until aged 21
Fellow T2A classmate, Cyril Tolley, also joined the BTH at about this time
but I’m not sure that he
was an apprentice and he was
called up for National Service at the normal age of eighteen.
Cyril, whose Dad was a machine shop foreman at the BTH, was never an enthusiastic scholar and
he probably viewed the thought of a further five years of schooling
with some disdain
Maurice Richards (Mo) and another Junior Tech graduate, Dick Dallow joined us
three months
later as D.O.
apprentices
Mo came from Sedgley—a long way
to travel in those days, Dick came from Rowley
Starting
Pay less than 2p/hour and a 45 hour week
The following extracts from
the Indenture agreement, signed by my Guardian (Dad) and me and
sealed with the official BTH
seal. The document was a long legal four-page tome and as can be seen
from that section dealing with wages, my
starting rate was 4.63 old pence an hour (less than today’s 2p)
rising to 10.53 pence in the fifth year.
It wouldn’t even pay my
train fare from Cradley Heath and I relied heavily on my Parents for pocket
money
The BTH regarded it as almost
a privilege to be trained by them but they did loosen the purse strings
a little when I was awarded
a special bonus of a few pounds in my third year as “Apprentice of the Year”
Working
Hours
The
working hours were
Start 7:45 am;
finish 5:33pm with a one-hour lunch break.
The odd finish time made up a 45-hour week
We “clocked on” by picking
up a check (a brass disk carrying our Works number) from the
Check House, alongside the
main gate, and depositing it into one of the designated containers sited
around the factory.
The Check House was closed
exactly on the dot and pay was deducted in 15 minute penalties so that
being late by one minute
cost us 15 minutes pay
An Armaments Factory
Early BTH background
The original workforce,
pictured in 1917, before the factory was acquired by the BTH
The Blackheath
factory was built during the First World War, specially designed and
commissioned for
high volume
cartridge manufacture. One of its features included a wooden roof which, in the
event of an
explosion, was designed to disintegrate and
allow the explosive energy to dissipate upwards into fresh
air and so
minimise further structural damage
Fortuitously, the theory was
never put to the test and the wooden roof exists to this day
Pictured
in 2006, the wooden roof still intact after 90 years
As a further
safeguard, the factory floor was made from hardwood blocks, to reduce the
incidence of
sparks, and
the last of these were not replaced until the 1970’s.
Found under
some of the blocks were flattened cartridge cases—grim evidence of its original
use
With the end
of the war in 1918 the need for armaments declined and in 1920 the complete
factory
was taken over
by the BTH
American Roots
The BTH had its roots in the
American Thomson-Houston Electric Co
It eventually acquired its own
manufacturing rights and by 1896 was firmly established as a wholly
British owned manufacturer
Its main base was at Rugby with significant
subsidiaries at Lutterworth,
The official address of the Blackheath site was BTH
Black Countryman would ever admit to being a “Brummie”
the branch was always known locally as
the “BTH Blackheath”
The
left hand picture was taken in 1919 when it was a government cartridge
factory,it was taken over by
the BTH in 1920
On
the right, a recent picture, although viewed from a different angle, shows that
the main factory block
is
still intact
A
20 Acre Site
The site covered about 20 acres with a very large rectangular
factory block with a row of two storey
offices along it length
Behind the main block were seven smaller out
buildings and then a separate building that housed a
self contained Toolroom.
There was also a separate electricians dept and a
surgery staffed by a nursing sister
At the far end of the main block there was a large
canteen with separate dining areas for the staff, male
and female employees (fraternisation not
encouraged), the canteen also had a screened off recreation
area with snooker and table tennis tables
An early picture of the “Men Only”
Canteen
The Sports Field
Behind the factory complex was a very large sports
field with the best facilities in the area; these
included a well-maintained football pitch with space
for up to two thousand spectators, a cricket field,
all weather tennis courts and bowling greens
There was a pavilion with two separate dressing
rooms, complete with showers and a separate
dressing room attached to the tennis courts
The sports
field was kept in immaculate condition by the full time groundsman—Wally Hammond
Gala Day on the BTH Sports Field
But it wasn’t
always used for sports and galas, before the site was acquired by the BTH it
was used to
store high explosive
well away from the main factory block
The
The Groups range of products
was massive, ranging from turbo-generators to electric light bulbs and in
its early days it was
involved in the manufacture of petrol/electric trolley buses
In 1935 it helped to
construct the Worlds first jet engine, using centrifugal compressors developed
by
Sir Frank Whittle and during WW2, amongst its
many achievements, it helped to develop RADAR,
electrically propelled
torpedoes and anti-acoustic mines
Sir Frank was an apprentice at the
BTH Rugby before WW2
The Blackheath Factory
The Blackheath factory became group’s specialist in the large-scale
manufacture of AC motors, up
to 50 Kw, and DC motors, mainly
for lift drives, and by the end of 1946 its total output had exceeded
more than one million electrical
drives
It also supplied four speed stator/rotor assemblies to Alfred Herbert
to be built into their very large
range of machine tools and on a
smaller scale, it made motor/generator sets, frequency changers,
amplidynes and selsyns—a type of
low torque remote positioning device
More than a million electrical
drive motors made by 1946
A very early Picture of Motors in the Despatch Area
The motor frames appear to be an early design, circa 1920’s and the
motor shafts seem to
be fitted with flat
belt pulleys—a practice that was superseded by vee belts in the 1940’s
The
wooden roof can be clearly seen
At its peak its workforce numbered more than two thousand and during my
apprenticeship it designed
and commissioned a self
contained mini factory to manufacture small AC motors. Built on the Blackheath
site, alongside the sports
field, it was a state of the art unit utilising the then advanced pressure
die-casting technology for the motor stators end shield and bearing
caps
Responsibility for the design and development of drives and systems was
centred at
1959 it was progressively transferred to Blackheath and electrical and
mechanical design offices
were setup
The Management team and list of long service employees
This
photograph was taken in 1946—the year that I joined them--referred to as the
I think
that one or two of the names on the front row got mixed up
The photo shows the “Managers”
The
list includes Managers and long serving workforce members—I suspect 20 years or
more
The
Apprenticeship Schemes, into the Machine Shop and the vision Mary Gadd
Into
the Millwrights, the Toolroom and the Canon dynasty
the
Planning Department, Final Test and Sport
Dudley Senior Tech and my fellow
apprentices