A BTH Apprentice
1947/1952
By
Trevor Sidaway
Into
the Planning Department, the Final Test and Sport
Planning Department Drawing Office with Alf Cannon, Dan
Jenkins et al
Those Mechanical apprentices
who had received favourable Works reports and had made appropriate
progress at Senior Tech were eligible for
training in the D.O. and as a nineteen year old I spent seven
months there
Pictured in 2006, the line of
offices running the full length of the main block
The Drawing Office was upstairs occupying the first two bays
Alf Cannon was in overall charge and his Planning Department Manager
was a Mr Foster, I can’t recall
ever talking to him, his secretary was a Dorothy Pritchard.
The Chief Planner—Dan Jenkins—was a genial type and seem to run the
office; he had two
Draughtsmen working for him.
One was Basil Rose—he
had the reputation as being the brightest, by a long chalk, of all the
apprentices
in BTH’s recent history borne out by
the fact that he was awarded a Whitworth Scholarship by the
Institution of Mechanical Engineers.
Effectively, this meant that he had
obtained distinctions in all his College exams.
It included a six month tour around
selected factories in the
adding the letters Wh. Sc. after his name
The Scholarship is still
awarded today and can carry a bursary of up to £17,000
I’m not sure of the other
Draughtsman’s name, I think his surname was Terry, one thing I am sure of is
that they had the very modern parallel
motion draughting machines, I had to put up with a Tee square
and set square
Alf Cannon junior
Alf Cannon Junior pictured at his desk in
the 1950’s
He was awarded the M.B.E. for services to Industry and retired in 1965
He was a good engineer an
effective manager and a strict disciplinarian who expected the same sort of
dedication
from his workforce as he
himself gave
As a result he had the
reputation being somewhat “impersonal” however; he was friendly
enough when he turned
up to support the first
eleven soccer team at our home games
He was responsible for
converting many of the old overhead belt driven machine tools, in the machine
shop, into
more modern individual
motor drives at a rate of about two a week—he did, of course, have the
motors on tap!
He was also responsible for
the highly automated factory unit built between the Sports Field and the
Toolroom
for the large scale
manufacture of fractional horsepower motors
A Rollocking from Cannon
I had been given the job of updating a
very large factory layout, it was an ink drawing on vellum and
very awkward to cope with, it had to be to
rolled up at the ends to fit on the drawing board which made
the use of a tee square almost impossible.
I had not quite finished it when I went
off on holiday for a week at Cliffetonville with cousin David and I
hadn’t been told that the Boss, Alf Cannon, had promised to post it off, I think to
Australia, on the Monday
of that week.
Basil Rose was enlisted to finish it off in my absence
On my return Cannon stormed into the office and gave me the biggest bollocking of my
BTH experience,
it by far exceeded that rendered by dear Charlie
on my third day in the machine shop
Dan Jenkins looked
rather sheepish; he confided that he didn’t know of the deadline either
In spite of this, I was able to refine my
drawing skills and was given a few design tasks and this training
proved valuable especially during my
subsequent National Service when I was put in charge of the
Garrison Workshops Drawing Office in
In charge of the REME drawing Office in
There were two other men in the Planning
Department Office;
Cyril Male, the Safety Officer,
A genial man who I had got to know when I
slashed the back of my right hand when trying to take
someone else’s large steel bars out
of a mechanical saw—off to the
Company Nurse, to have eleven stitches inserted
but no long term effects
Denis Joynes, the Javelin Thrower and Shot Putter
I never really knew what his real job was,
he spent part of his time helping to develop the pressure
diecast project that was to be a feature
of the new mini factory being built on land between the
Toolroom and the Sports ground.
He seemed to have a way with the girls and
ran the occasional coaching session on the Sports Field!
The Final Test Department
with Margaret Williams
Those Mechanical
Engineering apprentices who had obtained an additional ONC in Electrical
Engineering qualified for training in the
Final Test Department and I moved in there toward
the end of my
apprenticeship
The “Test” as it was known was at the far end
of the factory block and consisted of five test beds and
benches I joined the test bed run by a Margaret Williams and was
involved in the routine testing of
standard motors; this included what was called a
“flash test”.
This was carried out in a fenced off area with heavy rubber
gloves and boots being worn and involved
checking the integrity if the motor winding insulation with
an overload of at least 2000 volt
Other checks included dynamometer torque checks and heat
runs at full load with the heat generated
by the test
dissipated through elements submerged in open water troughs, called “the
tubs”
The heat runs were usually carried out on a night shift
The tubs were sited outside the rear of the factory and I
walked past them every working day on my way
to the Works canteen and they served as a steamy reminder
of one of the final products of the Company
In the
Quiet room
Some units were built for silent running applications, these
could be for submarines etc and tests were
made in a specially designed quiet room
The small room was heavily lined with asbestos; it was
deathly quiet and gave me an eerie feeling
especially as I have mild claustrophobia
Apart from the normal checks the generated noise was
checked on a very sensitive meter.
I was always glad to get out of
there
Another Trip to the Company Nurse
The benches had a
row of heavy-duty contact breakers and in a moment of abject stupidity I
absent-mindedly
shoved a paper clip in between the contact breaker prongs, there was an
almighty flash
and I suffered a painful burn to the palm
of my hand—another trip to visit the Company nurse
Apprenticeship ends
My apprenticeship ended on my 21st birthday in
Feb 1952, I wasn’t called up for National Service until
early August and I spent the last few weeks cooling my
heels back in the machine shop in the same
section that I’d started in five years earlier. By
this time however, Charlie had retired and an
ex
apprentice—Jack Evans—was in charge. It appeared to be a dead end sort of job
for an ex apprentice
but I understand that he was eventually moved into the new
small motor factory as a charge hand and
finally into the Personnel department
I spent most of this time on the shapers, making Gib Head
taper keys and on an old miller, surface
milling the cast iron lids of fireproof terminal boxes
I still recall that the taper on the Gib head key was 1 in
96
Sport at the BTH
The Sports field had the best soccer pitch in the area, a
cricket field, two all-weather tennis courts and a
crown green bowling pitch
It had a large pavilion with two dressing rooms complete
with showers and a smaller separate dressing
room for the
tennis courts
Table tennis and snooker tables were in a screened off area
at the end of the women’s canteen, (in those
days separate canteens for men and women were the norm)
In
the winter months my lunch hour would be usually spent playing table tennis and
I remember a
Wilf Baynham as one of the
better table tennis players along with Dinky,
my fellow apprentice on the
Ward
2A section, together with David
Whitehouse and Dennis Ford
Table Tennis
Competition winners, David Whitehouse and two fellow table tennis players
Football
In better weather a kick about with a tennis ball in the far corner of
the sports field and occasionally a
competitive
seven a side game, usually against Toolroom staff, on a piece of waste ground
alongside the
railway
station building
An Aston Villa amateur at eighteen
My overriding interest was soccer and
apart from spell as
an amateur with Aston Villa, and a
shorter spell with
Stafford Rangers, I played in the first
eleven at outside left
from the age of seventeen onwards
When I joined the team we were in
Division nine of the
Division two—skipping several
divisions
Some cup and league medals
The
thousands of registered players, hundreds of
competing teams and dozens of divisions with many
professional players emerging from its ranks
Its teams were household names, including
BSA, Bakelite, Dunlop, HP Sauce, General Electric,
Horsley Piggott, Palethorpes, Stewart &
Lloyds and many, including the BTH, ran reserve teams in the
lower divisions
Over the
three seasons that I played the nucleus of the team remained the same, including
a couple of
apprentices,
it was;
Shakespere
Angus Peel
Harry
Steventon(Capt)
ClaryCutler
Ron Hemmings
Teddy Detheridge
Ray Hadley George
Bissel
Arthur Hadley Jack
Bradley
Trevor Sidaway
Apart from me right-winger Ray
Hadley was the only other apprentice in that
team, he was a couple of
years older than me and was conscripted for National
Service in 1950. The right wing spot then became
a problem position to fill although guest player Reg Siviter was drafted in
for a spell—we also played
together for a
short while at
Birmingham
League and played for them for many years, finally as captain
Later on apprentices, George
Stevens (left half) and Brian Cartwright (left
back), became first team
regulars and my cousin David
Whitehouse also moved into the first team
squad shortly after I was
called up for National Service
Pictured in 1950 in the BTH pavilion, Billy Elliot, outside right of West Brom and
Blackheath and District Charity Cup to the Captain of
Malt Mill United—Jack Ness
They had just beaten the BTH 4;3,
scoring from a penalty in the second half of extra time
The BTH team that day
was;
Jack Shakespeare
Angus Peel
Harry Steventon (Capt)
Clary Cutler
Ron Hemmings
Teddy Detheridge
Ron Schofield Jack
Fletcher Arthur Hadley Jack Bradley
Trevor Sidaway
The final was held on the BTH home ground because of
its facilities and crowd capacity--about 2000
supporters paid to see the match
Pictured around 1950 with
one of the Championship shields.
Back row
I’m
on the right
Unknown/W Southern /B Hemmings//R Hemmings/J Shakespeare
Front row
K Baker/C Cutler/A Hadley/R Radford /T Sidaway/A
Peel
A
couple more team shots from after I had left for National Service.
I recognise about five players from the earlier Championship winning
side
Ex
Professional footballers at the BTH
There were
two that I knew;
One had
played wing half for
Baking Shop at
the end of the Winding department—I have forgotten his name
The other Ray Westwood played for Bolton and
He was a
graduate from the then famous pre-war Brierley Hill Schools team and joined
amateur
straight from school
He played
inside right and was a prolific goal scorer, regularly netting more than 30
goals a season
and towards the end of career he played alongside Nat Lofthouse and Bill Shankly
Bolton
wanderers FC, pictured in 1939
Ray Westwood is third left, front row
At the outbreak of WW2 the whole team
volunteered, en masse, for the forces--joining the
Regiment
Ray ended his
career with
were treated in those days that he was forced
to take a semi-skilled job at the BTH, working in one of the
out buildings behind the main factory block
I understand that he was the uncle of Duncan
Edwards
Cricket
The apprentices were winners of the annual
inter departmental cricket competition for two consecutive
years
I could bowl a fair off break but
my batting was atrocious
G Harris/ Keith
Pinches/ Dick Dallow/ Ray Hadley /David Whitehouse/ Peter Stokes
Peter Noot/ unknown/ Cedric Hall/ James O’Neil/ Trevor Sidaway
George Stevens/ Dick Dallow/ Mike Archer/
Roy Harris/ Keith Pinches/ David Whitehouse
Trevor Sidaway/ James O’Neil/ Cedric Hall/ Unkown/Ray Saunders
Other Sports
With two
tennis courts, tennis was popular but I was so soundly beaten in the Works
competition by the
legendary Kenny Tipton that I resolved, in the future, only to
play against the girls!
The crown
green bowling greens were kept in immaculate condition by Wally Hammond, the
Groundsman,
but for me bowls was for the old folks
A sorry
looking sports field pictured in 2006
LINKS
A
Dudley Tech Junior and early days at the BTH
The
Apprenticeship Schemes, into the Machine Shop and the vision Mary Gadd
Into
the Millwrights, the Toolroom and the Canon Dynasty
Dudley Senior Tech and my fellow
apprentices
BTH
Site at Blackheath Demolished in 2010