A BTH Apprentice
1947/1952
By Trevor Sidaway
into the Millwrights, the Toolroom and the Cannon
Dynasty
Out of the main factory block for the first time and
into the Millwrights and I spent twelve happy months
in this Department.
It was located in the bottom end of the self contained
Toolroom building sited behind the main factory block
The Toolroom had about thirty fitters and machinists,
a full range of machine tools including a Genevoise
Jig Borer, sited in a temperature controlled room, and
a small Drawing Office
Most of the younger staff members were ex Toolroom
apprentices and were a very loquacious bunch,
none more so than Ken Tipton,
a bench fitter, who insisted on occasionally addressing his best friend
and fellow fitter, Alan Bate,
rather formally by his surname—Master Bate!
Ken was an accomplished musician playing for many
well-known midland bands and in backing groups
for a number of the stars from that era including Bruce Forsyth, Max Bygraves
and the Australian
singing phenomenon of the 60’s—Frank Ifield
He also appeared in a very short clip in a film
featuring Sammy Davis Jnr and Peter Lawson
Ken’s wife Betty claims that it was an
unmitigated flop
Ken’s speciality
was the double bass and as can be seen he was also a vocalist. For many years he
was a regular
in the band at
the Queen Mary Ballroom in the
Hippodrome and the Grand in
Ken, on the right, at the Queen Mary Ballroom,
John Gibbons Jazzmen
Inset, Ken in the Fleet Air Arm
He was also a gifted tennis player and a
regular player in the BTH second eleven soccer team, occasionally
making it to the first eleven
Some of the other Toolroom characters were; Bill Hanke, Ken Cartwright, Fred Hodgkiss,
Alan Marklew, Ron Schofield, Teddy
Detheridge, Angus Peel and Ron Hemmings
The last three were regulars in the first
eleven and by this time I was well established as the first eleven
outside left
Angus was an ex Scottish Schoolboy International and played at right
back
Ron was center half, was a cultured player, who would have made
it in the pro ranks but for his lack of
pace.
His Dad, Bert Hemmings worked in the Personnel Dept and did all the organising and
secretarial work
For the Football teams
Teddy (Dither Detheridge) was left half
Bill Hanke left sometime before I transferred into the Millwrights to
join the family engineering business
William Hanke & Sons—he
married Brenda
who was one of the secretaries to the
Mr Gibson
The Millwrights benches were sited against the side
wall at the bottom end of the toolroom and opposite
them was a
middle-aged centre lathe operator. He was shortish, very rounded and had a
melodious
basso profundo
voice that he exercised daily.
His name was Fred Richards,
he was a long time member of an Old Hill Operatic group and I recently
discovered from his daughter that he also ran the
dance band in the
Waterfall lane
Bert Garland, the Millwrights Manager
The Millwrights manager was a Bert Garland and what a no nonsense character he was,
and he needed to be to keep all the plant
working all of the time, he had an office in the
Toolroom building
Trained as a marine engineer he was
dedicated to the job and kept everyone on their toes,
he lived in a house in the factory grounds
so that he was always on tap for any emergency.
He had ten millwrights working for him—One
of them worked in the first of the seven out
buildings located between the main factory
and the Toolroom and he repaired all the
conveyer rollers used throughout the
factory
There were four other teams of two; they
had specific parts of the plant to maintain and a “belt man.
David Saunders. He repaired and replaced all the flat
belts used throughout the factory his son ,Ray,
worked in the Toolroom Drawing Office and
he may have been one of the few remaining Toolroom
apprentices
I spent most of my time with the
team that looked after a large range of the machine tools
Caleb Martin (Cale) and Cyril Hope (Hopey
Dopey)
Cyril was about 5ft 4” and Cale stood a giant
6ft 7”
Towards the end of the War Cale was conscripted into the Navy and he claimed that he was so tall
that
the largest uniform was far too small and
he had to wait about six weeks, wearing civvies, while a special
uniform was made for him
He was the proverbial gentle giant and I
never once heard him raise his voice
In between jobs we would spend time in the
conveyor repair shop and it was here that he told his tales
and taught me how to create a miniature
Scimitar sword from a six-inch nail, a stainless dowel and a few yards
of fine copper wire
The bottom 5” of the nail was bent,
hammered, filed and finely polished into a gleaming curved arc
The stainless steel dowel, 3/32”dia x 1”
long, was inserted into a cross-drilled hole to make the cross
guard and the fine copper wire was wrapped to
form an attractive grip--there was no shortage of
copper wire!
It was wrapped in a clever way so that the
wire ends were concealed and then carefully varnished”
The head of the nail was also polished
to form the pomme
Other regular visitors to the repair
shop were one of the older millwrights who ran an illegal shop,
selling contraband cigarettes from the corner
office (for some reason, he seem to spend long periods in
there with the flighty ex ATS girl from
the machine shop!), and Wally Hampton, the
recreation field
groundsman--he ate his lunch in there.
Wally was an
enthusiastic member of the first eleven-cricket team
One of the very
pleasant routines that I did with Cale was to test
the fire hoses that were fixed in
strategic points on the factory roof. They
were gun type hoses, swivel mounted, and they had quite
a range. The “firings” were always done on
Friday afternoon and made for an exiting end to the
week—especially on sunny day
We also cleaned out the filters from the
dust extractor units on the roof and could get a free haircut
up there from Paddy—a millwrights mate!
Pictured almost 50 years later, in 2006, the roof
mounted fire hoses are still there
Blotting my
copybook with Hopey
There had been a problem with an internal
gearshift mechanism on a large radial drill, I think a
and Hopey had ordered a replacement cylinder type cam to fix it
The vertically mounted cam had an inclined
rectangular cam slot into which a roller follower engaged.
Rotating the cam, with an external
gearshift handlever, caused the follower to move vertically in the
inclined slot and take a train of gears
with it
Having waited a couple of weeks to get the
replacement cam the pressure was on to get it fixed and
Hopey was about to dismantle
the cam assembly when I had an uncharacteristic flash of inspiration—I
fished around in the oil filled bottom of the
gearbox sump and came up with the he real cause of the problem;
“a sheered off cam follower”
this effectively isolated
the gear train from its shift mechanism
Cale roared with laughter, fair skinned Hopey turned
a bright puce and I purred like a Cheshire cat
Hopey had some explaining to
do with the Manager Bert Garland and I let the truth be known in my
typical modest style
A large radial drill still in operation in 2006, could it be one left
over from 1950’s
Hopey eventually forgave me but I did get a glowing report from Bert and a little later on Bert
took
me to the Conveyer repair shop to collect his
treasured bowls, soaking in a linseed oil bath, then on
to the
It was no concern to him that this was in Works time
as no one, including the Boss Man himself,
Alf Cannon, would dare say a word
Cale suffered
from some genetic disorder, which in part accounted for his stature, and he
tragically died
a
relatively young man. His sister worked in the
Winding Dept and his Dad worked on a large
planer
in the machine shop
An Aston Villa Amateur
During this time I was selected to play
for the
an amateur by Aston Villa
The Hammer Man
Another Millwright looked after all the
cranes—mainly overhead cranes—I think his name was Mullins
and he came from Netherton. He was known,
rather facetiously, as the “Hammer Man” and he got this
nickname by having the reputation of
regularly dropping his hammer from the top of his ladder on to the
head of his mate whose job it was to stand at
the bottom of the ladder (to prevent any accidents!)
Fortuitously his mate always wore a thick
cloth cap and had a rather insensitive physiology
He also had the worst
case of halitosis that I have ever experienced
The Cannon Dynasty
The
Canons, Father and son, presided over the BTH for
many years during a sustained period of growth;
the
place seemed to run well which must have been a reflection on their Managerial
qualities
I didn’t know Canon senior but, as a regular in the first eleven, I got to know his son
fairly well—he
turned up at most home games—he also taught
Engineering Drawing at Halesowen Tech in the 1940’s
They were both passionate about the Works
Fire Brigade and all major Companies had their own
auxiliary Brigades.
Competitions between the brigades was
taken very seriously and at the BTH practice runs were
commonplace events in the sports field
It was claimed by some that established
Brigade members were treated preferentially by the Canons and
by the 1950’s the brigade had grown to
eight, three of them from the Toolroom
A very early picture of the BTH Fire brigade with
their competition trophies and ceremonial
helmets
In the Centre is Alf Cannon Snr, the Chief Fire
Officer, on his left, Alf Cannon Jnr, deputy Chief Fire Officer
Pictured in 2006, a sorry looking Dennis fire fighting pump,
used by the
fire Brigade in later years. It was found in the
old cycle
shed building alonside the Gate House
A
Dudley Tech Junior and early days at the BTH
The
Apprenticeship Schemes, into the Machine Shop and the vision Mary Gadd
The
Planning Department, Final Test and Sport
Dudley Senior Tech and my fellow apprentices
BTH
Site at Blackheath Demolished in 2010