EVERYONE NEEDS AN APPRENTICESHIP
10/1/2011
This is a sample chapter from the book The Edge of Time by
John Pellowe. I was ghostwriter and editor for this project.
‘Nowt like havin’ a ’prenticeship, better than’t Bank or’t mines’. Such were the words
commonly spoken in Oldham families as children approached school leaving age. A
university education was rarely a consideration unless you were at the very high end of the
academic scale which of course I was not. So ‘get a trade’ was really the thing to do.
Apprenticeships in the early 1950’s were not hard to come by as many tradesmen had
tragically lost their lives during the war and needed replacing so that we could rebuild Great
Britain. I was therefore well placed to join the family firm, Arthur Pellowe and Sons Ltd
(APAS), and become one of over a hundred staff employed there. Each tradesman at APAS
(1) had at least one apprentice attached to him who was able to learn a skill over a five or six
year period and the trades on offer included: bricklaying, plumbing, roofing, drain laying and
joinery. It was joinery that was of particular interest to me at that time although with such a
variety of skilled workers APAS could offer all kinds of experience from clearing drains to
building a site of sixty houses. They laid floors, put new roofs on factories, relined mill
boilers, built tournament tennis tables, and produced sawn planks as well as fine cabinets.
The whole enterprise was situated at the bottom of Chamber Road and was comprised of
offices and showrooms; a joiners shop, a machine shop, glass department and stores. There
was also a massive basement where the timber was stored and where the mighty circular
saws were kept busy cutting tree trunks into planks. This wood storage and cutting area also
contained a kiln for drying the finished products whilst outside was the huge builders yard
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containing several handcarts, lots of concrete mixers and a five ton Bedford tipper which
was always kept in immaculate condition by the driver, Humphrey Childs.
Entering the works on my first day I was soon made aware that in the world of an
apprentice the last in starts at the bottom and prays for another trainee to join the company
soon. This was because my job mainly consisted of brewing up, going for the lunches and
sweeping up. Until another lad joined I was unable to move on and, depending on how soon
another apprentice started after you, it could be a full year before you got a chance to hold
a hammer! Menial jobs apart, each apprentice was sent on day release to the local technical
college to take a course in the City and Guilds National Certificate for the building trade. This
course lasted for three or four years and as well as the full day’s attendance there were
three compulsory evening classes plus homework. However what the course didn’t teach
you was how to have the ability to face a national crisis in the canteen if you messed up on
the sandwich orders! After six months spent as the lowest esteemed object around, a new
recruit arrived. I impressed on him the importance of getting the twenty five brews in the
enamel brew cans just right, whilst also dealing with the orders for sandwiches and fish and
chips and left him to it. At last I could step onto the second rung of the apprentice’s career
ladder where I would spend three months in the machine shop on the belt sanding machine
or backing off from a huge circular saw.
After my initiation in the machine shop I gradually progressed to general domestic repair
work. Each morning I was assigned to a joinery tradesman for that day and we would be
handed a green job sheet by Cliff Wrench, the outside foreman. Cliff was lucky enough to be
allocated mechanical transport in the form of a 250cc Royal Enfield Motor Cycle which was
owned by the firm and which he used for site visits but unfortunately he was not cut out to
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be a motorcyclist and parted company with it frequently! Because he was the foreman he
wore a trilby instead of the usual flat cap and somehow he managed to tie it onto his head
before mounting the bike as Crash helmets were not compulsory then. Later, probably tired
of his time spent on the tarmac, he got the works to provide him with a Ford 10 open pick
up truck – hurrah! The job allocated to us by Cliff could be for anything from the fitting of a
new door to the repair or renewal of gutters; replacing rotten window frames or
strengthening someone’s floor. As an apprentice it was my job to load up the handcart with
all the equipment necessary for the job we had in hand and the most important task was to
ensure I chose a good one with solid wheels that wouldn’t fall off en route to the job. Of
equal importance was paying close attention to ensure that everything we needed was on
board, otherwise the apprentice, me, would have to walk back to the yard from the job no
matter how many miles away from the works we were. The appropriate materials and tools,
which probably included ladders, were loaded and then off we would go, with me quietly
hoping the job would be close by and not in Royton or Summit which would mean about
five miles of pushing the heavy thing. As we departed the yard two white enamel brew tins,
complete with chipped edges, would be swinging on the shaft of the handcart and these
were the most essential items in the eyes of my master, the tradesman to whom I was
apprenticed that day. We always had a large torch in the tool bag as we used to get terrible
fog and smog which often reduced visibility to a car length. Should this happen one or the
other of us had to walk in front of the cart to ensure that our twenty foot extending ladder,
balancing precariously on the cart, didn’t cause any damage to things looming up out of the
‘pea souper’ (2). The handcart had two large wheels and was not unlike the bogie I was
always falling off as a lad, similarly it had no brake system. There were a lot of hills where
we operated and when we had to go downhill the only way of slowing the contraption was
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to ram the wheel against the kerb. In contrast the only way to get the heavy cart uphill was
to generate some muscle! Depending on the location of the job our journey may take two or
three hours whilst the work itself would possibly take only an hour or so to complete. Such
were the transportation circumstances in those days. The ‘transport manager’ employed by
APAS was Mr Wilson. He was a large man with nicotine stained fingers and a moustache. As
the firm only possessed one five ton truck, Cliff’s pick up and the handcarts I’m not sure if he
deserved his title and he must certainly have had other work to do besides managing the
‘transport’.
The daily handcart pushing could be gruelling but it was something an apprentice had to do
whilst working his way up the ladder. I worked on general maintenance jobs for quite some
time whilst keeping an eye open for the larger jobs and at last, I was asked to assist with a
big job re-roofing the Ivor Mill at Shaw. It was a real bonus to be on a job like this for many
months, something to really get stuck into. Plus there was the bonus of not having to push a
hand cart as all the materials were delivered by the truck. Ivor Mill employed mainly female
workers and the rich humour of the mill girls brightened up our day as did their attire, for
they wore very little apart from a head scarf, a wrap around overall and some oversized
knickers which seemed to be the only type available in 1950’s Oldham! They were
constantly covered in cotton fluff which also adhered easily to their damply attractive and
clingy attire as it was always very humid in the mill in order to keep the cotton from
splitting.
The work that the girls did was mostly on the ring machines where the cotton was wound
onto bobbins (3). They were required to quickly tie any broken cotton thread and their
nimble girlish fingers were good for this type of work of course. The winding equipment
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clattered away as the smells of oil and cotton arose to meet us as we worked on the roof
above. We had to take special care whilst up there as it was only in extreme circumstances
that the machines would be closed down which they would have to be if we dislodged a
shower of dust and spiders whilst removing the ancient and heavy stone roofing slates.
Once the slates were removed, we merrily cut into the replacement asbestos roofing sheets
using a special bladed Bosch circular saw and causing asbestos dust to fly everywhere with
no protection at all as we didn’t know any different then and there were no rigid Health and
Safety regulations.
When the whistle went at the end of a shift, the machinery clattered to a standstill and if we
were not still busy on the roof we would be in grave danger of being trampled to death by
the departing lasses. Talk about Girls Aloud, these mill girls were a traditional breed of
Northern Hardware and they could seem quite formidable to a nice lad like me! However
one of my fellow apprentices, Derek Brierley (4), was more than capable of dealing with
them. As well as being a champion dancer he also seemed to be a champion womaniser. He
could not date these girls quick enough, even shooting off at brew time if he got a chance.
He was a stocky well built stallion and spent all his time sizing up his next conquest as we
worked on the roof above the girls. Apparently old habits do indeed die hard and when I
recently attended Derek’s funeral his brother told me that Derek had been married four
times. There were a lot of grandchildren at that funeral!
When they weren’t out courting with Derek Brierley the girls lived on the doorstep of the
Mill in rows of stone or Accrington brick houses which had yards at the rear. Beyond the
yard and between the rows of houses were passageways providing access for the rag and
bone man, the coalman and the dustbin man. Often in these passages you would find a
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couple of bricks stacked against a wall on which a smaller lass could get more in touch with
her young man, as this area was also used for courting. These Lancashire lasses, whilst full of
fun in the mill, were actually quite well behaved socially, especially when compared to the
skimpily dressed, ‘confident’ brigade to be found today on Friday and Saturday evenings in
Yorkshire Street, Oldham! They did not go into pubs on their own and only rarely did they go
to a pub with a guy. Courting was carried out on the back row of the cinema in the 1/9d
seats or at the dance hall although later in the evening the lucky couple may progress to the
back alley and the bricks if necessary. Tights had not yet arrived; stockings were held up by
suspenders and proved to be an interesting challenge in the dark; enough said but in fact
sex was rather more discreet in those days and if a lass got herself in the club then it was
frowned upon by all. It was very, very different from today where single mothers are
accepted; the girls in my day found a boy friend, went courting for a while and eventually he
would be asked to the girl’s house for tea on Sunday when he would be signed up to
marriage! It was a wonderful world of simplicity and order, totally void of materialistic
paraphernalia, selfishness, rushing around and greed.
When we had finished the roof at Ivor Mill I was given another long term job, this time in a
cinema. These jobs were as sought after as the mill jobs and this particular one was for the
renewal of a dance hall floor. Most cinemas in those days had a dance area, as well as a
restaurant or café and I am sure that in any old cinemas that remain today you would find
the gorgeous wooden dance floors under the carpets somewhere. This particular flooring
job had to be carried out over several nights to avoid disruption in the cinema so we would
arrive as the last customers were leaving, the five tonner truck dropping us off with the
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necessary materials. Up come the old boards, down with the new, which were three inch
wide, knot free maple, lovely stuff. A job like this would take a minimum of five nights and it
was important to have the dance floor up and running for the weekend. At 2 a.m. its time
for the night shift’s lunch and as apprentice I am obliged to sort things out. Cinemas in those
days usually had a big restaurant open to the public and I eventually located it and the
adjoining kitchen which was a huge place with walls of aluminium and ugly cooking units. It
is pitch black and bugger, the light switch is right at the other end of the room. Feeling my
way through the space in the stuffy warmth I hear scratching and scurrying whilst treading
and slipping on god knows what underfoot. I also notice a peculiar smell. Eventually I locate
the lights. Click, they are on and as I turn around the sight is amazing. Thousands of
cockroaches are swarming over the floor and on the unit tops, in fact on every surface.
Within half a minute of the light going on they all disappear except for the trail of squashed
casualties which indicate my route across the room. The following night I made sure to take
a torch but trying to shift the horrid swarm with a tiny torch beam was really spooky.
Understandably I was never very keen after that experience to eat cinema food. As the
magic hour of 4.30 a.m. approached, we would all be feeling whacked and by the time the
lorry picked us up at 8 a.m. we would be falling asleep on the journey home. Eventually our
work at the cinema was completed and another splendid maple dance floor has been laid of
which we are rightfully very proud of. We know that folks will trip the light fantastic on its
warm boards to the melodies of Billy Cotton and Victor Silvester; real dancing folks, strictly
come dancing style, feeling, touching, and sensing the dance, on our perfect floor!
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The next job is at Hunt and Mosscroft’s engineering works in Middleton where we were
required to fix a suspended insulation system to the whole roof. Again it is night work when
the thousands of megawatts of overhead crane cables are switched off. We manipulate our
way between them, not daring to get within a foot of these still lethal forces of power. This
job takes quite a few weeks to complete but at the end we look upwards and see a fantastic
suspended system, white and clean and saving huge heat loss from the factory. Following
such a major job completion, there would be a celebration and the workforce would meet
on a Friday night at The Mare and Foal Pub, across the road from the business. Another
occasion to celebrate was the awarding of the yearly pay rise. Wages were basic for
apprentices and minute though the pay award was, the esteem that came with that extra
couple of quid was like Christmas and birthday in one. To make up for our low pay the
opportunity to work overtime on Saturday morning at time and a half rate was very
attractive even though this was the time traditionally set aside for the local miserable jobs
such as the clearing of blocked tippler toilets. Many houses had one of these contraptions
housed in its own four foot square building at the bottom of the yard. The very nature of the
toilet’s mechanism meant that they were always becoming blocked so Saturday overtime
may consist of several local calls. Without getting over technical and not being too clever it
is as it says – the toilet tipples as and when the tippler plate is loaded. The resulting sewage
is then flushed away by the water draining from the sink in the nearby house. “Three jobs
this morning, all local, all tipplers and Mrs Sidebottom at number six had lost her bulky
knickers before her toilet packed up”, says Cliff handing out the work sheets. Sparing a lot of
gory detail it has to be said that the Saturday handcart run produced some real shocks.
Normally it was possible to free up the blocked tippler by tinkering about and peering down
through the scrubbed wooden toilet seat. If our initial ‘tinkering’ did not get things moving
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then some low level pot holing was required. This exploration often revealed some amazing
things wedged under the tippler, items often found were underwear, rats, and shoes. What
really fascinated me was how someone could lose a shoe down there unless you stood up
on the job!
One Saturday we arrive at a house not too far away from the works. I park the handcart at
the rear of the house and knock on the door. “Morning Mrs H. Believe you have a problem
with the toilet?” “E lad am glad t’see thee, been that way for a few days now, wen’t cat
disappeared.” Her comment gives me a clue and it is a fact that horrible kids have been
known to put all sorts down the tippler, dead or alive. We carry out an initial inspection. The
toilet is well blocked. Nothing is visible so it’s a pot holing job. Fortunately although we had
little else in the way of equipment we did have a boiler suit and cap to wear for such trips
plus various angled tools for working in the bowels of tippler technology. After rummaging
about in the not very fresh air I find it; yes a dead cat. This is going to be upsetting. Fish the
thing out, wash it down in a bucket of water, knock on the door holding the dead cat. “Sorry
Mrs H. I’ve found your cat”. I thought she would be upset but no, she was puzzled. “Eh lad
that in’t my cat, I dunna know where it can be then.” I wrap the orphan animal in a sack to
give it a state burial in the rubbish bin back at the yard. You win ‘em you lose ‘em!
As the yard closed at midday on a Saturday it was always a mad rush to get through the
allocation of jobs and return the hand cart in time. This often left little time to clean up
before meeting the team bus at the Star Inn for the weekly Saturday afternoon fixture of
rugby. Although I did not usually enjoy ‘team’ sports such as soccer and cricket, at the age of
seventeen I had joined a rugby team as I relished the travelling, the scraps and the training
club atmosphere, my position as hooker ensuring I was in the thick of the pack and not stuck
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on the wing. As I boarded the coach accompanied by the aroma of my morning’s adventures
I would be promptly demoted to the back seat but once the game was over and I had been
disinfected in the team bath I was popular once more and allowed to mix freely.
The rugby afternoons continued, my experience and knowledge as a joiner increased and
the time eventually arrived when I was allowed to team up with the house building squad,
initially at St. Anne’s Crescent and North Close, Lydgate and later followed by Merton and
Harrow Avenue off Frederick Street. APAS purchased plots of land for their ongoing house
building programme, each site usually on the scale of around sixty semi detached buildings.
In those days the only luxury by way of building machinery was a concrete mixer, so all
digging was completed by hand and this work usually fell to the ‘navvies’ who came from
Ireland. The initial pipe work leading into the houses was laid by Frank Whitehead a
supreme foreman, who handled a spade like a teaspoon and he would follow in the wake of
the legion of Irish navvies. Joe Hales was in command of the whole house building show and
his team of bricklayers was led by Ernie Dagnall whilst Jack McFarlane as well as being one
of his team was also a very good brickie. Tug Wilson was in charge of the hod carriers and he
was a bull of a man, an ex war marine commando and a professional drinker. On site I was in
company with some of the other apprentices: Derek Brierley, the lothario from the mill,
David Johnson, Keith Palmer, and Jack Jones. We were a good crew. The plumbers on the
building site were led by ‘small in size high in output’ Freddie Clarkson and they installed all
the pipe work, heating systems, and sanitary ware. They would also glaze the windows after
we joiners had put in the frames. Plumbers and joiners usually worked well together except
for when we nailed into the plumbers pipes whilst laying the floor boards after which it
would be difficult to find any joiners on the scene of the crime for quite some time!
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The floor boards together with everything else were made in the joiners shop at the back of
the APAS yard before being shipped to site. Whatever the item we made it, nothing was
bought in. The firm had made a huge investment in machines which were required for many
tasks such as sawing through mighty tree trunks or shaping wood via the lethal spindle. We
had Wadkin saws, planers, belt sanders, and tenon machines to name but a few. The man in
charge of the machinery and the bench joiners was Granville Bradley, a towering man of
about six foot three who always wore a brown buttoned coat and a cap. In his corner of the
workshop there was a desk, a bench and a huge array of cutters, blades, sharpeners, and
micrometers. Granville was feared by many because of his authoritative manner but he was
brilliant at his work. He would allocate the jobs to the men, passing the most difficult and
technical to the chief machinist, Neville Kershaw. Neville’s assistant was Jim Goldthorpe
who I remember well and we would team up again later when I set up the Housing Units
business and he came to run the timber and building sales. Frank Hounsell was the boss of
the bench joiners, an incredibly skilled man. Others included Sid Wagstaffe, Alan Warburton,
and Sidney Redfern, a lovely guy who lived at home with his mother and would now be
called gay. There was also Ken Jackson, another colleague who was later based at Housing
Units. Many of these bench joiners had incurred injuries on the machinery and were missing
fingers or thumbs, or indeed both together. When Jock Simpson lost bits of himself on the
spindle he never felt a thing and wasn’t aware of having had an accident until he saw the
blood. Not having the close attention to detail required by a bench joiner and being
naturally accident prone it was just as well that I found my forte with the site joiners. The
skills of a site joiner include the building of floor joists, roof timbers, partitions and frames,
which are known as first fixings, whilst second fixings consisted of the finishing touches:
laying the floors, fitting doors, fixing skirting boards, installing built kitchens and wardrobes,
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and all other joinery work. First and second site fixings soon became routine to us and
following the initial excitement of working on a house building site the work soon became
repetitive. Some of the men were good at both bench and site joinery and Frank Lees was
one of them. Eric Ibbotson was one of the site joiners, a real grafter with a short fuse. He
later emigrated to Canada where he established a business and built his own wooden
house. When I was hitch hiking over there in 1957 I called in to see him. There was also a
very slim site joiner who must have eaten garlic, a habit which, in those days, in Oldham at
least, was unheard of. He was called Frank Kure and he was Czechoslovakian.
Back at the yard the works office was run by Harry Howard who was deputy to my dad,
Lewis, and his brother, Arthur, the owners of APAS. Harry was in charge of supplies,
accounts, and the staff wages. The office junior was Derek Delhide who, a few years later, I
was to join at Housing Units. Next to the office was the stores and Bill Pass, an ex army
Warrant Officer, was in command there. Bill would assemble all the requirements for a
particular job and pass both them and the green job sheet to Ernie Berry who was in charge
of the yard. Ernie would allocate a handcart if we hadn’t already picked our own, and any
necessary yard materials. If it was plumbing you needed then King of the Plumbers was
Harold Slater who always wore collar and tie and pressed blue bib overalls with
immaculately polished brown shoes. Frank Druggitt (5) was another excellent plumber, in his
earlier days he had volunteered as a parachutist when Churchill required an airborne force
for World War Two. He trained at Manchester Ringway which was then just a shed and
airstrip, not the multi runway, world class airport it is today. His brother, Arnold also worked
at APAS as a decorator. Other fine plumbers were the ever cheerful Danny Costello, Jimmy
Palmer, Tommy Gowers, Jack Percival, Jack Ridings, and Roy Hobson, to name but a few.
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Roofing was handled by a charismatic Welsh man called Tommy Owens and a small chap
called Freddie who was his mate. These two were masters of their craft, seasoned roofers
well used to dodging very extreme weather. The pair of them always seemed to be more in
tune and at home when off the ground; it was almost as though the roof was their stage.
Also at the Chamber Road site was a very large fireplace showroom and offices together
with a smaller kitchen and bathroom section which was run by Harold Berry. Fireplace sales
were big business pre war and right up until 1960 and we had about a hundred different
items on show with all the latest in heating appliances, stoves, and all night burning fire
grates. Once a fireplace had been sold instructions for fitting would be given to Freddie
Wolstonecroft and ‘Little’ George who were the fireplace fitters. They were very efficient
and professional. They would be dropped off by the waggon at the site, together with the
fireplace, at 8.30 a.m. and they would have the job cleared by 5 p.m. Freddie had a shuffle,
not surprising with all that lugging of the monstrous slab fireplaces. There were many others
guys of course but their names and faces have become blurred over time, it feels good,
however, to go back in time and recall some of the people from my long ago days as
apprentice, every one of them dedicated to his role, a combined and coordinated work
force of tradesmen and apprentices, the likes of which is not seen today.
After five years of attending night school and day release I finally obtained a National
Building Certificate at the Oldham Technical College. Completing the course meant that I
had something to show for my time, unlike the Grammar School experience. At last, the
oldest apprentice could now go onto tradesman’s pay, although there was still not much
change out of £10. My promotion was of course celebrated with a boozy do at the Mare and
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Foal pub with the obligatory butties and beer. Paul Bowers, the youngest apprentice,
handed over my indentures, known locally as a ‘ticket’. Paul was just starting out and was
on the bottom rung but he did very well and eventually went on to run his own joinery
business in the tax haven of Jersey. As my apprenticeship had meant deferment from
National Service no sooner had I qualified when a letter arrived ordering me to attend a
medical after which I was promptly conscripted. It was stimulating to leave my working
environment after six years and I really was absolutely comfortable at the prospect of
joining up. I was twenty one and ready for a change.
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