Thoughts of Chairman Jack

 

 

THE THOUGHTS OF CHAIRMAN JACK

We set up Greenwich Industrial History Society in 1998.  I booked a room; got someone from GLIAS to come and do a talk;  and then issued a general invitation to anyone who was interested in `setting up an industrial history group to turn up - which a number of people did.  Perhaps about 20 people came, among them and most memorably was a little old man. He walked in and announced  that he was going to be Chair and that appeared to be that.

I had never met Jack Vaughan although I  had heard of some ancient curmurgeon from somewhere in Woolwich  who was good at upsetting council officers. Jack did  indeed live up to his reputation and in the first few months of his chairmanship we had some narrow escapes from some real difficulties caused by Jack’s forthright and determined manner.  He had his nose in everything he could find to have his nose in. He had worked at the Arsenal and there is an article by him on file about his apprenticeship which I will fish out sometime. He was enormously proud of the work he had done there  but he was also quite determined about  a number of other issues in Woolwich and to have his say on them..

Jack was quick thinking, well read and well informed, funny, full of ideas, a leftie, enthusiastic about many, many things – and immersed in many, many groups and activities.  I am very aware that industrial history was not the only cause he gave his heart too.   He always refused to take me to his favourite pub on the grounds that the pubs he frequented were not at all suitable for ladies.  Hmmmm!

We put out the first GIHS newsletter in April 1998 and there is a report on our first meeting. We set up a working party to sort out what was going to happen -it consisted of myself, Jack and Barbara Ludlow who was the Senior Assistant at Woodlands Local History Library. We agreed to cover everything relevant to the industrial history of Greenwich in particular those areas most under development pressure.  Which led to lots of arguments because Jack didn’t agree with anything the Council was doing .  He agreed to give a talk at the next meeting about Woolwich Dockyard . We reported:

“ Jack Vaughn gave an interesting on Woolwich dockyard and the many famous ships built there. Launches from the Woolwich slips took place before vast crowds of onlookers as the ship went down into the river with acres of flags flying from the decks. Relics of many of these ships can now be found in museums and collections around the world. Jack pointed to the origins of the yard as far back as the reign of Henry the VII and went on to talk about remains which could now be found on site. The conservation of the steam factory was particularly noted as a triumph for the Woolwich Antiquarian Society. Thank you to Jack’s daughter for helping with the slides.”

I seem to remember going with Jack around the Woolwich dockyard site with -  I can’t remember where they were from = archaeologists of some sort who had studied the dockyard and wanted to see  it as it was now and see if they could track down the bits and pieces which had been there in the past and  had now gone. They were all very intense and had all these maps and things.  One of them explained that they were very perplexed by a long wall which went right along the river front and wasn’t on any map.  “Oh” says Jack  “try the Greater London Council 1974”.

I thought it might be an idea to publish gradually some of the things Jack wrote for GIHS. There’s not a lot because he died after just a couple of years – he was well in his 90s. I don’t want to start right away with the earliest things he wrote because some senior council officers  objected rather and insisted on a right of reply.  Looking at it after 25 years its all a bit sad – Jack and the officials fundamentally wanted the same things . We have forgotten that as recently as 1998 the Council had very  little knowledge of much of that vast Arsenal site. Those Greenwich Council officers were tasked with getting a regeneration plan together for a Government owned site where outside agencies and developers had their own ideas. This was for acres and acres and acres of land which might be in the Borough but which hardly any of them had ever seen and knew very little about. If, like Jack, you had worked there, you had at least seen it.  

I’ll have to work how to handle that. Anyway - just to get things going here’s a completely decorous piece by Jack

THE OLD SHEER NONSENSE By Jack Vaughan

 

On page 5 of the November newsletter a small item caught my eye under “Bygone Kent” Vol. 22.  An Ashford Lady recalls being raised next door to an old public house, which she refers to as ‘Ye Olde Sheer Hulk’.

 

I remember it (just about) and I looked it up in Volume 1 of Vincent’s’ "Records of the Woolwich District".  An excellent ‘Plan of West Woolwich in 1748 is on page 41.  It covers the streets and alleys adjacent to the Royal dockyard main gate in one of which the pub stood.  It appears on the map as ‘New Alley’ but at the time that Vincent was writing his two volumes this name had   been changed to "Martyrs Passage".

 

In recent years the area, has, needless to say, been destroyed.  I have a map of Woolwich Pubs drawn in 1950, which shows the pub but not the passage.  I would welcome knowledge of the survival of

Perhaps the name of the pub is of interest.  ‘Sheers’ (or Shears) were a special type of lifting structure used in dockyards for inserting or removing masts in wooden vessels.  The word 'hulk' is famously used to describe cut down obsolete battleships for accommodating convicts for deportation- the practice ended with the American War of Independence.  It is likely that some shears were carried in hulks to form a type of floating crane. 

 

I recall that the pub was said to have been built using timber from the Royal Dockyard, which closed in 1869.

I have found further information on the pub in a booklet on ‘Woolwich, Plumstead and Neighbourhood’ – the date is unknown by certainly no later than 1890. Some of this is reproduced below.

-

The " Old Sheer Hulk," another of the branch establishments, (of the Woolwich Distillery and the Old Shakespeare’s Head)  is a house with many associations, having been one of the institutions of Woolwich for many years. In the porch of the house attention is attracted by a painting of the " Old Ship," and the words of the song, "Tom Bowling," by Dibdin, appear below. Many of our readers may regret that the "Old Sheer Hulk" has been restored and improved under Mr. G. H. Campbell's proprietorship. It has, however, now been brought into line with modern requirements, and it is fitted up in the very latest and. most effective style. The house stands opposite to the Royal Dockyard gates, and has always been well patronised by the navy, this patronage still being extended to it, even in its rejuvenescent form. The hotel is singularly well conducted, being under the personal management of Mr. Walter Campbell, the brother of the proprietor. We should also mention that this is the head quarters of, the West Woolwich Cycle Club.

 

I thought I might reproduce over the next few months some of the bits and pieces which he contributed to the Greenwich Industrial History Newsletter but also some of the campaigns he was involved  and what he thought about it all. There isn’t that much of it - as I said he died after just a few years.

To sum up – Ray, one of his colleagues in Arsenal history – said ‘Jack? Well Jack’s Jack – isn’t he?’

Woolwich in 1780

 I have been thinking but I ought to write up all the research i’ve done over 40 years on the man who built the Greenwich railway – the first powered railway in London - George Landmann. He had been a senior and  early Royal Engineer with an extremely interesting local background. He was a civilian when he built the Greenwich railway and it was not his only innovative project

However there are huge gaps in my knowledge of his life and but I really don’t think I’m going to be able to fill some of them at all them at all - so perhaps I should just go ahead and write up the bits I do know about.  Its the 200^th anniversary of the Greenwich Railway in 2036-8 but I am now so very very ancient that I think I had better do it now!!

So, I must apologise if I sometimes try out ideas here of what could go into a book about George Landmann.  To start with he was born in Woolwich in 1780 on the Arsenal site.   I thought perhaps I should say and say something about what Woolwich was like in 1780.  It’s not that easy because we don’t have - or i’m not aware of - relevant maps which would fix what thev town was like at that time The best I can come up with is the 1746 Roque map which shows Woodwich town centre. I rather suspect that Woolwich was one of the most highly industrialised towns in England at that time though I don’t have comparative figures.

I used to always enjoy going to talks where the origins of some industry or other was discussed and the late Professor Ray Riley was there. At the mention of ‘industrial revolution’ he would get up and point  to the size and complexity of the Royal Dockyards two hundred years before the supposed revolution began apparently  around 1780. In 1714 a thousand families were said to ‘belong to the Dockyard’ in Woolwich -  - and where did they live Add where were the facilities Which they would have needed.

I think we can name the area as North Kent Riverside and  it is the area of hillside between the River and the Dover Road. There is marshland between a series of Riverside settlements;- Rotherhithe, Deptford; Greenwich; Woolwich, Erith and ultimately Gravesend. One feature is that on that hillside are numerous excavations and pits – everything from dene holes  to the 1960s cement factory complex at Swanscombe.  In Woolwich  there are several pits right in the town centre. One example is in the land between St Mary’s parish church and the dockyard where concerns about the church’s stability date from the 17th century.

These riparian towns all had a very typical riverside  - fishing,  boat building, barge repair,maybe a ferry. The only exception  is Greenwich where the Palace was on the Riverside while  In Woolwich the Royal Dockyard formed one end of the  riverfront.  In 1780 the national press was full of stories about the need for more ships and thus expanding  the Royal  Dockyards citing Woolwich as the ‘mother’ dockyard  and describing planned extensions there. These extensions, undertaken over the next decade, included the Clockhouse and the gateway, still in place.  The primary ship launched in 1780 at Woolwich was a frigate called ‘Minerva’ – and so built for speed and action rather than size.  However  I don't think there is any reference to Woolwich Dockyard in George Landmann’s  autobiography  which is extraordinary since he must have seen it  every day at a time when the Navy near it's peak of its world leading assurance and effectiveness

Another major works in central woolwich was the Gover reply nment rope yard =  something which I have never written up here although I probably ought to. The rope walk was set up in the mid Tudor period  in order to provide rope for the Navy - every warship used several miles of it, all of which needed to be renewed on a regular basis. It is a very interesting institution In that it was the government owned factory at such an early date. The rope yard was on the line of what is now Berisford Street with a path called Ropeyard Rails running parallel and to the north.

 These two  big important workplaces must have dominated the Riverside in Woolwich in 1780 but George Landmann mentions neither. He does talk a bit about another such workplace - the Arsenal along with and in particular the Military Academy.

To the east of the dockyard and the rope walk lay what became the Royal Arsenal and, rather to my surprise, I find it was not designated as such until the early 19th century but I was very aware that it grew as a number of organisations were brought together. It is also important that this happened under The Board of Ordnance, a body which had been set up by under The Tudors to look after the nation’s military establishments and oversee supplies of armaments. A couple of weeks ago I wrote briefly about the establishment and ideas behind the Royal Military Academy and before that we had a speaker at Greenwich Industrial History Society, Mark Thompson talking about the rise of the scientific soldier along with Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers in Woolwich.

So , in 1780 the Woolwich Riverside was dominated by big government institutions – all of them ‘security’.  The Royal Dockyard was to the west going roughly from the Charlton boundary to what is now the Ferry Approach. To the east is the area which in 1780 had yet to become the Royal Arsenal  - it runs east from the point where the riverside path crosses the Arsenal wall as today. These big industrial sites didn’t leave very much space for the town to exist, particularly when we add in the rope walk on the line of what is now Beresford Street -- Where was Woolwich in all of this? I decided I didn’t know and so I emailed Julian Watson because he knows everything. Julian said: “Good question. Rocque shows it best, squashed between the Dockyard and the Arsenal and overlooked by St Mary Magdalene Church. Crammed into narrow streets leading off Woolwich High Street and Market Hill. Hog Lane with its Medieval houses which was later Ferry Approach… A small but densely populated community of great antiquity with an Iron Age/Roman fort at its heart by a similarly ancient Thames crossing.

South of Woolwich town is Woolwich Common along with Charlton and Plumstead Commons.  There is a whole history to the fate of these Commons but basically Woolwich Common was taken over by the military and actually purchased by them in around 1800 plus a Parliamentary order. This move was not popular and there were many complaints about the behaviour of the military On the Common - something which has not really gone away, since many conservationists  in Woolwich complain  about neglect by the military who still own it

North of the Common and to the west of the town were larger estates owned by the Bowater family. A great deal of that area is now housing. On a site purchased from them is huge range of Royal Artillery barracks built in the mid 18^th century by the Board of Ordnance and currently for Sale. There is also a considerable of amount of  open land around the barracks.  Further to the West is Repository Wood which again was purchased from the Bowater family.

The area of common and military open space has created a big green area to the south of Woolwich town. There are also several features of some interest - probably a great deal of it  in Repository Wood. One feature which should be noted Is the ha which goes along Ha Ha Road

There are of course numerous other military buildings in Woolwich and far more than that have been demolished over the years

John Day last days at the Arsenal

 

And so – I have reached the last couple of episodes of John Day’s memoirs which I’ve been following on and off for the past year. John Day was a premium apprentice in The Royal Arsenal in the 1930s; and  I’ve been using extracts from a lot of autobiographical material which he gave to Greenwich Industrial History Society Newsletter in the early 2000s. In them he describes how he was continually moved from Department to Department in the Arsenal with perhaps only a few months at each place at one time. So I’m afraid this last episode is going to be a bit fragmentary in that John is clearly just jotting down a few last points and ends up with when he eventually left the Arsenal.

 

In the last section of my previous episode- he was at ‘The Tinman’s Shop’ – another department near the Plumstead Gate.  He explained that the Tinman’s Shop was, among other things, responsible for making ammunition boxes used to keep detonators and fuses dry in humid atmospheres. These were often nearly two feet long and, he says ‘it was an education to watch a seam – which ran the length of the tin – being made neatly with one stroke of a soldering iron’. The irons used for this were made of heavy copper with a blunt end; while, he says, ’thin irons like the ones used for D.I.Y were known as ‘winkle pickers’.’

 

Everywhere he went in the Arsenal there were always people doing ‘private’ work and this included John himself.  ‘During my stay I made a “Brooklands” silencer, presumably for his motor bike, from sheet steel and had it dipped in tin on the night shift for a packet of cigarettes.’ He explained how the silencer was developed because neighbours of Locke King, who built the Brooklands motor racing circuit on his land, complained about the noise.I found a blog site which explains the background to the 1924 legal action against noise from the circuit and about the silencer

https://simanaitissays.com/2014/05/24/brooklands-and-its-silencers/

 

John continued with a  story about guns “One morning when I came in, there was a terrific row going on in the foreman’s office. This was because the barrel of a 3.7 inch gun was about 14 feet long and during production had about an extra foot less on manufacture. This was done on the night –shift and on this occasion the two feet had been sawn off the same end. The foreman said, amongst other things ‘What are we going to do with that gun now?’ to which the reply was ‘You can always put it a foot nearer the enemy’.”

Another month or two, between polytechnic term times, was spent in the Shell Tool Room doing odd jobs that included the design and manufacture of a lathe slide rest. John explained that all the tool rooms had a blacksmith to do odd bits of forging and lathe tool making. The one in this shop had been apprenticed to an ornamental smith and “ one day he showed me a rose that he forged as his test-piece. It was beautiful, even down to the veining in the petals and leaves.”

One Christmas was spent in the Forges with another apprentice, who’s name John had forgotten. There was a hearth next to the south wall and near the door. The first thing each morning they lit the fire with paper and wood and put some coal on top to roast into coke which produced a clean fire. Then, it being winter, the tools were warmed since a sudden blow on cold thin steel could find it shattered. He said “There is something fascinating about forming red hot steel which has the consistency of cold lead”. The two main occupations were forging pairs of tongs and making templates. When there was a complicated forging to be done, it needed a template of thin plate to check the shape against and an apprentice was the stooge to make it ....”but someone clever could avoid this.”

 

He describes how they made themselves a toaster comprising a 4” square slab of steel about ½ “ thick with a long handle. “This, heated to red heat in the forge, was the best and most even toaster I have come across for cooking toasted cheese” and “at Christmas we decorated the forge and extended our menu to include kippers cooked the same way.”  And he adds “it may be the only cookery that many men ever undertake - but it’s about adapting their tools to do the work of the chef.”

Also “in-front of our forge was a small steam hammer worked by a rather dour individual. We soon discovered that it was not as easy as it looked to take down a square section, keeping it square. With the slightest provocation, it would go into a diamond shape and it needed strong wrists to hold the diamond edge on to get the metal back to square. High speed steel, worked at less than near white heat would split like bamboo.”

Back to Christmas “as usual short of cash, we collected a number of old files and forged them into scrapers and screwdrivers for some of the awkward jobs we knew existed in the fitting and assembly shops. We went round these shops selling them and taking orders for other special tools.”

One day I went to the heavy forge and sat up on the crane gantry watching the forging of a part of a big gun barrel. To see a lump of red hot steel, some four feet square and ten feet long, being squeezed to shape under a huge hydraulic press is something never to forget.”

“Just behind our forge was a 1000 ton hammer made by James Nasmyth; it was dusty and neglected even then - what a lot of our treasures have been lost”. Yes, What did happen  to many interesting devices remaining in the Arsenal when it closed? It was always my understanding that everything was junked.

The last shop John worked in as an apprentice was Miscellaneous Machines situated at the Warren Lane end of the site.  John, writing in 2001 said it was sited ‘near where the new Museum of Artillery will be’. He wasn’t to know that the ill fated Firepower Museum lasted just a couple of years and I think the building he mentions is one of the ones used by the entertainment group, Woolwich Works.

At Miscellaneous Machines John worked on what he thought must have been a rejected export to Russia just after the Great War.  All the wording on it was in Cyrillic and, what was worse, all the feed handles worked the “wrong” way - because for a fixed handle to move a slide away by clockwise turning, the thread has to be left handed.

John also made bits for a printing press which the foreman was building for himself -all the apprentices well knew that if they got a drawing on an odd sheet of paper, it was a 'foreman’s foreigner'.

He said there was a first year apprentice in that shop who asked about a difficult screw cutting job. “I lent him, grudgingly, my special screw cutting tool with instructions not to let it get blunt. When he came back it showed signs of heavy use, so I told him to take it to the shop blow pipe and harden it, but not to get it too hot. He came back, very hang dog, with a shapeless blob of metal to the delight of the rest of the shop who knew that the tool was made of lead !”.

 

There were traditional joke messages that the younger apprentices would be sent on - caught by the old favourites of “a long weight” or “a right hand cuff”, but Woolwich had a special trick that was foolproof. “Going to the stores to borrow a tool, one would be told that 'Bill Starbuck' had it, but was 'not using it at the moment'  Enquiries about Bill’s whereabouts landed one in a far corner of the shop asking again, only to be told he was working in another building and to go there. The other building either denied knowledge or moved one on another wild goose chase!”

It all had to come to eventually. John became 21 and could no longer be an apprentice, so when the term at the Poly finished, he went back as a journeyman fitter for a few months.  He was engaged in fitting drum brakes to Great War equipment which was being resuscitated:. When he left he was not allowed to take with him  ‘a very nice set of single ended spanners up to 1 inch, which had arrived with a new electric motor and had never been entered in the books, so I reckoned they did not belong to Woolwich!. There was quite an argument.”

John left the Arsenal  and I understand most of his career was in the Patent Office.  He wrote all of this in retirement and I never actually met him although I know he did a lot of            work in the Royal Artillery library.

more small firms

 

A few weeks ago I started series of articles which I hope will look at lots of the little small firms which we’ve had in Greenwich and Woolwich. Most of them are too small and their history too uneventful to do a whole article on them.  I explained that when we started Greenwich Industrial History Society an old chap called Ted Barr used to send me the names of what he said were small engineering firms in the borough. I thought perhaps it was about time that I started investigating some of these and last week I took a  number from  Ted’s list and  It turned out that some of them were not as small as all that.

Right.  Next on Ted’s list, and first for this  week is  ‘Cook, Troughton and Simms’. Well, that was hardly a small firm - after all they named a road after one of its main partners. It’s a firm I’ve thought about writing up before - and I would have done so except that the rather expensive book on the firm’s background was sent to me by Royal Mail  -  which is fatal – unable to deliver it.  So I never wrote them up  – but I understand another local historian has considered doing it. Happily John Smith’s History of Charlton devotes four pages to them – this will be a very, very brief summary.

Troughton and Simms were optical instrument makers ‘of world wide repute’. In 1864 they  bought two acres of land on the south side of Woolwich Road west of Charlton Church Lane and erected workshops and transferred their optical equipment manufacture here from Fleet Street.

The origins of the company go back almost 200 years before they  moved here which can be somewhat confusing .  Very very briefly in 1688 there was an instrument maker in Fleet Street  who in 1704 was taken over by mathematical instrument maker who, in  1720, was taken over by the Royal clock maker and made orreries.  In1748 they were  taken over by a  maker of scientific and measuring instruments. - In 1782 they were taken over by a John and Edward Troughton.

Edward Troughton specialised in astronomical instruments. His company merged with that of William  Simms who made instruments for the East India Company. They also merged with Cooke who made telescopes and much else. Eventually in 1864 it was decided to set up a factory in Charlton and astronomical instruments were made for observatories all over the world here. In the 1920s the firm began to do less well and was taken over by Vickers. In 1925 their buildings were sold to Johnson and Phillips.

It is important clearly that we can hear a lot more about Troughton - if for nothing else for work they did for the Royal Observatory. I think Greenwich Industrial History Society would be very interested in anybody who has been studying the company who might be prepared to come and talk to us about them.

And  we should have told Ted, when he was doing his list of small firms,  that a small firm is not one that for 400 years was selling specialist instrumentation  internationally

Next      Ted listed Custance and Thomson, Meadow Court Road, Lee. He said they were long established and ‘all through World War II, they were on repetition machine parts’.  In 2006 they are listed at  Unit 49, New Lydenburg Commercial Estate, SE7 and closed down in 2010. 

 

In Meadow Court Road their building was just round the corner from Lee Road, next to the car repair business and it appears they left in the early 2000s. Their buildings are still shown in even the latest Google Street View although in other use but they received planning consent for demolition a couple of years ago. It is a relatively small set of buildings .

They are described as a ‘precision engineering company but it is unclear exactly what they were doing None of the reports give any details and there don’t seem to be any advertisements,  beyond a few advertising for staff. They seem to have been running for what appears to be 70 or 80 years. ‘Custance’ is apparently a fairly well known name in the Blackheath village area where there have been several distinguished family members. 

J.M.Dangerfield. In his list of small firms Ted gave no details at all about Dangerfield, other than saying they were plant engineers based in Trafalgar Road.  

John Manners Dangerfield was born in 1855 in West Bromwich where his father was manager of a chain works. He seems to have come to Greenwich at some point in the late 19^th century having lived in Reading where he worked as a carpenter and married. In Greenwich he worked at – or maybe set up - the Magdala Works at 514 Woolwich Road in Charlton -roughly opposite where the Troughton Works was. From 1900 he was involved in a number of local charities and various good works organisations – including, for example, a Wesleyan School and much else. Later this included more political bodies like the Woolwich Chamber of Trade. In 1911 was the wedding of his eldest son, Arthur.

There is remarkably little information about the work at the Magdala Works and their advertisements imply that they dealt almost entirely with transport issues and they clearly employed a fair number of men. In the 1920s they advertised ‘All kinds Motor repair work’ and continued to do this for the next 50 or so years. They advertise the use of Acetylene for welding and cutting. They mention a number of garaging facilities including space for large commercial vehicles. For hire were a ‘2 ton lorry, a delivery van and a touring car.‘

John died in 1942 at the age of 87 when he was living in Glenluce Road in Blackheath. He said that he had been retired for some time and I’m assuming that one of his sons had taken over the works. It continued to always be referred to as J.M.Dangerfield.  I do not know when they closed.

DeVille Brothers.  Ted said they were ‘”Sited on the corner of Royal Hill and Gloucester Circus and run by retired Royal Navy 'Tiffies'. They had a well-equipped workshop, and traded as general and motor engineers. During the Second World War  they made parts for PLUTO - valves and control gears.” 

I am told that ‘tiffies’ is slang for Navy ‘artificers’ - but apart from that it’s been very difficult to find anything much out about this works at all. The address on Royal Hill appears in some newspaper reports.

There are other newspaper reports about a William Lawrence Deville but nothing about any brothers. The main reason for the report  was the theft of Mr Deville’s car from the garage at 51 Royal Hill. The car is said to be worth £1000 which - where I come from - in 1946 was very, very  posh, so whatever the Devilles were doing must have been very profitable

E.Dello.  Ted said ”General engineer working from Sun Lane Garage. They had traded from other addresses and did general repetition work – “in the Second World War it was of a munitions nature”. I had not found the smallest reference to a workshop at Sun Lane or indeed any reference at all to anybody called Dello. I have assumed that Dello is a mistake for something else -but I think it’s a very long shot that it could really be somebody by the name of ‘Dale’. Anyway I found the following story in a Kentish Independent newspaper from 1965-  and I thought even if it isn’t Mr Dello that you might find it interesting.

“AT the top of Sun Lane, Old Dover Road, Blackheath, there stands one of the district’s oldest workshops with many interesting links with the days of hansom cabs, a cycling community ... It provides the working environment for 63-year-old Mr. Edward William Dale, a craftsman-machanic of the old school whose skill at the bench and machine has gained for him a big local reputation as a cycle and motorcar repairer”.

The article explains that Mr. Dale lives in Royal Parade, Blackheath, and has been employed in the shop in Sun Lane practically since his boyhood, working with his son, Michael Raymond, on motor-car and motor-cycle repairs. Surrounded by racks of tools and ‘spare parts, benches and machines, the KI reporter thought “there was an old-world look about the building with its ancient timbers, a lathe and drilling machine which showed evidence of constant use, rather indifferent lighting.” He said that ‘these days’ in 1965 – ‘It is mostly cars and motorcycles.’

Mr. Dale said he bought the business in 1937 from the late Mr. A, F Romboy, for whom he worked as a lad. “Years ago we made our own cycles in the shop and we had many well-known Blackheath residents as customers. There were some good cyclists in the district in those davs.”