By Fireman M.N.(Retired)

Bryco Concrete came back to me about some more pre-stressing heads. “We have the steel”, they said, so without thinking I said, “See you next week”. When I arrived at the works the steel was massive. They were R.S.Js again, 36” x 18” x 1” thick and 24” x 12” x 1”. Several lengths were about 40ft long. They had been part of “Goliath”, the big gantry crane that straddled the construction site at Hinkley Point and became redundant. I thought this was the granddaddy of recycling jobs. It took three weeks to cut and shape all the parts and a month to weld them together. Uprights to go into the ground with 45-degree struts welded to them, four on each end of the casting bed. They were huge and would be loaded to 750 tons.

Once again I “conned” Dad out of retirement to sort out the holes for this job. The steelwork was all set up, welded together with a load of re-enforcing bars and was ready for concreting. This was some task in itself. The ready mix was ordered with all plants within a 20-miles radius of Creech tied up for a whole day to supply this one job. The first pour was at 6 a.m .and the lorries just kept coming until 4 o’clock in the afternoon. There were 120 loads in all plus countless dumper loads from the batch mixer on site.

The concrete was still fairly hot a week later and a few small cracks appeared despite a regular hosing.

The casting bed was laid and I had the job of making several hundred clamps to hold the moulds in place. It was a testing time - this went well and I felt good. Later it was loaded to 1500 tons and I felt even better.

By this time work was coming in at a steady rate - most of which was interesting which meant a challenge. I always said a job was straightforward even if it was challenging.

There was still plenty of work from Bryco but it was sometimes a struggle to be in two places at once, so I had to let them go. John Matravers was starting up at Fivehead and he took the work on so I didn’t feel I was letting them down.

One spin off from an earlier job was the Merryweather fire engine. This was put in a sale and fetched £26,000 and shyster Robin thought his fairy godmother did love him after all. So as he travelled the country buying and selling fire pumps and engines he had found another pie into which to get his fingers. At one time I had four lined up in the yard including small units mounted on two wheels and used as estate pumps. There was also a dinky little thing called the “Valiant” which was used by the army and a boiler with the pump removed which a Bomb Disposal Unit had used for steaming the explosives out of bombs.

Talking with our Editor a few weeks ago, he reminded me about the Shand Mason pump that I operated at Glastonbury Rural life Museum one Friday night. I steamed it up for fire chiefs from all over England who were having their annual convention. I invited T.M.E. members and a good buffet supper was laid on which went down well.

Thinking back there were so many things with which I became involved and businesses for whom I did work - furniture repairs for County Hall, fabrications for Wessex Water, Standard Telephone and Cables, Taunton Cider and Trigg Engineering. There were countless builders large and small, the Landmark Trust - with mainly traditional window frames with forged fittings. These windows numbered sometimes twenty or so and were all different sizes, some even out of square but all an exact fit for stone or wooden openings. One job was for all that is left of Stogursey Castle - and that isn’t a wind up!

The last fire engine I worked on was named “Wakefield Lodge”. It was part of the vehicle collection being sold by the Shuttleworth Museum. Shyster Robin bought it along with other things for the Seal Sanctuary at Gweek in Cornwall as they wanted to steam it as an attraction. With this in mind I arranged for an insurance boiler inspector to test it. Some of the plates were so badly pitted, it was condemned as unsafe.

It was decided to have it fixed so I took the boiler to Roger Pridham at Tavistock. It was agreed that he would repair or replace all defective plates and bill me once a month and when paid they would carry on. The total bill was over £6,000. I paid the final £1,200 and collected it. The Seal Sanctuary paid the shyster who then went bankrupt leaving me slightly out of pocket on this with a lot of other work unpaid for. A few months later the Solicitors acting for the Seal Sanctuary said they would like their fire engine. I said I did not have it. What I did not say was that the chassis and wheels were down the road at Watermans Garage, the boiler was at Court Farm and the pump was with my friend across the road.

Eventually after several letters and a bit of horse trading. It was agreed that I would be paid cash on delivery of the Fire Engine to Gweek together with a Double Decker bus for a friend ( shyster had worked the same fiddle on this). At least that paid for the Low-Loader. Both vehicles were chained down on the lorry and padlocked which I said was for security! I was paid the cash - some £4,000 in £10 and £20 pound notes and the Seal Sanctuary proprietor said that he was sorry for what had happened and asked me if I would like to operate the engine for them? I declined as I was thinking of retiring.

When I thought about it, retiring sounded good. Janet and I talked it over. As I was sixty and had never made any real money, it was probably too late to hope that it would change. We decided that we would go for it. Janet still did embalming work for the local undertaker and we knew that we could get by. So we had a sale and cleared out all the heavy stuff leaving a few bits in the workshop so that I could play.

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