First day at work and end up with a horse.

[cuttsie]

We had a man and his son working at WW Axe and Sons Nether Edge and the father had a hook for a hand, his right hand if I remember. Anyway, he used to have a kip at lunch time so me and the other apprentice unscrewed his hook and put it in his overall pocket, it was the big pocket you see on painters overalls. Anyway 1 o,clock came and time to start work again and hooky, as we called him, cruel sods we were, started climbing a ladder which he did by hooking the rungs, well he ended up on his backside in a bucket of wallop, a kind of distemper. He went bonkers and chased us round the school we were working on, not a hope of catching us but I got a thick ear from his son who was about 23

When I'd been working about two and a half years the boss told me I was going to be a charge hand painting the railings at Southey school and I would get two helpers, who just happened to be mentally retarded, Anyway the boss told me to start one at one end and the other at the other end and on opposite sides, so I did. I had to go for a P so off I went knowing exactly where they were because it was my first school, I was there for nearly 5 years 1934 - 1938. When I got back the two idiots were standing either side of the fence splashing green paint on each other., they were both in their 40s or 50s. I went spare, they were both covered in paint and the ground was soaking in it. I went to the headmasters room and asked him to phone the shop and tell him what happened, the son turned up and laughed his head off. I got the job of cleaning up the mess but I worked on it a few minutes and said sod it I'm off and went and got a job with a firm on Ecclesall road.

 

There wasn't much work in winter so one Autumn a mate said he was off to Blackpool, why, I said, work mate, decorating the B & Bs oh! I said, al gu wi thi, so off we went, it was great, no lodgings to pay for and we were paid full wages.

 

Nowt like the building trade for having a good laugh and some times a roor is there Da,

Mind you its a good job that painter with the hook wern't a bricklayer int it!

[dafodil]

As usual the joiners had it easy.

 

One of my first jobs on Parkins was learning how to carry the hod.

This tool of torture weighed over 100 lbs when full of Sheffield brick co reds ,the same weight as me trying to carry the bloody thing.

 

An apprentice at Parkins was just cheap labour for the company although in the end you could do the job the reason being that you had to !.

 

---------- Post added 04-09-2013 at 22:32 ----------

 

 

To be continued just testing to see if Im on hols first [been a bit daft in't footi section.

 

---------- Post added 04-09-2013 at 22:46 ----------

 

So the Market job was coming to the end and one day A bloke turned up driving a big flash car it was a Jag or Bentley or summat like that.

Any way this bloke turned out to be Nicki Moss the company owners son and he stopped to talk to me and Norman asking us what we would do when the job was finished.

 

Norman was O.K because he was an old company employee who just moved from job to job with them.

But I was just an aprentice who lived in Sheffield and had no idea what was going to be my next move.

 

I told Mr Moss this and he asked me if I would like to work in Loughbrough where the company had its head office I replied that I would ask my Ma if she thought it was a good idea.

 

The out come was that on the next Monday I was on my way to Loughbro to start work on the new University building in that Town.

 

By this time I was the proud owner of a Matchless G9 500 cc motor cycle reg no TRA 991 bought from Greys on Bridge Street for £100 at 10 bob a week over for years.

 

So there I was 17 years old sat astride a big motor bike with a travel bag and panniers on the back heading for Liecestershire.

 

When I reported to the site that Monday the forman Jack who was a milatary type bloke with a pencil tash told me that Mr Moss had told him that I was coming to work on the site and that my first job was to go and get some lodgeings.

 

Now I was 17 never been away from home before and had no idea where to start but Jack told me that the main road through Town had plenty of boarding houses that took in working men.

So of I rode and in 5 mins had seen a sign stating board and lodgings attached to a large Cafe.

 

In I went and to my suprise was shown into a barrack type room above the Cafe and told it was seven and a tanner a night with breakfast.

As the company was paying for this I could not care less so I booked in and so started my first day in Loughborough as a out of town building worker.

 

That first day I just got to know my way around the job and at Six pm I walked to my new home.

 

I had my tea at the cafe and after a walk round Town and a pint [underage still] I decided to turn in and I then experianced one of the most bizare nights of my life.

 

It turned out that this big Cafe come lodgeing house was a lorry drivers stop over and the beds were aranged barack room style along the top floor of the building to my dismay a lot of my fellow roomers were walking about bolocko and at the same time swearing ,farting, belching and making lewd comments about the youngster in their mist namly me!

 

I never slept a wink that night as every ten mins or so some one got up to use a large bucket with a lid in the corner and the snoring from all corners had to be heard to be believed.

Apart from that the bloke to my right was fast asleep with his hat on and this facinated me as I kept wondering if it would fall off.

 

The next morning after breakfast with the residents I arived at work knackered without a wash and Jack asked me how my lodgings were I told him and he was concerned that I had got myself into the wrong place and so decided to find me somewhere himself.

 

This he did and for the following four weeks I stayed at Mrs Mansells Guest House which was a vast improvement on the transport cafe as I had my own bedroom and my meals with the family [Four Daughters no dad]?.

 

The Job on the University was different to what I had been used to on the Market as the apprentices worked in teams under the guidence of Jack and it was obvious that I had more experiance than them as I had more or less had to do the job from my first day on Parkins two years before.

 

This did not go down well with Jack as he took his job in charge of the lads very seriously and continously bolocked me for not paying attention to his instructions on the complicated subject of Brick bonds ,flat or struck pointing.perps beds and blocks as I thought it was old hat and that I knew it all anyway.

 

After four weeks Jack told me that to keep my job at Wm Moss and Son I had to become a bound apprentice the same as all the other lads on the job and I told him to stuff it up his arse as I had no intention of staying in Loughbrough until I was twenty one living in crap lodgeings on low money and eating hard sausages for breakfast at Mrs Mansells so for the first time of many in the building trade I got the sack!

Good story telling Cuttsie .

[bullerboY]

I heard the stories of the buffer girls and the young lads with the milk bottle and one of the girls would lift her skirt up and show her credentials ,you can guess what happened next.

[cuttsie]

So I ended up back in Sheffield with two weeks wages and my cards.

 

The next step was a visit to West Street to sign on the dole but" this was not as simple as I thought it would be as the battle axe behind the screen informed me that by refusing to be made a bound apprentice at William Moss and sons I had made my self unemployed so I would not be getting any dole money for six weeks at least.

 

This put me in a predicament as I had my Motor Bike finance to pay as well as some board to my old Mar who was in no position to keep me for any length of time.

So at the end of the month my pride and joy the Matchless G9 was returned to Greys on Bridge Street who informed me that as the finance agreement had now been broken a penalty of £12 was to be charged.

 

They are still waiting for their twelve quid these fifty two years later.

 

I was now eighteen and a trip into the Cannon pub on the corner of Haymarket which was the place to go if you were out of work in the building trade led me to a job on Granville Road where the new St Pauls school was being built.

 

Imagine my surprise when I found out that the gang of bricklayers on that job were the same lot that had been on Parkins when I started work three years before.

 

The gangmaster was Mick Atkin who was one of the first brickwork subcontractors in Sheffield and Rotherham and he set me on as an improver which basicaly meant low wages.

 

Mick along with his brothers Orbury and Ray had as many as five or six jobs on the go at once and would employ up to thirty brickies and labourers at a time and would take the responsability for all the brickwork away from the main contractor who in this case was Finnegans of Sheffield.

 

This meant that any **** ups in your work and you were in trouble or in most cases down the road [often with your money stopped ]as Mick did not take prisoners and was known by the nick name Flamborough Head which is self explanatry.

But I got on O.K with the Atkins as they remembered me as young Judd from't Manor Top which had been my moniker when I started at Parkins so I got away with just a clip and rolloking now and then.

 

My time with the gang lead up to the winter of 1962 when in mid December the great freeze started .The snows gales and sub zero temperatures of that 62/63 winter had to be experianced to be believed and many winters later I have never known one to come any where near to that one.

 

This lead to us all being laid off work and this time along with thousands of other I could sign on at West Street ,this meant in my case walking from Gleadless and back twice a week through the snow, ice and blizzards that raged throughout Dec 62 through to March 1963 and all for the couple of quid or so that I gave my Ma for my board.

The Country in that winter was at a virtual standstill with railways , canals [still in use at that time commercialy] and roads all effected so it was not only the building trade workers who were laid off.

 

Any way March 1963 came around and by mid month the thaw had set in and I started out to make my way on two buses to High Green where our current site was .

 

Imagine my surprise when I found that the site had been working for two weeks already and no one had bothered to let me know [even though no one but the gaffers and professionel people had a phone at that time a post card cost now't] so I was well wassed of as I had never been so skint in my life and this as well as owing money to various mates who had subbed me now and then through nearly four months.

 

I decided that my time with the Atkins gang was about to end and started looking around for the next leg of my journey in the building trade which would lead me up in the World ,literaly that is.

Edited September 19, 2013 by cuttsie

[mikebatty]

The biggest day of your life til then arrives you are starting work!

 

I cycled the six miles to my first days ever work at the building site at Wollerton Road Bradway.

 

The first thing i did was introduce my self to the forman of Parkins Rotherham who,s name was Jack Horne.

 

Jack looked at me and asked if I was sure I was fifteen and then when convinced asked me what trade I would like to learn i said I would like to be a joiner, He replied that joiners were two a penny and I had better start with the bricklayers.

 

He then told me to start work by finding Bonny and taking the gobbo round to the bricklaying gangs.

I walked round the site and asked if Bonny was around and was greeted with lots of **** taking. Any way at last I found the mysterious Bonny who turned out to be the biggest bloody Shire Horse that ever walked.

 

Apparently my first job was to lead this great big bloody horse and cart around the various bricklaying gangs and load up any gobbo , lintels ,bricks,etc that they needed.

The problem was that if Bonny didn't want to move she just would not until she was ready and no amount of pulling and tugging would change her mind and then all at once she would be off like s--t of a shovel.

 

My other job was to fill the copper boilers with water and light them for the tea and dinner breaks ,this I

did using the bucket that I had previously given my new pal her oats in ,

When the water boiled I had to fill all the mashing cans and take them round the site to there owners.

I had much trouble with this task the biggest being smacked in the nose by a joiner who objected to having the bloody horses oats swilling around in his tea.

I also had to mash the formans tea [Jack Horne] who insisted on having his delivered to the site cabin in a china cup what a bloody first day in the grown up World.

P.S. I used to see the joiner who cracked me in the nose many years later in the Carlton Club at Gleadless and knew I could have got my own back ,He never recognised me so I let bygones be be bygones but as far as the bloody horse goes every time i buy a tube of glue I think of her.

 

Nice humorous story Cuttsie.

Must be something about the nature of the beast.

I had a 17 hand Clydesdale which we called Thor. A gentle giant you have yet to meet.

I used to take him for a ride every morning . Round the fields and down through the village . Whichever way you went from my house you had to go through a beck .

The first two or three turns he came to a halt - in the beck. No amount of coaxing would move him on . So , dismounting into the beck up to my calves in water ; pulling at the reigns without any response , I just had to wait until he was ready . He would then just calmly walk out and wait at the side of the beck .

Having learned my lesson the hard way. On approaching the beck I used to dismount at the water splash, walk over the footbridge holding on to the reigns , tether them on to the handrail on the footbridge and sit in the field until he was ready . He would just stand in the water for a good 10 mins . letting the water run over his fetlocks . When he was ready he would just walk on to the track , I would mount and we would be on our way .

Thanks for bringing that memory back . I am sure you enjoyed your experiences with her as I did with mine .

You learn that , sometimes , you have to go at someone elses speed and not yours .

Edited October 4, 2013 by mikebatty
Adding a learning experience

[cuttsie]

Nice humorous story Cuttsie.

Must be something about the nature of the beast.

I had a 17 hand Clydesdale which we called Thor. A gentle giant you have yet to meet.

I used to take him for a ride every morning . Round the fields and down through the village . Whichever way you went from my house you had to go through a beck .

The first two or three turns he came to a halt - in the beck. No amount of coaxing would move him on . So , dismounting into the beck up to my calves in water ; pulling at the reigns without any response , I just had to wait until he was ready . He would then just calmly walk out and wait at the side of the beck .

Having learned my lesson the hard way. On approaching the beck I used to dismount at the water splash, walk over the footbridge holding on to the reigns , tether them on to the handrail on the footbridge and sit in the field until he was ready . He would just stand in the water for a good 10 mins . letting the water run over his fetlocks . When he was ready he would just walk on to the track , I would mount and we would be on our way .

Thanks for bringing that memory back . I am sure you enjoyed your experiences with her as I did with mine .

You learn that , sometimes , you have to go at someone elses speed and not yours .

Cheers Mike, Old Ossie Parkin who owned Parkins of Rotherham was mad about horses and used to keep a herd of what I think where refered to as Polminoes , He kept this herd on the fields that surrounded his offices at Whiston nr Rotherham.

Any way every so often the whole lot used to get out and start roaming the area even as far as Ulley and Wickersley and this escape always resulted in all the apprentices being rounded up so as they could go and round up the escapees.

 

What Old Ossie and his son Howard, [another story] didn't know was that it was the local apprentices that made sure his polminoes got out the night before as this escapade could often give us three or four days of disapearing where ever took our fancy and old Ossie never caught on.

[cuttsie]

About three weeks later I was stood at the bar in the Cannon pub on Waingate when in walked an old school pal Cliff Eadley.

Now Cliff was one of the brighter mates who attended Prince Edwards on the Manor Top and he was usualy one jump in front when it came to matters of common sense.

Anyway we got chatting over a glass of Stoneses and Cliff mentioned that the P.W.D.or to give them their full name The Public Works Department where advertising for bricklayers on the new Hyde Park Flats project.

We aranged to visit the site on the following Monday and Cliff sugested I leave the talking up to him, this suited me as I am not very good at telling porkies.

 

So came the Monday and we arrived at the site office to be greeted by the forman bricklayer Malcolm summat or other!

Straight away Malcolm asked how old we where and before I could open my gob Cliff told him we were twenty two .[we were 18 and 19 year olds.]

Now wether Malcolm believed him or not I don't know but doubt it mainly because even when I was twenty one I often got asked how old I was in pubs.

 

But the outcome was we were set on and had a rise not only in wages but in the views across Sheffield as the Hyde Park was the first multi storey block that we had both worked on.

 

On our first day Malcolm proceeded to sniff us out and see if we were actualy capable of the work involved on the flats, he put us on building the brick panels that seperated the flat balconys from each other expecting us to **** things up I think.

But realy it was like shelling peas to us as we had both been having to keep up with and work alongside hard taskmasters almost from leaving school.

 

We soon established ourselves and worked without a hodcarrier as all the gobbo, bricks and blocks where delivered to each rising floor by hoist.

This hoist also acted as a lift for the men working on the floors and there was no such thing as health and safety involved it seemed as though any one could jump on and become in charge of this mostly open ended contraption at will and how no one was killed on that bloody thing I will never know.

 

When your gang wanted bricks , blocks or gobbo you simply stood on the scaffold at the hoiste gantry and shouted down to the labourers a couple of hundred feet below to send you the required materials.

 

This was a constant battle as there was approx twenty othe gangs doing the same and among them were some who the labourers down below favoured for whatever reason.

 

It became important for us to get our stuff up onto our section because Malcolm [who was known to one and all as the Milky Bar Kid ] had put us on bonus so me and Cliff used to work through our dinner hour and get ourselves loaded out with gear.

 

Any way we soon started to double our money on the flats and when the Milky Bar Kid used to bring the bonus chits round on Friday afternoons we were often the top earners and this did not always go down well with some of the older hands who would hang around waiting for gear while we just jumped on the hoist and got our own.

 

The Hyde Park was my first involvment with the Construction Union and to work for the P.W.D. you had to be a member.

 

This union was completely useless and usualy took the part of the P.W.D in any disputes.

I remember one incident involving lifting heavy concrete balastrades .

This was part of every gangs work on their section.

The balstrades where about eight foot long and perhaps four foot six high and made out of solid concrete.

 

Every gang had to manhandle these into position between columns on the balcony edge and they must have wieghed at least 15 cwt .

Now that is a lot of weight for two or three men to shift and we had to improvise rollers from bits of scaffold etc to shift the bloody things.

This lead to many lads hurting their backs etc and putting them selves off work so we walked out and called in the Union .

 

The main actors from the union office on Norfolk Street turned up and proceeded to advise us not to make a fuss [i mean making a bleedin fuss about lugging 15 cwt about and breaking your back] as jobs were getting hard to find at that time of year so as usual at that time we just shut up and carried on.

 

I saw my first death on a building site while on the Hyde Park Flats it was not a pretty sight and one of three that I have experianced in my time in the trade .

 

The difference in workers getting killed in the building trade is that it usualy one or two men at a time and so does not reach the same media interest as say the mining or fishing industries although if they are all added up year on year you will find that there are many more lads killed in the building trade than any other.

 

Cliff and myself had one narrow escape on the Hyde Park Flats when working on the red brick panels that fronted the flats.

We were running in the brickwork when an almighty crash seperated us [we were perhaps six foot apart]

What had happened was that the shuttering joiners working above us mishandled the steel shuttering cramps that they used to hold the shutters to the rising columns and the bloody lot fell bang in the middle of us two we escaped certain death by inches.

No tin hats no steel toe caps and no one bloody cared at that time.

To be continued another day.

Edited October 31, 2013 by cuttsie

[flyer]

Cheers puddinburner ,Hope yesterdays Yorkshire was O.K.

You were so lucky horse on the first day,I was 54 before my first, mind you not knowing his head from his butt he made me $40,000 the hard way when racing purse's was very small,and if there was a way to do it wrong i did it, but he taught me everything i now know re horses and i went on to have 20 more great years:love::love::love:my beast

[cuttsie]

So my career on the Public Works Department took me on various jobs around Sheffield those jobs included the Kelvin Flats, The Sheaf Valley Baths, The Art College, Brook hill Flats ,Nether Thorpe Maisonettes and various smaller contracts.

 

The P.W.D. was the finest council organisation ever assembled in this City it was a Socialist idea that worked! all the workers were treated as equals and for the first time ever in Sheffield building workers got sick pay and proper paid holiday entitlement.

 

It was a sad day when the Council decided that it was better to put all the work out to tender and let the big private contractors move in on a big scale.

So my last job on the P.W.D. finished [Kelvin Flats] and I ended up on the lump.

 

Now the Lump as it got to be known was a way where the big contractors got out of paying ,Sick pay, Holiday entitlement, Insurance, or any other overhead that came with employing people on a proper basis.

They did this by making building workers self employed .

 

Being on the lump in the Sixty's meant that you were paid in cash for the amount of work you turned out and this could be effected by such things as bad weather, no materials to hand, or simply that the contractor could not be bothered to make sure that the work was continuous and so at times you simply did not work .

 

You were supposed to pay your own Insurance Stamps and Tax and due to this many building workers got into trouble over the years as they were not book keepers or good with money so as when the tax man came a calling many ended up in court and bankrupt.

 

My first job on the lump was for Hassles Castles [as the firm of John Hassle was known in the trade].

The site was at Fox Hill and the houses where Semi detached with the odd detached thrown in.

The prices offered on site were appalling, in the footings we would get around £6 per thousand common bricks laid and that was hard graft , to earn a fiver a day each a two and one gang [Two brick i's one hod carrier] had to lay nearly three thousand bricks.

 

The house units them selves were split into three floor price sections. From damp course to first floor [bedroom] level was seventy five pounds.

The second floor was a hundred and the topping out Fifty quid.

 

So Hassles Castles were getting the brickwork built on a pair of Semi's for around £300 to £350. and they were thrown up!

I mean to even make a living wage you had to lay over a thousand bricks a day regardless of weather or any other hold ups and that is why the lump workers in all trades got a bad name, the main contractors and speck builders simply cut the prices so low so as to make it impossible to do a good job without cutting corners.

 

Any way the site at Fox hill had some interesting characters among them being Bunney Grey[ George] from the Pitsmoor area who although weighing around eight stone wet through would fight any man who crossed him and often did on that site.

Another well known character on site was a bloke called Ray Morgan who was a well known Sheffield hard man ,A man you crossed at your peril .

This lead to an amusing episode on one house we were topping out due to Ray taking away our ladder leaving us stranded on the roof.

 

We shouted down to our hod carrier Ken Carr[ later land lord of the Tramway on London Road] to go and tell Ray to bring back our ladder, Ken went away and ten minuets later came back and shouted up to us that Ray Morgan had lifted him above his head and threatened to chuck him in the lime pit so Ken had decided that Mr Morgan could borrow our ladder for as long as Mr Morgan needed it and we would just have to stop on top till he brought it back.

 

All the lads on Fox Hill seemed to be Wednesdayites and the job corresponded with the year that Wednesday got to the cup final at Wembley and the whole site followed them to every round .

 

All the matches were on Saturday and I remember us all working while dinner and then setting off for the match [Wednesday played every round away that year] and we visited Huddersfield and Villa Park among others.

We would all cram into who's ever old car or van or lorry was available and go to the away matches in our building muck, turned down wellingtons, old corduroy trousers, various old two or three piece suits etc.

 

I remember one time at Huddersfield Wednesday had won and we all headed for the local pub to celebrate ,Huddersfield Rugby Club just happened to be celebrating their own win that day and where in the pub along with their wives and girl friends.

 

Bunny Grey being Bunny Grey took charge of the juke box and we were having a good old sing song along with the Rugby lads when Bunny decided he wanted to dance and made a bee line for the first female he set eyes on.

Now remember Bunney was in Wellow's and covered in gobo and these rugby lasses were in their best coats and frocks and so did not fancy a jive with our man at all.

But Bunny dragged this lass up to dance any way ,this resulted in the Huddersfield Rugby team asking us to leave and after a bit of pushing and shoving we decided it was a good idea and shot out side followed by the Rugby lads who it seemed were going to sort us out .

I remember Ken Carr, and me running down Huddersfield main Street and looking back to see Bunny Grey slinging his wellingtons at the pursuing Rugby mob while at the same time shouting at us that we were a set of yellow bustards .

He was right!

To be continued.

.

Edited November 10, 2013 by cuttsie

[biggsy]

Cuttsie- that's the best read i've had in years!!

 

You should turn your life story in to a book

 

 

 

Cheers, Biggsy