First day at work and end up with a horse.

[cuttsie]

Most of us got the sack when the York job finished [the job run over time , Mick Colley bricked the spy hole in up side down ] The spy hole allows the furnace man to check on the progress inside the furnace .

Any way The gaffer Pete Chapman asked me and around a dozen others to stop on the office until the next job came up which meant we got bare money until called back.

When the call came they told me to present my self at Manchester airport the following day ready to fly out to Ireland.

 

 

This was a big thing for me as I had never ever been on an aeroplane before and the farthest I had been from home was London [Wembley 1966].

 

So here I was newly married ,new babie, and of on a jet plane to the Emerald Isle.

Funnily enough the hit song at that time was Leaving on a Jet Plane written by John Denver and recorded by Peter ,Paul and Mary.

So there was tears as I left Walkley tools upon my back for the airport.

 

At the airport we all met up and boarded the air Lingus plane for Cork in Southern Ireland , The plane in question was not as the song a jet plane but a very old prop engine job that shook and rattled as we took of and seemed very noisy to us lot of rough arsed travellers from Sheffield ,I remember one bricki Barry Taylor who was petrified and sat perfectly still the whole journey staring straight ahead , this came to a head as we approached landing at Cork and was due to fog.

The pilot had three attempts at landing before managing to touch down and old Barry was crapping himself ,at one point he asked a couple of priests sat across from us to say a few words to their gaffa which brought about lots of shall we say advice from fellow passengers.

 

When we eventually got through the arrival area I found I was a few yards behind our mob so ran to catch up only to stopped by uniformed men and returned to customs,

At the desk the customs man asked me why I was in such a hurry To which I told them I was just catching up with my mates, Any way he told me to empty my bags on the counter ,My tool bag was emptied and the general ****e accumulated in there covered him and his counter in brick and cement dust.

Not a good start [it was the time when the troubles in Ireland were about to kick of again and my running along with a tool rattling bag did not go down well.

When I finally got through I found my new name was smuggler .

 

We left Cork and headed for a place called Dungarven In Waterford where we were to build some rotary furnaces for an American company.

We found various boarding houses in the area and settled in to what was be a very interesting six weeks .

 

---------- Post added 03-01-2014 at 19:43 ----------

 

Rotary kilns or furnaces are just that a long round furnace that slowly turns as it heats up.

The brickwork involved in lining is not complicated but must be exact as any bed joints that are not tight would lead to catastrophe when the furnace is first commissioned.

 

So us Sheffield mob started the work for which Sheffield bricklayers are famous throughout the World due to furnace design learned in the local steelworks.

 

---------- Post added 03-01-2014 at 20:42 ----------

 

We worked twelve hour shifts days and nights with perhaps one day of every ten days or so.

Dungarven at that time was quite little town not used to Sheffield's finest boozers and de dar's descending among them and we where not welcomed with open arms by the locals.

 

In the local Hotel one night I was having a drink or two with a local doctor, we spent a couple of hours discussing the World in general until I noticed he kept telling me how crap the English really where and should get out of Ireland.

 

Now I was not into politics at all in those days and this conversation was going straight over my head until he [a bloody Dr] offered me outside to have a scrap as he would sort me out at the same time as calling our lads English bustards.

 

To say we where amazed is putting it mildly as we all thought we were getting on with the locals .O.K.

Anyway the Garda turned up and chucked us out telling us not to come back so we went back to the digs only to be met by the land lady who told us that if we caused any more trouble we were out.

 

Near to the end of the job when the furnaces were being tested we were doing last minute checks when the Irish welder who had worked with us all through shouted into the furnice that" if you Sheffield furkin gangsters don't get out now I am going to turn it on and fry you".

 

We looked at each other and filed out with a lad called Parkin from the Arbourthorne bringing up the rear.

The Irish welder and his buddies were having a good laugh at our expense until Pete gave him the Arbourthorne kiss opening up his nose then flooring him with a crack to his wedding tackle.

 

This did the trick as the welder was the local hard man but who had not met up with one of Sheffield's street fighters before.

 

My time in Ireland left me with mixed feelings and I have never been back , I now realise it was a very tricky time in Anglo Relations with the troubles about to kick of but I have worked with hundreds of Irish lads in England without one bit of trouble so the time I spent in Waterford was an eye opener.

 

As an after thought two things about Ireland stick in my mind one was the extreme quite as I walked back to the digs in the dark after the night shift ,you could not hear a sound !until one morning that is! when I heard strange footsteps following me and decided to go a little faster ,the faster I walked then ran the nearer the following steps got and in the end I stopped and looked around to see just a bloody donkey with two milk churns strapped to its back just trying to be friendly with me.

 

The other thing is Pete Chapman the gaffer gave me a lift to a place called Cappoquin ? on the blackwater river where there was a bacon or pig factory .

The blood from the freshly slaughtered pigs would go through a pipe into the river along with bits and pieces of pig ,bacon etc and the sight of massive fish feeding around that pipe was amazing with local kids just catching them in buckets.

The Sheffield fishing fraternity would pack in if they had witnessed that.

Edited January 4, 2014 by cuttsie

[Nekatom]

Brilliant, only just seen this and read bits. Will come back and read the rest.

[cuttsie]

Brilliant, only just seen this and read bits. Will come back and read the rest.

 

Thank you Nekatom.

 

---------- Post added 16-01-2014 at 21:36 ----------

 

So the Ireland job came to an end we returned to various jobs around Sheffield's Steel Works then up to Whitehaven near St Bees head in Cumberland to build another rotary kiln .

At night when you sit on the St bees Head you can see the lights of three kingdoms and it is a magnificent spot to spend an hour or two.

After this job finished Pete Chapman the gaffer asked me to go to Venezuela in South America for a six month contract it would have been on double the money that could be earned in the U.K. but due to new family commitments I turned it down this was probably a turning point in my life and who knows what would have happened if I had gone to South America.

 

A I fell in with a bricklayer called Blondie Wilson who lived on the Parson Cross . Blondie was character from a by gone age who always wore a collar and tie for work ,chain smoked, drank like a fish and was always skint.

 

We got a start at the English Steel depot on Stevenson Road down Attercliffe and our first job was to build a round chimney that was around 100 ft high.

This was a new experience for me and a real eye opener as we worked from the inside getting winched up in a large bucket as the chimney grew in height ,no health and safety involved stand on the bucket and up we go.

 

We finished the chimney and started building some dividing walls on the main factory floor ,the Forman had a habit of talking to you while at the same time squinting down the wall checking to see if it was plumb or not and this got up Blondie's wick.

 

He did it a few times until one day Arnold [blondie] let him have both barrels .

"What the fricken hell are tha piken at " yelled Blondie at the foreman who promptly jumped back and fell down a manhole breaking his leg ! that was us walking down down Stevenson Road tools upon our back , middle of winter skint and once again out of work.

About a week later after calling in the Red lion on Holly Street to see if there was any work about to start I fell down a hole on West Street and broke my leg!.

 

---------- Post added 16-01-2014 at 22:44 ----------

 

To be continued I hope.

Edited January 31, 2014 by cuttsie

[dafodil]

Thank you Nekatom.

 

---------- Post added 16-01-2014 at 21:36 ----------

 

So the Ireland job came to an end we returned to various jobs around Sheffield's Steel Works then up to Whitehaven near St Bees head in Cumberland to build another rotary kiln .

At night when you sit on the St bees Head you can see the lights of three kingdoms and it is a magnificent spot to spend an hour or two.

After this job finished Pete Chapman the gaffer asked me to go to Venezuela in South America for a six month contract it would have been on double the money that could be earned in the U.K. but due to new family commitments I turned it down this was probably a turning point in my life and who knows what would have happened if I had gone to South America.

 

Any way I fell in with a bricklayer called Blondie Wilson who lived on the Parson Cross . Blondie was character from a by gone age who always wore a collar and tie for work ,chain smoked, drank like a fish and was always skint.

 

We got a start at the English Steel depot on Stevenson Road down Attercliffe and our first job was to build a round chimney that was around 100 ft high.

This was a new experience for me and a real eye opener as we worked from the inside getting winched up in a large bucket as the chimney grew in height ,no health and safety involved stand on the bucket and up we go.

 

Any way we finished the chimney and started building some dividing walls on the main factory floor ,the Forman had a habit of talking to you while at the same time squinting down the wall checking to see if it was plumb or not and this got up Blondie's wick.

 

He did it a few times until one day Arnold [blondie] let him have both barrels .

"What the fricken hell are tha piken at " yelled Blondie at the foreman who promptly jumped back and fell down a manhole breaking his leg ! that was us walking down down Stevenson Road tools upon our back , middle of winter skint and once again out of work.

About a week later after calling in the Red lion on Holly Street to see if there was any work about to start I fell down a hole on West Street and broke my leg!.

 

---------- Post added 16-01-2014 at 22:44 ----------

 

To be continued I hope.

two leg breaks in one week:)

[cuttsie]

On the corner of West Street and Leopold Street [where the Central Tech School used to be ] the Corporation had dug a hole, not a big hole just an average size hole that was going to take a road sign post.

 

Anyway the hole diggers were having a fag break as I came round the corner from the Red Lion and I exchanged a few pleasantries with them ,Due to the couple of pints of Stoneses that I had consumed in the Red Lion I fell down the hole and broke my leg.

 

After I got to my feet and realised that I was not very well the the Corporation men gave me a lift to the Infirmary in their Bedford lorry and dispatched me into casualty who then proceeded to put on my leg a knee length pot.

 

This meant around six weeks off work which was as it turned out in the end quite profitable as I put in a claim to the Town Hall for compensation as I had fallen down their uncovered hole on West Street.

 

It turned out that they knew all about the accident as the lads had reported it to the office and the outcome was that I was offered four hundred and fifty pounds compensation which would be around ten weeks wages at that time.

 

So six weeks off on the panel ,a bit of fiddle on the side and then my compo cheque arrived I was rich again!.

 

This was the time when Goverment grants were all the rage in Sheffield and a fewof the lads had jumped on the band waggon and set themselves up as self employed builders and property repairers and I teamed up with a couple of them to do the same.

Apart from me there was Brian Widdowson a joiner from Walkley Lane ,Leaking Larry Sampson a plumber from the Arbourthorne and Frank Damms a plasterer from Walkley and we all soon obtained jobs all over Sheffield on the Goverment Grants and shared our trade skills so as to work on each others jobs.

With my Compo money I was now the proud owner of a Bedford C.A. van with a 1.6 litre engine and sliding doors ,three speed manual gearbox with column change it was about ten years old and a bleedin nightmare to drive and maintain.

I had also purchased ladders and other various bits of equiptment to get me started as a self employed builder.

And then I met Tosh Wild.

 

---------- Post added 31-01-2014 at 23:00 ----------

 

The year would have been around 1971 and I was regular drinker in the pubs around Walkley .The Rose House, The Freedom , The Royal, The Heavygate, The Crown and all pubs inbetween. Walkley was the most exciting part of Sheffield in the 1970'swith a pub on every corner and these along with the Walkley Working mans club were packed to the rafters most nights of the week.

 

But the Rose House on South Road was the pick of the bunch as this was the pub where the Walkley characters hung out.

 

One of these was my pal Tosh Wild.

The first time I met Tosh he was in the process of lighting a fart and he was an expert at this one time Walkley fart lighting championship events.

 

I will not go into the ins and outs as to fart lighing but what I will say is that it is a spectacular event that once witnessed is never forgot and when some one tells you that they nearly died laughing then you will have some idea as to what I mean.

 

I got talking to Tosh who was a larger than life member of the Walkley mafia .

I told Tosh that I had set up on my own and that on the following week would be starting a big Govement grant job on Walkley Street, A job that would mean taking of the rear roof and building a full width Dormer window [thousands of these where being constructed in the early 70's so as to create bedrooms in the terrace houses roof space].

 

I told Tosh that I would need a joiner and slater to give me a hand as I had never attempted a full roof job on my own before.

 

"No worries Judd" replied Tosh "I will give thi an hand I'm an expert on Dormers'

 

So thefollowing Monday we stood on the back yard of a terrace on Walkley Street and I asked Tosh" where do we start," He looked up at the roof, lit a cigar and said the immortal words " how the friggen hell do I know never seen one before" And that was the start of a partnership that lasted 22 years.

 

We figured out the drawings and completed the job and many more followed over the years ,we became well known around Sheffield and I will get my thinking cap on and think about some of the interesting and unusual jobs and people we met along the way .

Edited January 31, 2014 by cuttsie
co op er ation

[cuttsie]

We soon got established and the work started flooding in.

on one government grant job on Cross Lane at Crookes we had to take down and rebuild the whole frontage of a terrace .

The houses are the last block on the left as you come up to the junction with Mulehouse Road .

The job involved taking down the front elevation of stone work ,numbering the courses and rebuilding while making sure that the elevation was tied into the interior walls.

 

The job took us around six weeks and caused quite a stir on Cross Lane.

 

As it was a Government grant we had an Inspector from the Council in charge who's name was Vic Spivey and Vic due to his expertise and firm friendly advice became a mentor and friend over the years.

 

Any way the job went well and we were put on the Councils list of approved contractors which meant that we were able to tender for works that involved Shoring up ,and at a later date taking down and rebuilding Dangerous structures of which over the years we completed many some of them under dangerous circumstances ,this was due to the fact that at times we had whole frontages of up to four storied buildings propped up by means of jacks and acrows.

 

One that I remember is opposite Trevor Faireys plumbers merchants on Barber Road was a large stone corner building that to this day you can still see the no's etched into the stone work as you pass on the bus.

 

Through Vic Spivey we met a Sheffield character who's name was Laurence Newman and Laurence owned and rented out many houses throughout Sheffield we became his maintenance team .

 

Laurence was very secretive and insisted when we were in company with his tenants that we called him Mr Laurence although we would often slip up on purpose and refer to him as Laurie which would send him into a real strop but was a great laugh to us.

 

He was also a volunteer radio presenter at the Hospitals and a charity riser for various causes, On one of these he organised a barn Dance some where up Dore or Whirlow [a foreign country to me and Tosh.] Anyway he invited us and we had never seen so many Rolls Royces ,Bentleys and Jaguars in one place in our lives as we rolled up in my Cortina with go faster stripes.

 

Unknown to us he had told his committee that me and Tosh were his security men who would keep our eyes open for any trouble that may occur and a more unlikely pair of bouncers he could not have picked in a million years although Tosh was a big lad he would rather eat than feight.

 

So there we were boozing, laughing and dancing with all these posh tarts from the South side of Sheffield when the balloon went up at the bar as a couple of local big wigs started started pushing and shoving each other about and in so doing fell straight int the middle of the Jazz Band.

JUDD, TONY, shouted Laurence "Over here chaps sort this lot out " to which Tosh shouted back "tha can flic of Laurie sort it out thi sen'.

 

This lead to loud cheers from all the posh set as Laurie had to go wading in himself to separate the waring pin stripes who soon packed it all in and resumed drinkies as though nowt had happened.

 

It was six months before we heard from Laurence again when we were summoned to his office which was down stairs at theTrouser Bar in the Wicker ,he told us that he had only been having a laugh by making us his bouncers and that he really needed us now to do some out standing jobs on his property's [What he really meant was that the stand ins he had used while he had the munk on with us were crap]

So we tried on a couple of pairs of chino's along with leather belts told him we would pay him later and started doing his jobs again.

Edited March 23, 2014 by cuttsie

[cuttsie]

One morning we got a phone call from an inspector at the dangerous structure dept in Sheffield Town Hall asking us to attend a site meeting at a house near to Catherine Street at Pitsmoor.

When we arrived on site the scene that greeted us was to say the least amazing.

In attendance there was the fire brigade, the police the local press and various inspectors from the council .

A fair crowd of neighbours made up the gathering and this was due to what became known as The Pitsmoor Mole affair.

 

What had actually happened was that the resident of the large Victorian Terrace House had decided that he was going to have a swimming pool in the foundations of his house and had proceeded to dig under and at the same time remove all the supporting walls below ground level.

 

This work had apparently been going on for months and the result being the house was now standing on thin air , the drains that supplied the street had collapsed and a large pile of mud, clay and bricks was spreading onto the Street and neighbouring property.

 

The council had put a stop notice on any more works proceeding and they asked us to make the site safe reconnect the drains and board up the works so as to stop any one entering the property.

 

We got to work straight away but the Pitsmoor Mole was having non of it.

As soon as we connected a drain or started to prop up the above walls he would straight away kick in the drains and try to remove props etc.

 

On top of this he was threatening us with violence and he was a big lad who we learned was not to be taken lightly .

 

So he got himself locked up while we rebuilt the foundations and reinstated the services carted away the tons of rubbish and generally made things safe.

 

The outcome of this job was that we got to be well known around Pitsmoor due to the publicity the job had aroused and we started getting work from the local Housing Associations inc North Sheffield Housing.

 

The office of North Sheffield H.A.was on Spital Hill and I soon got to know many of the staff inc Architects, surveyors, and housing officers this led me to getting interested in social housing and the problems that poorer people have in finding suitable accommodation even to this day.

 

While working for North Sheffield i became involved with the labour party this being due to the people i met on a daily basis who were at the very bottom of the pecking order and who were desperate just to have a roof over their head.

 

This labour party thirty odd years ago was not the New Labour of today who have moved into the chattering classes but a solid working class bunch of individuals who all knew what it was to get your hands mucky and had experienced the life of those they represented at that time.

 

And in the middle of all this left wing carry on we suddenly realised we had made it !

by made it i mean we had started to have money in the bank and we became tash wearing , Jaguar driving, Detached house owning , Spanish holiday goers and night club lounge lizards all within around five years.

Edited April 25, 2014 by cuttsie

[PeterR]

Yet more good laughs with a dose of social history well written cuttsie :hihi: Looking forward to the next episode!

Edited April 26, 2014 by PeterR

[cuttsie]

Yet more good laughs with a dose of social history well written cuttsie :hihi: Looking forward to the next episode!

Thank you Peter ,your post is most appreciated as my English has been a constant pain in the arse to me due to my education at The Prince Edward University of life at the Manor Top.

 

---------- Post added 08-05-2014 at 20:28 ----------

 

We were now pulled out with work both private and commercial we got contracts at Hallam University , [Funny that as I had worked on the building when it was first built in the sixty's]. we were also in demand at various steelworks on extensions and maintenance as well as the Housing association contracts .

 

As we had now grown to be more than a two man band we had recruited a few tradesmen ,joiners, Bricklayers, Plasterers etc , as well as Tosh's three lads ,Gary, Lee, and Craig Wild , These three lads all went on to be top trades men in their own right and could build a house from top to bottom without having to bring in any one else as me and Tosh had had to do from the early days.

 

Even with all this bigger stuff coming in we still had our old customers from the early property dodging days to look after.

 

One of these lived in a large detached house on Crooksmoor Road and called us in to re build a stone boundary wall that had fallen down in the winter.

 

Now this customer had always been a good payer but for some reason after waiting a couple of weeks we still had not received a cheque so I gave the Lady a phone call.

 

"Just wondering if you could settle our account " says I.

'

"And I am just wondering when you are going to come and sort out this disgusting job" said she.

 

So of I shot down to Crooksmoor Road .

 

On arrival I was greeted by a silent ,unblinking if looks could kill ex customer who indicated for me to follow her up the garden path, I was a little puzzled as we walked past the pristine looking recently finished stone wall to the top of the garden where there was a large garden ornamental pond complete with Greek Statue that in times gone by had water flowing out of his gob.

 

But Now the statue had water coming out of the largest concrete nob that had ever been cast onto a Greek God and I laughed.

 

Our ex customer was not amused and proceeded to tell me that her lady's tea in the garden day to support the local cubs had been ruined by this dreadful image and until she had received a letter of apology and the offending member had been removed there would be no cheque and she would expect a discount.

 

And so it turned out that the young Wildies had between them had altered old Eros by bending the water pipe down through his arse sticking it out front and over the couple of weeks made his old man the pride of statues World wide.

 

It cost us humble pie and fifty quid ,It cost the Wild brothers a bolocking but it was worth every penny .

 

---------- Post added 09-05-2014 at 07:40 ----------

 

Just had a text from ex customer and we are forgiven .

 

---------- Post added 09-05-2014 at 07:45 ----------

 

Thank you Peter ,your post is most appreciated as my English has been a constant pain in the arse to me due to my education at The Prince Edward University of life at the Manor Top.

 

---------- Post added 08-05-2014 at 20:28 ----------

 

We were now pulled out with work both private and commercial we got contracts at Hallam University , [Funny that as I had worked on the building when it was first built in the sixty's]. we were also in demand at various steelworks on extensions and maintenance as well as the Housing association contracts .

 

As we had now grown to be more than a two man band we had recruited a few tradesmen ,joiners, Bricklayers, Plasterers etc , as well as Tosh's three lads ,Gary, Lee, and Craig Wild , These three lads all went on to be top trades men in their own right and could build a house from top to bottom without having to bring in any one else as me and Tosh had had to do from the early days.

 

Even with all this bigger stuff coming in we still had our old customers from the early property dodging days to look after.

 

One of these lived in a large detached house on Crooksmoor Road and called us in to re build a stone boundary wall that had fallen down in the winter.

 

Now this customer had always been a good payer but for some reason after waiting a couple of weeks we still had not received a cheque so I gave the Lady a phone call.

 

"Just wondering if you could settle our account " says I.

'

"And I am just wondering when you are going to come and sort out this disgusting job" said she.

 

So of I shot down to Crooksmoor Road .

 

On arrival I was greeted by a silent ,unblinking if looks could kill ex customer who indicated for me to follow her up the garden path, I was a little puzzled as we walked past the pristine looking recently finished stone wall to the top of the garden where there was a large garden ornamental pond complete with Greek Statue that in times gone by had water flowing out of his gob.

 

But Now the statue had water coming out of the largest concrete nob that had ever been cast onto a Greek God and I laughed.

 

Our ex customer was not amused and proceeded to tell me that her lady's tea in the garden day to support the local cubs had been ruined by this dreadful image and until she had received a letter of apology and the offending member had been removed there would be no cheque and she would expect a discount.

 

And so it turned out that the young Wildies had between them had altered old Eros by bending the water pipe down through his arse sticking it out front and over the couple of weeks made his old man the pride of statues World wide.

 

It cost us humble pie and fifty quid ,It cost the Wild brothers a bolocking but it was worth every penny .

 

---------- Post added 09-05-2014 at 07:40 ----------

 

Just had a text from ex customer and we are forgiven:)

Edited May 8, 2014 by cuttsie

[mort]

Post added for technical reasons.