I used to pass the Wrights Ropes factory on the train on the way to school in the 1960s. You could always recognise it by the little clock turret. I never went there, but my father knew the managing director, Percy Shakespeare. My Dad was a Labour man and Percy Shakespeare, unusually for a businessman, was a Labour Party member. He had a big house in Wentworth Road, Four Oaks, on the private estate, and had a live steam miniature railway running round the garden. He used to open this twice a year, for the Talyllyn Railway Preservation Society of which he was an early member, and the local Labour Party. He had some beautiful miniature steam engines, which I think he built himself in his spare time: a class 5 4-6-0, a Great Western 'Hall', and a big freelance ten-coupled engine called 'Sans Parents'. I loved them and on one occasion asked if could stay for a while after my parents went home. "Yes of course" he said and I ended up getting a chauffeur-driven lift home. He retired to Trelleck in Monmouthshire. I wonder what happened to his engines. They were wonderful things.