The site at the top of Birch Road was shared by two plants in the Birfield Group, Forging & Presswork and Salisbury Transmissions. I started work as an engineering apprentice at F&P and stayed there 14 years before the Cold Forging department moved to Hamstead. The three storey office block (still there) was shared between F&P and ST, we even shared a Drawing Office print machine, and the old style Managing Director 'ruled' both plants. The site had a central road with the forging plant on the canal side, and the ST machining plant on the other side. Delivery of our forgings was initially down the road to the Birch Rd Hardy Spicer plant. When HS moved to Chester Rd someone at F&P had the bright idea of using canal boats to deliver our forgings to HS, looking at maps it can be seen that the canal runs past both sites. Unfortunately the forge used to throw scrap forgings over the fence into the canal until a pleasure boat was nearly sunk by an enormous pile of forgings which were found when the canal stretch was drained.
Some products produced by the press shop of F&P were steel toecaps which were known as 'ToeTectors' in safety footware.
The Cold Forging part of F&P was run on a licence from a German company Neumeyers in Nuremburg.
GKN took over the Birfield Group in 1965/66 and eventually the original Birfield Industries automotive products became the major part of GKN's business so it turned out to be a very profitable take-over.
oldmohawk
