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Drop Stamp - Birch Rd Witton
The Drop Stamp was a small company in Witton where my dad worked for many years.
Dad "came up" from Wales at 16. 1938-39. In those days you either went down the mine or went down the mine. He left.
There were hordes of Welshmen in Brum in those days. I often think it would make good reading and good scholarship to have a study done on the Welsh in Birmingham. I have not seen anything on the subject and I think it deserves attention. Deroga Due to a long tradition of both industry and a love for learning the Welsh came to Brum either as factory workers or teachers. I bet just about everybody in the 50s and 60s had at least one Welsh teacher in their school.
Any road up. I digress. So my dad went into lodgings with a truly marvellous Brummie family and worked as a grease monkey at the factory and worked his way up to being a highly skilled tool-maker.
The factory was an amazing United Nations of people. Huge Polish "stampers" who ran the big hammers and furnaces. Ukranians, Welshmen by the dozen, German ex prisoners of war and pre war emigres, Latvians, Lithuanians. Even a Brummie or two. You'd be lucky to hear English. This, however was no impediment as whoever said Brummies spoke English anyway. But it was a bit of a laugh. My dad got so aclimatised he spoke Welsh with a Brummie accent, which tended to flummox the lads back in the valleys.
The factory was run by two Brothers - Hickman. I can't remember their first names right off.
My mom started work there at 16, in the office, when her family came down from Co Durham. So began one of the world's most famous love stories. Hark, what light from yonder furnace shines - Bill Shakespeare a well known Brummie poet.
As a kid I always loved the place. It was magic. Brick walls but tin ceilings and shaking all the time. A regular Dantes inferno at night as they had to keep the furnaces running as it took days to fire them up or down. You could feel the ground shake when they were going full steam. The bang and crash of the hammers. Roar of the furnaces. The heat. The warm, oily smell of lubricating machine tool oil. Picking up handfuls of steel shavings and dust that lay around the machines in little grey piles, and making our own sparklers. My dad running quizes at home that always included the question, "how do you spell Cincinnati ?". I wanted to go to America just because of that name alone. He always got us on that one. For him it was easy, he saw the name daily on the milling machines.
Perhaps the most awesome of all experiences was the annual "works party" a marvellous affair much anticipated by us kids all year. The men put into a weekly pot and put on a party for the kids in the canteen. The canteen food organized by a very large and formidable Welsh lady called Lil, who was a second mother to my dad and used to boss him around in Welsh much to the amusement of the rest of the factory. So wonderful. This deserves a book all by itself. See attached photo and see if you can guess which lovely lad is me.
If anyone who reads this was ever at one of these events they will surely agree.
My dads name was Ron (Ronnie) Poole. My uncle - Harry Lee - worked alongside of him at the same bench. Uncle Harry lived a short distance away at 97 Brookvale road next to the famous "Barn".
Sometime in the late 60s or early 70s the Hickmans sold up - or went out of business. Dunno for sure but the factory closed at any rate. I have no idea if the structure remains or if its gone. Satellite photos make the site look like its been re-built. Right hand side of Birch rd about half way down as you go down the hill. Dunno the number.
Then my dad went to work at Forgings and Pressworks a GKN company. I ended up working at GKN later too. At their head office at the end of Heath St. Technically - but only just - over the border in Smethwick.
So ...... it would be lovely to hear from anyone at all who may have worked there or who, like me as a kid, enjoyed the glories of those wonderul "works parties".
Trevor C Poole
The Drop Stamp was a small company in Witton where my dad worked for many years.
Dad "came up" from Wales at 16. 1938-39. In those days you either went down the mine or went down the mine. He left.
There were hordes of Welshmen in Brum in those days. I often think it would make good reading and good scholarship to have a study done on the Welsh in Birmingham. I have not seen anything on the subject and I think it deserves attention. Deroga Due to a long tradition of both industry and a love for learning the Welsh came to Brum either as factory workers or teachers. I bet just about everybody in the 50s and 60s had at least one Welsh teacher in their school.
Any road up. I digress. So my dad went into lodgings with a truly marvellous Brummie family and worked as a grease monkey at the factory and worked his way up to being a highly skilled tool-maker.
The factory was an amazing United Nations of people. Huge Polish "stampers" who ran the big hammers and furnaces. Ukranians, Welshmen by the dozen, German ex prisoners of war and pre war emigres, Latvians, Lithuanians. Even a Brummie or two. You'd be lucky to hear English. This, however was no impediment as whoever said Brummies spoke English anyway. But it was a bit of a laugh. My dad got so aclimatised he spoke Welsh with a Brummie accent, which tended to flummox the lads back in the valleys.
The factory was run by two Brothers - Hickman. I can't remember their first names right off.
My mom started work there at 16, in the office, when her family came down from Co Durham. So began one of the world's most famous love stories. Hark, what light from yonder furnace shines - Bill Shakespeare a well known Brummie poet.
As a kid I always loved the place. It was magic. Brick walls but tin ceilings and shaking all the time. A regular Dantes inferno at night as they had to keep the furnaces running as it took days to fire them up or down. You could feel the ground shake when they were going full steam. The bang and crash of the hammers. Roar of the furnaces. The heat. The warm, oily smell of lubricating machine tool oil. Picking up handfuls of steel shavings and dust that lay around the machines in little grey piles, and making our own sparklers. My dad running quizes at home that always included the question, "how do you spell Cincinnati ?". I wanted to go to America just because of that name alone. He always got us on that one. For him it was easy, he saw the name daily on the milling machines.
Perhaps the most awesome of all experiences was the annual "works party" a marvellous affair much anticipated by us kids all year. The men put into a weekly pot and put on a party for the kids in the canteen. The canteen food organized by a very large and formidable Welsh lady called Lil, who was a second mother to my dad and used to boss him around in Welsh much to the amusement of the rest of the factory. So wonderful. This deserves a book all by itself. See attached photo and see if you can guess which lovely lad is me.
If anyone who reads this was ever at one of these events they will surely agree.
My dads name was Ron (Ronnie) Poole. My uncle - Harry Lee - worked alongside of him at the same bench. Uncle Harry lived a short distance away at 97 Brookvale road next to the famous "Barn".
Sometime in the late 60s or early 70s the Hickmans sold up - or went out of business. Dunno for sure but the factory closed at any rate. I have no idea if the structure remains or if its gone. Satellite photos make the site look like its been re-built. Right hand side of Birch rd about half way down as you go down the hill. Dunno the number.
Then my dad went to work at Forgings and Pressworks a GKN company. I ended up working at GKN later too. At their head office at the end of Heath St. Technically - but only just - over the border in Smethwick.
So ...... it would be lovely to hear from anyone at all who may have worked there or who, like me as a kid, enjoyed the glories of those wonderul "works parties".
Trevor C Poole
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