The Goodie old days

COMING down under the demolition men's blows this week was a part of Blackburn's industrial heritage known officially in its heyday as the Atlas Ironworks.

But, if you were in the know back then, you would have called it by its other name -- The Trinity Works.

You would also have known that the best place to go to seek a coveted apprenticeship there was not the engineering company's office but Holy Trinity Church, at Larkhill, on the other side of the town centre.

For that is where Clayton Goodfellow and Company's works manager Fred Kemp was a "big bug".

"If you went to Holy Trinity, you had a chance of getting taken on by the firm," said 69-year-old ex-"Goodies" fitter Ken Hartley, of Whalley Old Road, Blackburn, who spent 32 years with the firm.

Only a handful of lads were lucky enough each July to start serving their time there -- for a whole seven years. But apprenticeships at the firm, founded in 1857, were highly sought-after -- because it was such a by-word for excellence and superior skill that its craftsmen could be guaranteed a job anywhere in engineering.

Clayton Goodfellow, begun by partners William Clayton and Jacob Goodfellow on the strength of a piston Goodfellow had invented, built its reputation on the steam engines and drive equipment it made for Lancashire's cotton mills, but the Park Road firm developed to become one that boasted it could make anything.

And, as was recalled by retired quality control inspector Ken Atkinson, of Selous Road, Witton, joined at his home by old-time workmates to lament the loss of the old workshop, the firm, once employing more than 300 and with a "staff" of 55, turned out heavy and medium capital goods that went all over the world. They made brick-making machines by the hundred, rolling stock and giant track-maintenance machines for railways at home and abroad, presses for Michelin tyres, bottling machinery for Belgian brewers and huge processing machines like this 60-ton monster shearing machine (below) that was shipped in 1966 to a Spanish steel mill. The company's contribution to the country's defence in war and peace was also huge as it turned out parts for tanks, planes and ships -- and, memorably, for the artificial Mulberry Harbour that was floated in huge sections across the Channel in 1944 to form the supply port sustaining the Allied invasion of Normandy.

"Goodies" were contracted to make the huge winches which lowered and raised the legs of the harbour's piers, according to the ebb and flow of the tide, and kept them anchored to the sea-bed. Given only six weeks to do the work, every department worked day and and night and Sundays to finish the job on time -- and ended up with a week to spare and without any interruption to the other vital war work they were carrying out. Fred Kemp received a letter of commendation from "Monty" -- Britain's military supremo Field-Marshal Bernard Montgomery,

Recalls 74-year-old retired turner Fred Blanchard, of Oakwood Avenue, Sunny Bower, who began his apprenticeship just as the war broke out and supplied the picture (above, centre) of 1943 night shift workers at the factory: "We worked nights and then days, week and week about, then. Clayton Goodfellow did a lot of good work for the country during the war." For 79-year-old former centre-lathe turner Eric Turner, of Bridgewater Court, Blackburn, the firm's heyday and most successful period came when the war effort also brought considerable modernisation at the works, bringing in new machinery and methods and the demise of the plant's old steam engine, parts of which, he says, still lie along the pathway to the now-gone Greenwood's corn mill nearby. Afterwards, the company continued to thrive to such an extent that as it celebrated its centenary in 1957 it was staging an export drive on four continents and in the 1960s and 1970s had its order books full at times as far as three years ahead.

But though it was brought down by the recession in the early 1980s, first axing scores of jobs before plunging into receivership in 1983 and finally having its equipment and premises sold off the following year, for its old-time employees the best times were when "Goodies" was still a family-owned firm -- as it was for five generations until 1969 when it was sold to a merchant bank before ending up with a small consortium as it entered its death throes. "There was a family atmosphere that came right down from the top and made it a happy place to work," says Ken Atkinson, who also recalled the extensive social activities that were coupled with work at Clayton Goodfellow -- from supper dances and bowls handicaps to swimming and football clubs. There are fond memories, too, of the firm's famously socially-inclined boss, joint managing director Bill Harrison, whose grandfather was a nephew of the original Goodfellow.

He was renowned for spending most of his working day in the Castle Hotel, in Market Street Lane, but nonetheless gathered in the orders that kept Atlas Ironworks thriving.

Says Eric: "For those of us who began as youngsters there, those old days were happy days -- days of learning that produced so many craftsmen.

Apprentices now in their 70s and 80s will look back and wonder what went wrong with the engineering trade to force this establishment into receivership.

"I'm sorry to see the building go -- another landmark lost by Blackburn, adding to the many already destroyed."

Picture: The night-shift workers in 1943.