10112

Work
Man goeth forth to his work,
And to his labour until the evening.
Psalm 104.23

Eyeless in Gaza,
At the mill with slaves
John Milton – ‘Samson Agonistes’
Chapter

At The Mill With Slaves

Eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves
Samson Agonistes - John Milton

Schoolchildren left school, started work, worked until retirement, and then died off. It
was a fact of life that jobs were for life. A career, once begun, was to be maintained at
whatever cost. When I left school, I imagined that the employment I secured would last
forever. That was the culture and expectation of the times and it seemed as if nothing
would ever happen to alter it.

In my later school years I entertained a desire to become a merchant seaman. I had

become increasingly aware of the many peoples and cultures in the world, and wished to
see them, taste the differences, and try to understand why they were so different from that
with which I was familiar. The merchant marine was the only way I knew to achieve that
ambition.

When we left school, Pete West and I went along to the Employment Exchange together.
A man who interviewed us cautioned us against ‘holding each others’ hands’ through
life. Neither of us intended to so that, we just shared a common idea. Peter said he
would like to join the merchant navy also.

The truth about my desire for a seafaring life was that it was just an idea. I had not the
kind of drive that impels men to follow a dream until its completion. I was a drifter: a
passive spectator at what life did to me. Powerless, I went with the flow, and landed
wherever it threw me up.

Peter and I both started work at Sykes and Tunnicliffe's Bankend Mills, Almondbury. I
worked in the weaving shed and Peter worked in the finishing department. As places go
it was a good place to work, and sported some interesting characters, among which was
my mentor, Vincent.
 A steam crane like this one sat outside Radcliffe’s Builder’s yard
at the bottom of Cambridge Road for years until it rotted.
Try as we might, we lads could never get it to work!

Common Bricks Poor Man’s Feast

A Spinning Shed
Chapter

Vincent
'I look at th' yealds, and there they stick;
I ne'er seen the like sin' I wur wick!
What pity could befall a heart,
To think about these hard-sized warps!'

Sykes and Tunnicliffe manufactured mohair pile rugs, mats, and pew runners. Their
products were first quality. The weaving shed foreman was Vincent. He was a quiet,
pleasant man, balding with glasses. He was about forty years old. Although he could not
drive, he had a car and was taking driving lessons.

Every morning he drove to work illegally. He crawled close to the kerb and travelled at
around four miles an hour, just faster than a brisk walking pace. Vincent was my tutor in
the arcane practices of the weaving shed. He was gentle and patient – as was his driving.

The weaving shed was the noisiest place I had ever been in. There were about 18 or 20
looms working with their clatter and din. Many of the weavers, mostly women, were
either deaf or had some degree of hearing impairment caused by the incessant noise. Ear
protection was not provided, not even thought of.

All weavers could lip read; it was the only way they could communicate. I never learned
to lip read, but I did learn to shout. The obvious benefit to me was that I could sing at the
top of my voice all the workday long. I loved it. The elderly lady weavers took to me
because I was always cheerful and willing. I fetched sacks of rolled paper weft and
placed them next to their machines, singing like Caruso – at least, I was as loud as
Caruso.

Another of my duties was ‘tying in.’ This was the method of joining the old warp to the
new, when a beam was changed. The warp was wound round a giant bobbin. Called a
beam, and when this had been used up it was replaced by a full one. The ends of the old
were tied to the ends of the old, and the knots pulled through the sley so that weaving
could continue. The knots had to be secure or else they would slip and the single thread
had to be threaded through all the complicated elements of the loom. The two ends were
separated with the forefinger, and knotted with two fingers and the thumb of one hand.

One of the weavers was Michael, a Pole. He had come to England after the war to escape
the tyranny of the new Communist masters. He was courting one of the weavers, a red-
haired girl, with temper to match, who lived near the mill. Michael lived in Halifax in
lodgings.

He said that his landlady was upset because he kept his coffin in his bedroom. He had a
small collection of gramophone records, including “Music, Music, Music,” by Teresa
Brewer, and Pee Wee Hunt’s “Twelfth Street Rag.” He lent me these records, from
which time they became firm favourites. I loved Teresa Brewer’s enthusiasm and verve.
About this time, early 1950, another singer was making a name for himself. Johnny Ray,
a native of Utah, recorded, “Cry.” I had never heard such emotion in singing. It was a
chorus of colour, a stream of fast-rising glory, awakening in me an unfamiliar sense of
grandeur. I believe that the only emotion I had ever felt was despair. I knew not the joy
of love, nor that life held any joy. “Cry” suggested to me that there were dimensions
available to human feeling that could be beneficial. Around this time, Kay Starr released
'‘Wheel of Fortune,” which had a similar effect on me.

I have little doubt but that Michael’s red-haired fiancée continued to make his life
miserable long after I left the mill. She shouted at him and threatened him in public. He
just smiled and made light of it. He was probably right to do so, for they rubbed along
reasonably well, in spite of what seemed to be their mutual hostilities.
Chapter

White Eagles
" Since the early 1800's when nicotine was first discovered, smoking has been
considered a socially acceptable way of slowly killing one self, often in public.
For many years it was considered perfectly normal for smokers to not only indulge
in a habit that slowly turned their lungs to carbon but to openly inflict the
same fate on others by polluting the air with deadly nicotine poison...."
USA NCD

Michael was one of the Polish exiles after World War II who felt it safer to be in England
than return to live under Communist rule in his native land. He was a nice man, generous
with his time who enjoyed a good sense of humour. He was engaged, so he believed, to a
girl who worked as a burler in the Mending department. I don’t recall her name but she
had long red hair and a temper to match, which she unleashed with regular ferocity on
poor Michael. Little wonder, then, that Michael sought alternative diversion.

He lived at Halifax near Halifax General Hospital, in a stone built bay windowed terrace
house as a lodger, and upset his landlady by storing a coffin in his bedroom. Apparently
buying one’s coffin in anticipation of the inevitable visit of the grim reaper is an ancient
Polish custom.

His landlady was obviously not Polish and saw something bizarre in the custom of this
man from a far country that she had only heard of because of the depredations that
country suffered during the War.

Thus it was, that when Peter and I accepted Michael’s invitation to accompany him to the
pictures in Halifax one night that we had to wait outside in the dark and cold of a
cheerless Halifax suburb after Michael appeared at the door at our sounding the door bell.
His landlady did not like strangers waiting in her house, not even for a man who had his
coffin stored upstairs.

Michael was just a little bit embarrassed at asking us to wait outside because he knew that
in Poland the custom was to bring visitors and friends into the house, especially on cold,
dark nights in inner city suburbs. Not that Halifax is a city, but you get the point.

To ameliorate our potential discomfort, which was swiftly realised, he handed each of us
a cigarette and saying he would not be very long, disappeared back into the warm, light
house. We looked at the slim cylinders under the flickering gas lamp and saw the
splendid insignia of the Polish White Eagle in shimmering silver line on the paper sleeve.
Somehow, the cigarettes in our hands eased our discomfort by elevating us into the ranks
of adulthood, even manly adulthood.

Finding our matches from somewhere, we lit up, inhaling deeply in the damp street, and
immediately and in concert erupting into fits of coughing.
“These are strong,” said Peter. I agreed as best I cold manage in between paroxysms of
coughing alternating with very short and painful periods of breathing. They were not
only very strong, as we persisted drawing on them under the street lamp, but they burned
quite differently from English cigarettes. I had to fight for breath to get air through them
and it was a losing battle.

Then, we noticed that the lit ends were glowing for about an inch instead of being glow-
red only at the burning tip. A few more puffs and like lightning from the heavens we
realised that in the dark and in our ignorance and in our efforts to look manly, we had put
the wrong ends in our mouths and lit the hitherto unknown to us filter tips.

Hiding our ill-lit cigarettes under someone’s privet hedge, we became at least temporarily
non-smokers. When Michael appeared we explained to him how much we had enjoyed
his Polish cigarettes. Even though we were young and neither of us brought up with any
great sense of formal social etiquette, we understood that Michael’s engagement to the
ginger-haired girl was a burden that he could neither enjoy nor abandon, and so we had
tender feelings for our kind friend.

His was a world of incomparable displacement from the world he knew when he entered
the war as a young soldier in his Polish homeland. He could not return to his home, nor
could he write, telephone, or otherwise contact his family for fear that the Communist
government bring pressure to bear on his family because he was living free in the land of
liberty.

He had a home, with a landlady who thought him odd, which he was not, well, not very,
and a fiancée who expressed her love for him by berating him and demeaning him at
every verse end. He needed a couple of friends even if they were half his age. Well, he
had us and we treated him right. That is, except in regards to the gramophone records.

He very kindly lent me his few 78 rpm gramophone records including one by Teresa
Brewer, Music, Music, Music! During the short time I had them to play on my
magnificent three-part gramophone, I sat on one on the bed in the small attic. The brittle
platter cracked and gave up the ghost. When I returned the records to him, I was too
embarrassed to tell him. I had not yet learned that mistakes could be confessed,
compensation made, and forgiveness obtained.

My childhood was characterised by a blame culture in which even the smallest error was
met with condign chastisement. Michael was puzzled but did not press the loss. I am
sure that he had suffered greater disappointments in his life and was not about to fuss
over a record, even a hit record.

My time at Sykes and Tunnicliffe was short, lasting only three short months. Boredom
with the job had set in, as it would with most of the many jobs I had, and it was time to
move on. Moving on meant leaving Michael behind. We said an uncomfortable
goodbye and I never heard anything of him since that day.
If he is still alive, he will be in his early eighties. I hope he found someone to love him
better than did the red-haired burler with the irascible and explosive temper. Someone to
treat him well, understand his darkness when he remembered his past, weep with him
when he thought of home and his refugee flight that separated him from his family, and I
hope that he managed to see them when things improved.

I wonder if had children, perhaps a son called Michael who inherited his father’s gentle
ways and simple trust, and who would smile to remember the coffin balancing on top of
the wardrobe and laugh out loud at the thought of two of his father’s youthful friends
lighting White Eagles from the wrong end one misty wet night under the guttering
gaslight of a Northern street far from the lights of his beloved home.

If such a one there chance to be, “Here’s looking at you kid!” You had a great dad!
Chapter

Having My Ears Lowered

… Like characters in Beckett,
We've convened on pneumatic thrones, all head,
Our bodies checked in a checkered cape. We heed
The quick scissors, the length of a snippet
Our covert fingers coax from tent to floor.
Aidan Rooney-Cespedes

My regular barber was just round the corner from Westgate, opposite Sparrow Park on
Upperhead Row. There was one style, and the coiffure was topped-off by a generous
helping of ‘Fixative,’ an early type of epoxy resin that set the hair like Welgar Shredded
Wheat. Nor rain, nor hail, nor snow, nor any wind could move the hair dosed with this
primitive super-glue.

On the right side of my neck is a small pimple that has always adorned it. I can not feel
it, so when I can not get my hand to it I am never sure exactly where it is. Visits to the
barber’s as a lad were always nerve-racking affairs, because the haircut was finished off
with an open razor shaving the neckline. I was terrified that the blade would slice off the
pimple, and so shrank visibly under its advancing stroke.

I never dared mention this to the barber. In my antique period, I remain nervous when
the hair stylist – all the barbers are dead – gets out the open razor. However, since few
still resort to this method of clean finishing, there is less need for my historical anxiety.

Sykes and Tunnicliffe laid on a shooting brake, driven by Harry, which left the junction
of New North Road and Westgate each morning, Saturdays included, at 7 00 am. It was
parked the other side of Westgate opposite my barber’s shop, and took workers right into
the mill yard, saving us having to walk from St Michael’s church in Almondbury, which
was the trolley terminus, a good mile or two from the mill, overtaking Vincent as he
crawled carefully and illegally up Ashes Lane.

It is told that when the local Bobby happened on the same stretch of road that Vincent
was criminally traversing, something right inside the Bobby’s collar required the urgent
insertion of his stubby forefinger to claw away at the manifestation, and also involved the
rotation of the Peeler’s head away from the scene of the crime.

One of the warehouse men cut hair as a ‘short-back-and-sideline.’ For the princely sum
of one shilling - an hours wages for me - he gave a haircut that was pronounced by
another worker to make me look like ‘the Duke of Windsor.’ Despite the unique absence
of Fixative it was a shilling well spent. I had been paying one shilling and sixpence for
what seemed like forever.

The extra sixpence was probably for a bottle of Fixative. Barbers may well have pre-
empted car mechanics who charge every customer for a full can of Plus-Gas and a box of
sterile hand wipes. These fall in the category of ‘life’s little extras’ that help grease the
wheels of commerce. Of course there is more – much more – but who remembers?

If I had known that I would want to remember all the details someday, I would have
taken more notice and might even have made notes.
Chapter

The Place of Humour

The world of work was more pleasant than school had been. There were new things to
learn, and new people to meet. I learned some important things about humour. When a
schoolboy, the major employment of humour had been amusement. Walter Fox and I
shared similar, but not identical, senses of humour. He was more urbane than I was - and
I was more unrefined than he was. The differences were visible at the peripheries of our
dispositions.

At work, I learned a lesson that I had begun to learn at school; that humour was a useful
defence against the attentions of those with little sympathy for a boy struggling to grow
up. After three months in the mill I became bored and sought fresh employment.
Chapter

In The Foundry
With roots of iron there is metal in the air,
When the cupola melts white iron glares.
Richard Mikolajewski

I applied for a job as an apprentice core maker in the foundry of Thomas Broadbent’s
Central Ironworks on Queen Street South. I went for an interview that went well,
although I did not mention that my Dad and Granddad worked in the machine shop. I got
the job and started in the dirtiest place I had ever seen. It was a huge foundry,
manufacturing some of the biggest castings imaginable.

I worked at an iron table, making small cores out of sand. The sand was rammed into a
core pattern that was usually in two halves held together by spiked clamps. First, the
pattern was brushed out with paraffin to prevent the core sand from sticking to the orange
painted interior. Then the sand was put inside and tamped to make it compact.

Metal sprigs were pushed in to help maintain rigidity during the moulding process. Oil
was added to the sand to harden the cores during baking. I always used plenty of oil,
because of which the cores were easy for the moulders to handle as they fitted them
inside their mould. I was complimented and told that I made the best small cores in the
foundry. I was somewhat pleased to receive this accolade.

Huge furnaces melted tons of pig iron into white liquid ten times hotter than Hades’
place. This was spewed out down a channel by a furnace-master who filled the mighty
steel cauldrons that giant overhead cranes took tons of molten metal in giant ladles to the
huge moulds laid out at various parts of the foundry’s dusty floor.

Spitting sparks of white and red fire, the massive vessel were tipped over to pour out the
white hot metal into the mould. It was at once warm and exciting. The down side was
that after they had completed pouring, they threw black sand onto the pouring place, and
the sand gave off an caustic odour that was nauseating. I had to go and stand by the mile
high main doors in the open air to stop myself retching.

On my first day as an apprentice, I was asked to go to the upstairs store and ask for a
“Long stand.” I presented myself at the window, made my request, and was asked to
wait where I was. After ten minutes or so the storeman returned and asked me if that was
long enough. I had had a ‘long stand’ and enjoyed the joke.

It was a regular thing to send new boys on a fool’s errand somewhere to ask for a ‘long
stand,’ a ‘box of sparks, a ‘bucket of steam,’ a ‘straight ‘S’ hook,’ or some similar
impossibility. It was a gentle initiation into the world of work.
Besides hydroextractors for commercial laundries, and heavy ironwork, Broadbent’s
Central Ironworks made X Craft midget submarines during WW II.

Thomas Broadbent & Sons Ltd X Craft Midget Submarine at Aberlady Bay
© Alex Morrice 2005

HMS Expunger - Midget Submarine by Broadbent’s 1945

In Chatham Historic Dockyard Museum
 “HMS Expunger”
Overall length 53.14 feet
Displacement 30 tons
Built by Thomas Broadbent & Sons Ltd - 1945
Chapter

The Light That Failed

I remember The Light That Failed as a dramatic poem vividly illustrating the
consequences of the failure of a lighthouse to send forth its warning. The title was
applied to almost every failure of illumination during my childhood, and burned so deep
into my psyche that I still recall it when a lamp bulb expires or some other failure takes
place. But there was one other occasion when the memorable words were ecphoriated
with a mixture of triumph and savage amusement.

Having left school at Christmas 1949 and commenced my day labours as a weaving shed
weft and everything else boy for Sykes and Tunnicliffe, Bankfield Mills, Almondbury, as
has been told, and departed from their employment somewhat summarily, having
determined that they could not advance either my interest or my skills, I took
employment as an apprentice with Thomas Broadbent & Company of Queen Street
South, Huddersfield, as a core-maker.

Cores are used by moulders to ensure that molten cast iron does not occlude places that
needed to be clear. I worked with core boxes made in two halves that were held together
by iron dogs driven in at each end. They were then filled with core sand mixed with
special oils so the cores thus formed could be baked hard but would easily crumble when
the moulds were broken open after casting.

To prevent the sand sticking to the sides of the core box, paraffin was liberally applied to
the inside surfaces before the sand was packed in and rammed solid. My iron bench held
a treacle tin full of paraffin with a one-inch paintbrush to effect the application. Most
days I used about three-quarters of a pint of paraffin. Each evening, after cleaning my
bench off, I trotted to the stores with my tin to fill it ready for the next day’s work.

It was with some measure of disbelief that I arrived at work one day and found my tin
completely empty. Had I not filled it the night before? I had a clear memory of doing so,
but my memory never being too hot as far as day-to-day events was concerned, I decided
that I had been mistaken and trekked to the stores to obtain the smelly magic fluid so I
could get to work and quickly forgot the puzzlement that had gripped me as I stared into
the bottom of my empty tin.

That might have been that if I had not had exactly the same experience on the following
morning. I was a shy lad, not given to asking questions, and the reticent men who
worked either side of me either did not see my bewilderment or ignored it. Thus passed
my mornings for the rest of the week. Every night I filled my tin, every morning it was
empty. Being hesitant to ask my neighbours, but becoming increasingly concerned and
not a little cross, I determined to act to nail the culprit, for I was convinced that I was
being robbed.
That night I went to the stores and poured what remained of my paraffin into the spill
bucket under the forty-gallon barrel and then repaired to the cold water tap, that stuck out
of the wall shining bright in the dirty dark moulding shop, I filled my tin with water. I
carried the tin back to my bench and put it in its corner and, with a peremptory “Bye” to
my neighbours, headed for home.

When I arrived at my bench next morning the water was gone. I developed a theory that
concerned the core maker to my left, Jim. He was a middle-aged, portly, taciturn, pipe-
smoking gruffian who had worked at Broadbent’s since Methuselah was a lad. Those
who know pipe smokers will understand that they can do anything with their pipes except
keep them alight. To save on matches, that cost a penny a box, Jim had made a light by
drawing a string wick through the lid of a treacle tin, which he filled with paraffin and
kept it lit on the shelf next to his bench.

This morning I kept an eagle eye on Jim and his perpetual light. Taking out a long red-
ended match, he struck it and applied it to the string wick. The wick lit briefly then went
out. I knew I was on to something. He took out another precious match and striking it
applied it to the wick. This lit even more briefly than before and then dimmed to
darkness. Jim began striking matches and trying to light the lamp, but by now, the wick
would not even take light.

I watched Jim’s face take on a series of expressions that defy description as simple
perplexity was transposed through a series of ascending mysteries, eventually resolving
into a pudgy red enigma. It was at this point that he started thinking the unthinkable.
Using his trowel to prise off the lid of his lamp, he held the tin under his nose and sniffed
deeply. It is an interesting and amusing spectacle to see daylight penetrate a dark place
as come to pass in the murky recesses of Jim’s turgid mind.

“It’s water!” he exploded, as if water was foreign to the planet. I got the distinct
impression that he thought someone else was to blame, but I jumped in anyway in an
uncharacteristically loud voice, pressing home my advantage on the heels of his
astonishment.

“You have been stealing my paraffin, and now I have found you out in your perfidy, you
black-hearted villain!” I roared loud enough to attract the attention of all in a thirty yards
radius. The foundry stopped work and a dozen or so pale and puzzled faces, appearing
atop dirty black overalls, turned to look at red-faced Jim, compounding his
embarrassment, as the awful truth of his unmasking dawned on him. He had been found
out and had nowhere to hide.

That was the last time that my paraffin disappeared and Jim’s light, with a new wick,
burned as bright as ever. Things settled down in our corner of the core shop as Jim
returned to his inner life and occasional grunted greeting, and I set about thinking about
my next job. I had been there almost three months and their time was up.
After three months I left, having become bored and I secured employment with the Co-
operative Wholesale Society in their transport department at Deadwaters, behind St
Thomas’ Road.

Broadbent’s, Jim, the foundry, and the core shop, slipped from the front of my memory
as my life moved on to other places and other concerns. Years have passed and I have
experienced many things that have had greater claim to be remembered than Jim’s pipe
lighter and my missing paraffin.

Yet, from time to time, my memory revisits that dirty sand-strewn corner of Broadbent’s
foundry in Queen Street South in old Huddersfield, and I wonder what happened to Jim.
If he is alive, he will be more than a hundred years old so it is probable that he now looks
upon another world. And I wonder about his passing: did Jim’s light fail? Did he go
home in the dark or had he enough oil in his lamp to see him safely through? I would
love to know.
Chapter

Driver’s Mate Days

At the Co-operative Society’s Transport Department, I was a driver’s mate to Willy
Wood, who lived in one of the Co-op houses on St Thomas’ Street. He was a cheerful,
bright sort of chap, but subservient to a fault. We travelled to various branches of the Co-
op scattered around Huddersfield and district, delivering groceries to customers’ homes.
Some days we would pick up branch orders from the warehouse at Deadwaters.
Deadwaters was so named because the canal that ran behind the garages had been
blocked off.

The warehouse smelled of wonderful things. Sides of smoked bacon, sacks of Demerara
sugar, sacks of currants, raisins, and sultanas, and a hundred other spicy smells from
goods exposed to the air. Biscuits were packed in big biscuit tins, not wrapped as they
are today. Sugar was sold in conical twists of blue sugar paper. Everything was sold
loose and weighed out.

Willie and I made a good team, except on one occasion. We were delivering from the
Almondbury branch behind the Parish Church. Some discussion took place between me
and the manager, during which I said something to him - I don’t recall what - that Willie
took exception to. He kicked me savagely in the groin, exclaiming, “Don’t you speak to
my boss like that!” He had hurt me quite badly. The manager was visibly mortified,
although he said nothing to Willie, but when we were leaving he kindly gave me a bag of
sweets as compensation for unjust suffering. There were gentlemen in the world, and
although I did not often meet them, this was one.

I worked at the Co-op for six months. Then I learned that I could earn twice as much
working in the brickyard at Birchencliffe.
Chapter

Bricks Without Straw

I went and got a job at The Huddersfield Brick, Tile, and Stone Company that had, by
1951, reduced itself to a brickyard, having nothing more to do with tiles or stone. It had
two good-sized kilns of the continuous firing kind. The chambers ran round the kilns, so
that one kiln would be filled with bricks by setters, then the doorway was bricked up and
smeared over with a coat of lime and cinder mortar to prevent loss of heat or gas. A
couple of chambers away burnt bricks were removed and stacked in the yard ready for
collection.

The fires were maintained by a firer who worked on top of the kiln but under a roof.
There were plenty of windows around the upper floor, all of which were glassless. There
were rows of firing holes, each with a round cast iron lid of six inches diameter, which
the firer lifted with a steel rod, hooked at the end, then shovelled in some slack coal. He
had to wheel the coal up a steep ramp to the firing level from a big heap at the foot of the
ramp. Except for wheeling heavy wheelbarrows up the ramp, firing was a steady job.

After several days of continuous firing, when all the bricks had been fired, he would put
no more coal into the chambers, but would advance the fuel which was ignited by the
heat from the previously fired chamber. His was a perpetual journey around the kiln
supplying fuel in the correct quantities to the right chambers.

When the chambers were broken open – reminiscent of Howard Carter opening the Tomb
of Tutankhamen – the heat would still be intense, so the drawers wore leather guards over
their fingers and thumbs. Everyone wore clogs in the brickyard as protection against the
heat from the kiln floors. Between the rows of bricks were wedges of coke. We took the
coke home in sacks and burned it on our fires. It was an excellent fuel.

The works foreman was known as Rowley – his name being Roland. He was a nice, kind
gentleman with a quiet sense of humour. Our day started at 7 am, but because of the odd
assortment of people who worked in the brickyards, we rarely had a full team in the brick
production shed at start time. Rowley would say, “If I ever come in and find you all
working, I’ll die of shock.” He was in little danger of early death.

What I liked about the brickyard was the variety of the work, and the changeable daily
round as different needs required me to perform a variety of tasks. It seemed like the
answer to my interminable boredom.

I enjoyed the brickyard work, hard and demanding as it could be, and liked most of my
fellow workers.
Chapter

Brickyard Cricket
God give us grace to see
The grandeur in the soul of erranty.
Florence Ripley Mastin

After I had worked at Sykes and Tunnicliffe’s, Central Ironworks, and the Co-operative
Wholesale Society, I turned my attention to the brickyard at Birchencliffe, where the
Huddersfield Brick Tile and Stone Company made common bricks. The major attraction
was a better wage.

The mill had paid me a shilling an hour for a forty-four hour week, whereas Broadbent’s
had paid me twenty-two shillings and sixpence for the same time, but I was learning a
trade. I cannot remember how much I was paid as a driver’s mate for the Co-op, but the
brickyard took me up to three pounds and ten shillings for forty hours, and paid overtime.

The brickyard was a veritable treasure-trove of some of the most remarkable characters I
have ever met. But, I come not to memorialise those worthies, but to tell about Brickyard
Cricket. The name of the game broadly hints at the essential nature of the game.
'Brickyard,' besides being a nominative is also a modifier and directs our attention
towards the differences between the civilised game of bat and ball that calmly play out on
English village greens during our long, hot summers, and the fight for survival defending
a wicket in a brickyard.

The game equipment, for example, is different than that used by grammar schools and
above, even though they are made from like substance. But whereas pukka cricket bats
are fashioned from willow trees, Brickyard bats are made from any old plank that is lying
around and not actually holding up a building.

Willow bats are made on an industrial copy lathe to ensure that each unit is identical to
the thousands produced each month in the cricket bat factory, and then fitted by pressure
and glue with wound and rubber-sleeved three-spring shock absorbing handles.
Brickyard bats are made by first cutting the orphaned plank to length, and then incising
long slots a third of the way in on each side and cutting through from the outsides to
connect them, leaving a chunky square handle protruding from the integral blade.

No rounding of the handle, no cord-whipping, no rubber sleeve, and no shaped blade

apart from, the shape it was when it had been sawn by the Brickyard Bat Maker, who was
usually the maintenance man who had access to a powered hacksaw. It was as heavy and
as deadly as a war club, and could double for one when the game turned nasty.

The ball was a genuine cricket ball –a ‘corky’ – that had seen better days, but which was
still lethal if it hit the face or head.
The pitch was any more or less piece of ground between the two mammoth brick kilns,
and the wicket was chalked on a convenient wall, preferably one without windows.

The rules and regulations for Brickyard Cricket are not written down in “The Rules of
Cricket,” maintained for almost three hundred years by the Marylebone Cricket Club, but
are carried in the hearts of Englishmen of a certain temperament everywhere. The Queen
of the Iceni, Boudicca, knew them by heart, and almost beat the Romans, but she was
thwarted by their inability to limit their fielding team to eleven men.

The “Rules” state that, “The captains are responsible at all times for ensuring that play
is conducted within the spirit and traditions of the game as well as within the Laws.”
Backyard Cricket has no teams, and no captains, so it is to be little wondered at that at
times things get a little robust.

Cricket Proper is a battle between two teams of gentlemen each trying to outscore the
other team, and get them ‘out’ in as many ways as possible. It does provide for some
spectacular moments when ‘leather on willow’ reaches epic proportions. On the other
hand, Brickyard Cricket is epic from the beginning. It starts out epic and gets epicer with
each passing second.

The Brickyard game is between all those who are not the one person batting at any given
moment and the rest of the players. Any number can play, and there is no provision
made that anyone has to be gentle. The fundamental premise is “Get them out or knock
them out!” In cases of severe injury, there is no stopping play, no assistance from first-
aiders, and no whimpering. The game must go on!

The provision of thirty minutes for lunch break does tend to make players frantic to get
the batter ‘out’ and get themselves ‘in’ for a few moments of glory - or gory - depending
on the unfolding of events and the venom of the bowlers.

Talk of fast-bowling in cricketing circles will never fail to raise the name of 'Fiery'
Freddy Trueman, the Yorkshire fast bowler who made strong men’s knees shake and
their legs buckle beneath them when they saw the tousle-haired ogre begin his run up to
deliver intercontinental missiles disguised as red leathered cricket balls.1.

Freddy wannabes at Birchencliffe could move the ball with equal speed, but had an
advantage that regular cricketers did not enjoy. Cricket matches are played on grass, and
the twenty-two yard long pitch is cut very short, and rolled flat with a heavy roller, to
iron out any lumps and bumps that could deflect the ball in unexpected directions.

The ground inside the brickyard was mostly mud to which was added on an accidental
but historical basis lumps of brick, collections of coke, ash, coal, plasterer’s lime, and
lumps of wood, together with whatever body parts were knocked off intrepid batsmen
who took up their plank-bats and asked for “leg and middle.” That gave the ball plenty of

1
See Freddy in action: http://www.cricket.mailliw.com/archives/2006/08/31/video-of-fred-trueman-
bowling/
choice to fly off at curious and incredible angles taking the batsman, and sometimes his
teeth, by surprise, and in severe cases, by ambulance.

As unlikely as it seems, I still hold the world record for distance travelled by a struck
ball. The north end of the old oval kiln opposite the feeding shed was the site of the
wicket, and ‘muscle-man’ Farrell, an incredibly strong brick drawer, bowled a Yorkie
that came in an almost straight line towards my nose.

In flash of brilliance, such as Nelson showed at Trafalgar, and that caused the Australians
to lose Tobruk twice, I swung the bat around with vigour as if I was hurling it away from
the deep south side, connected with the ball whilst continuing to describe an arc on a
slightly upward trajectory that only ended when I and my bat were actually turned to face
the end wall of the kiln.

The ball had lifted high in the air and flown across the row of terraced houses that backed
onto the yard at Prince Royd, and entered the open upstairs window of a number forty
three Halifax bus on its way back to Huddersfield. It was discovered by cleaners four
months later and had travelled an estimated six hundred miles in that time. Surely a
world record. As is common with non-legal forms of cricket, I was declared “Six and
out!”

That was long ago, and, as William Wordsworth said, “Another race has been, and other
palms are won,” – commonly paraphrased as “a lot of water has gone under the bridge”
– but there remains some tasks in life that can only be handled properly in the spirit of
Brickyard Cricket. It is the only approach to a dangerous and sudden situation when
recourse to the safety of a committee to spread the blame is impractical, and an
immediate response is essential.

It is in those terrifying moments that I feel again the roughness of the bat’s handle in my
grip, and swing at the looming problem with determination, and all my might and main,
and feel once more the satisfaction of having knocked the situation for a six over the
stone rooftops of the nearby houses.

Despite the lost ball, the inevitable groans from close comrades, and the impatience of all
during the hiatus whilst a substitute missile is located, the thrill of having despatched
Farrell’s Best Yorkie into another state of existence is exceeded only by the sudden
slaying of fire-breathing dragons that disturb the tranquillity of peaceable folks, or
threaten the security of the vulnerable.

Whether the intended victim is an adult unable to see the perfidy of someone who has
gained their confidence, or a child in the hands of an abuser, the Yorkshire Cricket
Response has never failed me yet.

The vision of the idly curious was limited to seeing only men at play with primitive
implements: hard working men taking a break from dangerous employments in
occupations that could see them crushed by falling rocks, lose limbs to runaway tubs,
blown to pieces by dynamite in the quarry, have backs broken and muscles torn as they
struggled to right a heavy load of bricks on a barrow whose slick wheel was sliding off a
six inch wide metal plate, drenched in rain, or severely burned by ash in the kiln that
looked cold and grey on its surface, but which glowed white hot inside. They saw only a
pastime in the stream of hard lives; little thinking that the way we played our game
instilled lessons in life that could be obtained in no other university.

Brickyard Cricket readies one for the anomal and unexpected, provides a ready and
robust response to intimidation, and sends bullies on their way, not rejoicing, but with
something to think about in respect of their future behaviour. Now that’s what I call a
sport!
Chapter

Dramatis Personæ
By the nature of the varied and demanding labour, brickyards attract unique and eccentric
characters.

Long Harry
Rowley
Christadelphian clerk
Farrell
Kane
Willie the Firer
Luther
Edward
Agnes
? Marshall
? Hayes
Eli
Freddy & Jimmy
Leslie the Little man - educated
Doris the Glamour granny
Plasterer
Chapter

The Fighting Parson

When I had worked for eighteen months at The Huddersfield Brick Tile and Stone
Company, at Prince Royd, Birchencliffe, I experienced my first foray into the minefield
of labour relations, by striking for parity with the brickie, Mr Kane, and was sacked for
my trouble, so I took a position in Sharratt's brickyard about a mile or so down the Elland
side of the Ainleys, on the main Halifax Road.

In the Birchencliffe brickyard, I had been known as a Mormon boy who took pocket
sized scriptures to work and read them in his idle moments. While this caused no
problems, it did raise a certain amount of interest, but was mostly viewed as being just
something that I did and left at that.

When I moved to Sharratt's, my religious observances were seen as aberrant and

unacceptable behaviour for rough folks in rough employment. After I had been working
there three days, I was sat at my machine taking off newly-pressed house bricks, when I
was approached by the resident thug demanding to know if I was “religious.” I replied in
the affirmative, whereupon he invited me to fight him. To my surprise, I accepted his
invitation without flinching, raising my voice, or taking my eyes off the raw bricks
spewing from the mouth of the mechanical press. He seemed equally surprised.

He disappeared round the corner of the brick hole to reappear two minutes later to ask me
if he could bring a friend with him to the fight so that it would be two to one. Again, I
said that would be just fine. He left but came back twice more, each time adding to the
list of his protagonists who were to take me on at dinner time in the field across the road
from the entrance to the brickyard. Each time I told him that his suggestion was fine.

The last time he came with a mounting number of lieutenants, with some exasperation
evident I told him that he could bring whoever he wanted and that I would fight them all
together. On his last visit, he informed me that his armed force had reached the unlucky-
for-some number and was thirteen strong. "That's fine," I said placidly. "I'll see you at
one o'clock.” I may have smiled.

At one o'clock, I crossed the road carrying a large bottle of the yellow lemonade, made in
the factory by the side of the sunlit field where I stood, drank, and waited for the horde to
arrive. At the end of the lunch break, when I was full of lemonade but very lonely from
the opposing army's failure to show, I walked back into the brickyard and resumed work.
From time to time, young men would walk around the comer near where my machine
was situated, look at me, and walk back. This happened twelve times.

From that time on I was known as “The Fighting Parson," and lead a life free of
harassment and scorn, my new workmates showing conspicuous respect for an unlikely
Christian warrior. What the young brawler never discovered, because he was too afraid
to find out, was that if he had fought me, even by himself, he would more than likely
have knocked the stuffing out of me.

I have not had many fights and have only lost one of those I have had. I do not like
fighting and would rather avoid confrontation, but there are times when decent people
have to stand up fearlessly or fearfully for what is right, simply because it is the right
thing to do.

Twenty years following this adventure, I worked at Shaw's Pallets in Dobcross,

Lancashire, over the Pennines from Huddersfield. One worker was six foot two inches
tall and a bully who used his size to intimidate smaller men, and we were all smaller than
he was! I witnessed him perform an act of high foolishness that could have seriously
injured another operative. I went across to him and told him in no uncertain terms that if
I ever saw him do anything like that again I would report him to the management and
would expect them to deprive him of his employment and press criminal charges. His
response was grunted belligerence.

Later that day, whilst queuing to "clock out" he pushed in the queue. I took exception to
his unfairness and told him to get to the back of the queue. He became belligerent but
this time he added threats and imprecations to his fuming. I invited him out to the back
of the factory to fight it out. He stood stock still, looking into my face to gauge my
intentions whilst figuring his options. I have never exceeded five feet seven-and-one-half
inches in height, and I weighed about eleven stone seven. He was about ten years my
junior and weighed in at an athletic fifteen and a half stone.

His thinking done, he said that if he fought me he would miss his bus. I said that if he
fought me, win, lose, or draw, I would give him a lift home in my car. He thought some
more before his courage folded, then, grunting, he joined the back of the queue, with his
machismo evaporated, his power publicly shredded, and his bullying days at an end. My
stock rose immeasurably. I was regarded as courageous, with an alternate reading of
foolhardy, charges to which I plead guilty due to derangement. My would-be antagonist
suffered from uncertainty, but most of all from pure cold fear, as is most often the case
with bullies.

It is quite possible that I would have lost both fights miserably and I knew it. But there
are times when we have to risk defeat, even be prepared to lose in order that truth,
righteousness, and justice, are given their proper place in our communities. And we need
to know that some things, like truth and love, are worth fighting for, and we lose only
when we stand silent and indolent in the face of injustice, hatred, prejudice, or
unrighteousness.

The truly Christian life has been lived when, at its end, we can declare with Paul,

I Have Fought a Good Fight,

I Have Finished My Course,
 I Have Kept the Faith

To be right and please God, it is sometimes obligatory for us to take on the enemy, even
when he is bigger than we are, more vigorous than we are, and even when he comes
against us in battalions!
Chapter

Going For a Soldier

Ben Battle was a soldier bold And used to war’s alarms,
‘Til a cannonball took off his legs And he laid down his arms
Thomas Hood

I continued to enjoy my spiritual and social development among the Latter-day

Saints. My time among them was pleasant and rewarding and I soon felt very much at
home with them. They were unquestionably supportive, and to a young lad of my
experience and disposition, that was no small thing.

I was baptised in December 1950, having spent late summer among my new
friends of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the first branch of the
Church in Huddersfield for some time, and finding new friends and good companionship
in the several branches of the Church in Halifax, Dewsbury, Bradford, and Leeds, in
what was then the Leeds District.

The year 1951, I passed in work and at Church, for the most part, enjoying both
but for entirely different reasons, but in 1952 the long shadow of conscription fell across
my life as I became increasingly aware that some time in 1953 I would be conscripted in
to the British Armed Forces of the Crown to serve in one or other arm for the
compulsory two years. So I joined the Army to avoid the being conscripted. That is the
only reason I can think of as to why I signed on for three years regular Army service
rather than waiting.

No doubt it was all clear as day once upon a time, but now I can only guess. I
might have thought I’d do the extra year and get a bit more money. I cannot think of
anything more heroic than that. Satisfied with the extra thirty shillings a week, I was not
unhappy at being referred to as a “thick regular” by my National Service comrades.

Until I had to report for duty, my employment continued, and I somehow managed to get
a job on the building site at the rear of Brock Bank during the erection of the houses
there. The company building them was Erith of Kent. I was put to work with a lump
hammer and a cold chisel chasing channels in the walls for wiring, and knocking drain
holes in them to carry the waste outside. This was during the time that my mother started
baking again.

Her teacakes were the size of a small beret, the weight of a medium brick, and the density
of concrete. However, they were substantial and one of them went a long way. These
were what I ate for my dinner on the building site. Very filling.

During an absence from work because Toastedof sickness,

Buttered CurrantITeacake
obtained another job at Elliott’s
Brickyard at Lepton, and worked there for the period of my sick leave from the buildings.
I am at a loss to explain my thinking or my condition, but it is true. After my ‘sickness’
was over, I returned to Erith's.

One of the carpenters on site was big Dave Valentine. He was a Rugby League player
who played for Fartown, as Huddersfield Rugby League Club is known. Dave Valentine,
was one of the small but select band of Scots who made a major impact on the sport of
rugby league, which celebrates an important centenary on Friday, September 1 2006.
Valentine was undoubtedly the most famous of the Scottish rugger players, the former
Hawick union player leading Great Britain to win the inaugural Rugby League World
Cup in 1954.

Dave Valentine
Details from the Sportal Rugby League World Cup 2000 Greatest Players site

Dave Valentine’s place in rugby league history was already assured before the inaugural 1954 World Cup.
He had already won eleven test caps, played in Ashes-winning sides in 1948 and 1952, toured Australasia
with the Lions earlier in 1954 and won a host of major honours with a sublimely entertaining Huddersfield
team. He had been capped by Scotland at rugby union and in league he had been a mainstay for the
celebrated Other Nationalities XIII.

A virile, hard-working, strong-tackling loose-forward and a leader others would follow, Valentine was
offered the captaincy of Great Britain for the first World Cup when stand-off Willie Horne turned it down. It
could have been a poisoned chalice for many of the returning 1954 Lions also decided to forego the
experience and injuries ruled out other candidates.

History shows that Valentine’s party of underdogs went to France and confounded both the sceptics and
the opposition. Britain probably never had a more inspirational captain as Valentine led them to a 16-12
victory in the final against an excellent French combination. That final at the Parc des Princes proved to be
Valentine’s last appearance for Great Britain. What a way to finish.

Dave hammered screws into the floorboards to fasten them into the split steel joists that
support the upper floors. None of the screws ever saw a screwdriver, except what he
called his “Manchester Screwdriver.”

From Erith’s I went to work at Sharratt’s brickyard, near the top of the Ainleys on the
Elland side, and it was from Sharratt’s that I enlisted.
 Chapter

The Initiative Test

The Army Recruiting Office was in Kirkgate, opposite the Parish Church. Some time in
July 1952, I took a day off work and made my way to the office, answered some
questions, filled in some forms, and was sent to Halifax for a medical.

Looking up Kirkgate

The instructions to get to the doctor’s surgery in Halifax were simple and verbal. After
getting on the right omnibus I followed the directions and duly arrived. The trip for
medical inspection was a simple initiative test. It is told that some would-be soldiers are
still wandering around Halifax muttering into their beards: these failed the test.

Halifax Piece Hall

Returning to the Recruiting Office clutching a brown envelope describing my rude
health, I was invited to fill in some more forms. When it asked for ‘religion’ I said,
“Latter-day Saint,” which was questioned by one of the staff.

“Have you ever heard of that?” he asked the sergeant with the bright red sash on.

British Army Recruiting Sergeant’s Badge

“A man may claim any religion he likes!” said the sergeant in a firm voice, and that was
the end of the matter. The only problem with being a member of The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints as far as Army service was concerned is the fact that the box
in which a soldier’s religion is transcribed in his AB 64 Part One is one inch long. So,
while it accommodates RC, C of E, Meth, Bapt, and so forth quite nicely, abbreviating
the full title of my Church was problematic. However, after some discussion we settled
for Latter-day Saint in small squashed letters.

I was eventually invited to stand and take the oath of allegiance to Her Majesty Queen
Elizabeth II, her heirs and successors, from which I have never been released, except
mentally, then given the Queen’s Shilling, that I converted into jelly babies on the way
home. I was a soldier. Well … almost!

I had been given a date to join the training unit of the Corps of Royal Electrical and
Mechanical Engineers at Blandford, and supplied with a travel warrant to travel there by
steam train. The Corps is colloquially known as the REME – pronounced REEMY –
despite a REME captain instructing us to refer to it by separate initials, R – E – M – E.

Thinking ahead, I went to a barber’s shop at Green Cross on the way home.

“Give me soldier’s hair-cut, I’ve gone for a soldier,” I said in an important voice. “Yes,
sir!” he replied in a voice that betrayed his former khaki days. In a flash a cape
surrounded me, following which, with sudden despatch and a million inconsequential
questions from the veteran, his silver scissors flew, electric shears whirred, and my shell-
like ears fell several feet towards my feet. Wading in my crop of hair, the barber held up
the mirror.

“That should do,” he said. I agreed. We were both wrong, even though I had never had
my hair cut as short as he cut it in all the years I went for “Short back and side, please”
to the barber shop next to Moxon’s coal office opposite Sparrow Park as a boy. I breezed
out of the barber’s hut with the glowing confidence that I had met the Army’s rigorous
tonsorial standard. Ambrose Bierce defined being positive as being mistaken at the top
of one’s voice. Subsequent events at Blandford proved him right.
Chapter

Peter Yull
We saw the anguish of his soul

The branch members variously received news of my enlistment. In any event, military
service was inevitable, and I should have had to go in another five or six months anyway.
Kath Crowther’s brother, Peter, was my age. He enlisted shortly after I did. He went
into the Fleet Air Arm, becoming an airframe engineer, and served for many years.

When Peter’s marriage broke up, he wandered lost and lonely for many years, not
keeping in touch with his family which was a source of constant anxiety to them. One
Saturday, many years later, when I was going to the London Temple, Kath asked me to
put Peter’s name on the prayer roll, which was not then a common practice in the United
Kingdom. I added his name, and the following Thursday he walked unannounced and
unexpected into his parent’s home in Kirkheaton.

He was never active in the Church again, but married a girl from his village, Kirkheaton,
started a new family, and became a leader in his local branch of the British Legion. He
was a gifted pianist, a good man, and a loyal friend.

Kath had another brother, Billy, who joined the merchant navy. He was lost overboard
one New Year’s Day. The Huddersfield Sea Cadet Corps held a service of remembrance
for him at the rear of their quarters on Old Leeds Road in which a wreath was placed on
the canal in a brief but touching ceremony.

There is a double sadness in such a loss. One’s mind can never discover exactly what
happened, and that gives reign to imagining all kinds of terrible things, as if the loss itself
was not terrible enough. There is something of comfort in knowing where the beloved is
resting. A grave is a focal point for grief: a place of pilgrimage where remembrance of
times past, and present hopes can be fused.

Moreover, while this does not abolish grief, it does lessen it. There is some satisfaction
from being able to visit such a place that is not available when the resting place of the lost
one is unknown. Humanity’s fears tend towards the worst, as expressed in Wordsworth’s
The Affliction of Margaret.

A strong faith is of great comfort. As Joseph Smith said, “While we weep, we do not
weep as those without hope.” Religion had taken over my life and infused it with new
meanings. I took it seriously, reinterpreting life and myself in new ways. I do not mean
that I was perfect, or even a good example. I was still being made. Dennis Livesey once
remarked of me at this period that I was “struggling to grow up,” and he was right.

Peter did not return to activity in the Church, and I saw him only one further time when
he visited to attend some function. He married a girl from Kirkheaton, lived there,
worked nearby, was involved with the British Legion Club there, and died far too young
and a stranger, he who had once been my closest friend
Chapter