Henry Brown, Son and Pickles. Engineers - Part 8

I dare say I might have bent your ear from time to time about the fact that the reason we don't have lads coming on wanting to be engineers nowadays is because we don't let them play out in interesting places like loco sheds, foundries and workshops.  At the age of ten years my dad was letting me read his engineering magazines and was taking me every Saturday morning to the works where he was the manager.  I was always set on doing something, drilling holes, polishing chromed parts watching the furnaces being charged, I was soaking it all in.

Twenty years earlier Newton had been doing exactly the same thing.  The engineer at Wellhouse was Billy Watson who came to Barlick from Rochdale in his twenties.  Newton mated on with him and every morning would go and help Billy in the boiler and engine house.  Very often he started the engine after breakfast and this sometimes made him late for school but Newton had his priorities right, the engine came before school!  Billy taught him to indicate engines and if he was going to do a bit of valve setting at night he'd have Newton with him.  Newton always said that it wasn't Johnny who taught him his engine skills, it was Billy Watson and his own reading and observation.

By early 1930 he was working full-time at Wellhouse in the machine shop and going out with the men on weekend jobs.  Dennis Pickles and Leonard Parkinson took him with them and taught him all they knew.  They installed shafting and bevel gears, did repairs and Newton saw every kind of millwrighting job at first hand.  Other young men came to work at J A Pickles.  Walt Fisher, Stanley Fisher's son, Bob and Jimmy Fort, they grew up together at Wellhouse and learned their trade.  I once asked Newton why he never bothered with anything electrical, he said there was no need to, Walt Fisher left them all behind and so right up to the firm closing they left all that work to him.  Walt was Newton's partner when they closed the shop down.

In the early 1930s J A Pickles and Son had every mill in Barlick under their wing except for Long Ing where Rushworths from Colne were still the king pins.  Outside Barlick they had all the mills from Earby to Foulridge and occasionally further afield.  On top of this there was specialist machining work that they took on for other engineers.   

Johnny soon started Newton up doing outside jobs on his own.  He was only 14 when his dad sent him to Arthur Dobson the engineer at Crow Nest Shed.  Newton said his dad told him in later years that he'd had a word with Arthur about sending Newton but at the time he knew nothing about this.  Arthur was noted for his ability to swear and young Newton was more than a bit worried.  When he got there he found that the job was to put a couple of big washers under the economiser damper because it was rubbing on the brick floor of the flue.  Arthur lent Newton one of his lads and big does and little does they levered the damper up, did some measuring and Newton went back to the shop to make the washers.   Newton said they were anything but round but they put them in and cured the job.  When he landed home at night he was as black as the fire back but Johnny calmed his mother down, "He's been on an outside job!"  Other jobs followed, he was sent on his bike to Salterforth to fit a half inch pipe at Berry's mill, he repaired a wringing machine for a woman down Rainhall.  One day he went to a bloke who made torpedoes (pasties) down at Syke called Nat and repaired the firebars under his oven.  Small jobs, but good experience and he remembered them all.

Transport was sometimes a problem.  Johnny sent Jim Fort and Newton to County Brook one day in the winter of 1930 to fit a new bronze bearing in the water wheel.  It had all been measured up and made and just needed taking up, dropping in the pedestal and the jacks letting off to drop the wheel onto it.  There were men there to help them as well.  Newton asked how they were going to get there and Johnny said they had to catch the bus!  Now this bearing weighed about 100Kg  (200lbs) so these two lads set off with it on a bogie, manhandled it on to the bus and then dragged it down through the fields from the top road to County Brook.  I think it was Johnny's idea of initiative training.

There was a significant event late on in 1930.  Johnny collared Newton in the middle of the afternoon and said "Clough's stopped, come with me."  They went to Clough mill and sure enough, the engine wouldn't run.  Leonard Parkinson and Dennis Pickles were there and every time they opened the steam valve it did half a turn and then bounced back.  They had taken the lids off and checked the valves but it had beaten them.  They were all stood there scratching their heads and a little voice piped up from the back, "It never will run will it!"

Newton had spotted that they had set the left hand eccentric 90 degrees forward when it should have been back.  Dennis Pickles blew his top at Newton but Leonard quietened him down and asked Newton what he meant.  Newton showed him and Leonard said "The lad might be right."  Johnny told them to alter it as they couldn't make it any worse.  So Leonard and Newton slacked the eccentric off, barred the engine round and nipped it up 180 degrees back from where it had been.  Johnny told George Hoggarth the engineer to try it.  George opened the steam valve and off it went, "Ticky Tock" as Newton put it.  Johnny rammed his bowler hat down on his head and said, "That's it, that's me finished wi' engines.  If you want me from now on you'll have to send for me!"  That was how Newton's engine fitting started, he was 14 years old.

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© Stanley Challenger Graham 2003

Page updated: 13 OCT 2003