Scope and Content
(00 min.)
The informant was the fourth son in a family of 9. His father worked George Garside’s canal boats. For four years after leaving school, at age fifteen, he worked with his father and brothers on two boats transporting sand on the canal between Leighton Buzzard and Paddington. Garside’s sand came from Grovebury Quarry on six wagons, pulled by a small engine, to a gantry, just before Tiddenfoot, where the sand was tipped into two boats. When the sand was very wet the truck was chained onto a ring set in concrete, to ensure it did not fall into the boat.
(5 min.)
The boats, named Evelyn and Linney, each held about 33 tons, and were horse drawn. The horse was owned by the father and the boats rented from Garside’s. The sand was used mainly for building. There were various methods of unloading the sand at the destination, depending on where it was being delivered. In places like Greenford Golf Course they used wooden barrows, with iron wheels, across planks. At Paddington Basin, contractors such as H. Sabey and Company, had a steam crane and a grab, and the sand would be unloaded for them. A man in a boat positioned the grab and he had a shovel to collect the loose sand. At Richardon’s, a small firm just past H. Sabey and Company, they had to unload, or ‘throw off’ the sand themselves. John Dickinson’s had a warehouse in Paddington Basin. Their boats travelled through the night transporting goods from Apsley, Nash and Croxley Green to Paddington.
(10 min.)
Dickinson’s boats were ‘clothed up’ so no-one knew what they were carrying. At Uxbridge Lock boats from companies such as Dickinson’s and Fellows, Morton and Clayton had preferential treatment, and were let through, when the lock was closed to others. These firms’ boats with a motor were called fly boats. Fellow, Morton and Clayton boats travelled from Birmingham, often through day and night to the Thames to catch a ship. Priority was also given to them at Marsworth Lock. Such high priority was not needed for the sand. Informant describes a twelve hour working day, and how the horse-drawn boat was manoeuvred through the locks.
(15 min.)
Informant’s father was paid per load of sand transported. From that payment he would pay anyone who worked for him. The sons had one shilling a ton for unloading, and some pocket money. The father stopped working on the boats and the horse and boats were taken over by informant’s older brother and his wife. Informant went to work ten hour days as a navvy at Parrott and Jones’s pit on Shenley Hill, now the Tidy Tip. He had to shovel through some twenty to thirty feet of clay to reach the white sand underneath. That sand was loaded into a tipper truck on railway lines. A gas engine powered the winch.
(20 min.)
There were only 3 men working on this process. Family men would earn 36/8d a week; there was no piecework. The white sand went to different places. Some was collected by horse and cart for delivery to pubs for use as whitening (steps, etc) and in the spittoons. Sand also went to Parrot & Jones’s yard in North Street, to repair their trucks and lorries. They also had pits of their own in Vandyke Road and Shenley Hill. Informant left the pit after about six months and worked with his brother-in-law, a sort of sub-contractor with Marley Tiles. There he painted ridge tiles, added toppings, and left them to dry overnight in a rack. He was there about a year, before moving on to Brown’s Transport, on Stanbridge Road, as a trailer boy. Near Brown’s there was a pub and about 4 cottages. The sand pit was behind Brown’s.
(25 min.)
The area, now known as Harrow Road, was under water then. Harry Brown was very overweight and had difficulty walking. He travelled by pony and trap. Informant looked after the trailer and helped with the loading and unloading of bricks. He worked with a driver, Bert Draper. There was a lorry and a trailer. They visited a brickyard, Fletton’s, at Water Eaton. The pair transported bricks to London and further afield. During World War Two they delivered bricks to Bristol to cover petrol tanks. Informant describes experiences driving with bricks through the Blackwall Tunnel when it was still single lane.
(30 min.)
Some time after the start of the War he went to work at the Foundry, where Vimy Road is now. He describes the businesses on Bridge Street: Poet’s shop, Mallet’s, a greengrocer’s, The Ewe and Lamb public house, a solicitors and Doctor Square’s and Bolton. Next to their surgery was a high class dress shop, Florence Inns, then Smith’s bike shop, followed by a house which was turned into a café. Where the new ring road is now there was a yard and garage selling petrol. The bridge over the mill stream (now the river), was the border between Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire. As a boy he remembered a horse and cab in the yard of The Bridge Hotel. The cabby would collect people from Leighton Buzzard Railway Station. A separate cab was used to take those suffering from scarlet fever, or similar, to the fever hospitals on Grovebury Road and along Mentmore Road beyond the sand quarry.
(35 min.)
By The Bridge Hotel was the river Ouzel, which ran into the mill stream. Informant recalls a picture palace, The Grand, near a big house, where government work was carried out. Just past that, at the top of the drive leading down to the Foundry Equipment, there was a shop, some flats, and Doctors Sharpe and Doctor . . . . . . Next to the surgery was Brantom Brothers, stonemasons. An unmade road led to the canal bridge, where there were several businesses, including an Italian hat factory. In this area Vimy planes were made during World War One; also Morgan cars. The Foundry was at the end of this site, and they made different things for the war effort. They used moulding sand, a very soft sand mixed with molasses, to make it stick together. Informant was not sure of the source of the sand.
(40 min.)
Informant had a number of different jobs at the Foundry, although he was not in the foundry itself. He describes the process of using a moulding box in which casts were prepared. They produced items, including sand mills for other foundries, in Luton and Nottingham. They made steel endless belts. He chauffeured people occasionally. There were not many drivers and cars around then. He describes a Frenchman, Mihac, on a ‘sit up and beg’ bike in the rain, holding the handlebar with one hand and an umbrella in the other! He had learnt to drive (a lorry) whilst working at H. G. Brown’s. Whilst in that employ and collecting brickbats from Fletton’s, to take to the camp at Oxendon, the sirens went and informant relates an incident where a German bomber targeted a train in the vicinity. He thinks an RAF plane from Hatfield subsequently brought down the German plane in that area.
(45 min.)
Harry Brown, of H. G. Brown’s, bought a traction engine and a steam engine from Shefford. It was a long journey to Leighton, with the traction engine doing only two or three miles an hour. The traction engine was subsequently used to remove trees at Oxendon to make way for building. Returning to his account of employment at the Foundry, informant was assigned to new duties, handling sheets of corrugated iron. Whilst labouring on a roof he slipped and suffered a rupture, resulting in six weeks off work, and time in Luton and Dunstable Hospital. He was paid whilst off work, because he should not have been allowed to work on the roof. Thereafter he was given light duties, driving a lorry to collect steel girders from the other side of the Blackwall Tunnel . . . . Tunnel Avenue . . . to deliver to the Foundry. It was difficult to source steel at that time.
(50 min.)
Informant’s next employment was with A. C. Biggs, Grovebury Road. There he accompanied a driver with an international Yankee lorry to deliver sand to Cantol’s, near Cambridge. The sand could be unloaded from both drop-down sides. He also did work for Smith and Sons, Grovebury Road, who distributed potatoes and cabbages to the shops. With the international lorry he would collect potatoes and other produce from small holdings around Flitwick to store on Grovebury Road, not far from Bigg’s yard.
(55 min.)
Informant transported sand by lorry for building purposes from Double Arches Quarry to Cambridge Tile Works and Long Crendon Tile Works near Thame. Also to many builders’ yards in London, where it was sold in barrow loads or bucketsful. That was prior to tipper trucks. However at Double Arches the sand was tipped out of the skip wagons, hauled by engines on the light railway, onto the lorries. The wagon was on a bridge and the lorry was parked beneath the bridge. During the War he also drove lorry loads of sand to Bovingdon Aerodrome. Towards the end of the War he worked full time transporting Silcott’s Cattle Food, which had come from London and was stored in Stanbridge Road. He drove lorry loads around farms in the Leighton, Wing and Stewkley area. He could begin at Coiter’s Farm, Hockliffe Road, then proceed to farms in Eggington, Hockliffe, Tebworth, Toddington, Harlington and Barton. Loads included cattle cake, pig food and chicken food.
(1 hour)
Sand was also taken from Stone Lane Quarry (Arnold’s) and Bedford Silica Sand Mines. That from Stone Lane was thrown into trucks to be to be transported by rail. Bedford Silica Sand Mines produced mainly dry sand and was bagged. A use for that yellow sand was in bird cages, and informant delivered the sand by lorry to shops.
(I hour 3 mins.) End of interview
Content Summary by Pat Aitchison (1 September 2008)
Track 2
(00 min.)
The informant describes 3 or 4 employees of A. C. Biggs, at Stone Lane Quarry, getting sand ready, through screens, for collection. He loaded the sand onto his lorry and drove it to Billington Road Siding where he and his mate, with help sometimes, threw it into railway trucks. One lorry load filled two or three trucks. Drier sand from local quarries, such as Arnold’s and Garside’s, was carried by the Light Railway to the siding, where there was a gantry used to tip the sand into trucks. A.C. Biggs did not have tipper lorries when informant started working there, although at the end of his employment there were three tippers, one of which he drove. In all there were about 20 lorries. Whilst some lorries were taken up North, informant drove around the local area and London. In addition to carrying sand he transported farmers’ produce, for example wheat, in bulk. Sometimes they collected provisions from Southwark Bridge to bring back to Mallet’s, provision merchants, in Bridge Street. This was during World War Two. Marley Tiles commenced business just after the War, making tiles in a factory at the bottom of Marley yard. The broken tiles and mix, which had gone hard, was used by Dunstable Council for footings for building. Informant transported the excess rubble in a tipper lorry to a disused pit.
(5 min.)
This was Parrot and Jones’s, along Vandyke Road. One day two German Prisoners of War were assigned at Marley Tiles to break up the rubble, to assist the handling process. There was a farm, which is now a kennels, at the other side of what is now the school, and they had some rubble for their gateways. Some of the rubble was also used for a roadway at Bailey’s Farm. After the War ended informant drove a lorry taking cattle food around the farms towards Swanbourne, in one direction, and Barton-le-Clay in the other. He visited Kiteley’s Farm, at Capshill Bridge in Hockliffe Road, and he went to farms at Eggington, Hockliffe, Tebworth, Toddington and Harlington.
(10 min.)
British Road Service (B. R. S.) took over A. C. Biggs. Around 1950 informant moved to A. W. Forth, who bought three lorries off B. R. S. This employer also had a tractor, which was used with a Mole Drainer to bury pipes in the fields to provide water for cattle. Steel pipes were replaced with black plastic Marleythene pipes. Describes in detail work at Studham, a big farm belonging to the managing director of De Havilland’s, where he had an aeroplane in a hangar.
(15 min.)
Informant drove A. W. Forth lorries carrying Marley roof- and, later, also floor-tiles to lock-up garages around the country for tilers to pick up. He describes the security on the garages as combination locks, with the code number being given on a ticket. One winter’s day he and his son began around 4am and delivered to about 10 garages in Bury St Edmunds ending up about 5pm in Dursingham. They did not return home until about 9pm, working over hours. The next day they may have delivered a load to Kent. Bill Forth took over Silcott’s, from B.R.S., and that yard was used for storage. Informant was the only one of the three drivers with a Union Card, which was needed to drive into the London Docks area. There the ‘ganger’ man identified which dockers would work in the docks. There was always the potential of workers going on strike. He collected loads, such as two tons of bone meal, from warehouses in the Thames area. He visited docks such as the Royal Albert, Limehouse, South East India and South West India. There was one dock where the dockers worked slow mostly all day, then they would do overtime. Dockers were allowed half an hour to get to the canteen, an hour for lunch, and half an hour to return to work. That meant that deliveries could be delayed up to two hours. Informant visited Silcott’s factory, Silvertown, and Tate and Lyle’s factory in the same area. Also BOCM, a cattle firm. He collected ten tons of fodder, chicken, pig or cattle, and loaded it, sack by sack, onto the lorry which was sheeted up and roped, before being driven home. Hard work.
(20 min.)
Informant worked for A. W. Forth for about two years. There were times when his lorry was off the road, and he accompanied his employer to Chamberlain’s Barn Quarry, off Heath Road, to blast the sandstone for Arnold’s. An auger was used to bore several holes in the sandstone, then gelignite and detonators were put in place. A piece of string, on a stick, was ignited with the end of Bill Forth’s cigarette, whilst the informant hid behind a tree. Informant was paid danger money.
(25 min.)
This method was also used for blowing out tree stumps at Lord Rosebery’s at Mentmore. The sandstone at Chamberlain’s Barn was blasted out to reach the sand underneath. This also occurred in the pits at Heath, behind Banwell’s Garage, and at Walpole’s at Heath, where there was sandstone and ironstone to blast through to get to the sand. Informant moved next to work for Birch, a coal merchant in Leighton, who had a long-wheelbase Ford lorry. Informant transported Marley tiles. He describes one snowy day during a very bad winter, possibly 1963, when there was no coal arriving by railway, and he had to collect coal from Nottingham. Coal sacks and brown paper covered the diesel tank to prevent it from freezing. Frozen diesel resulted in many lorries stationary on the side of the road. On the road between Newport Pagnell and Northampton there were pieces cut out of the snow to allow vehicles to pass each other. It took a whole day to get to Nottingham and back.
(30 min.)
Informant moved on to work for Frank Bulch driving sand from Garside’s Pit at Grovebury to Marley Tiles. When informant was driving sand in A. C. Biggs’ tipper from Arnold’s to Anchor Tiles, on Heath Road, at the top of Broomhills Road, there was a concrete ramp he ran up from which the sand was tipped into a bin. From there it was mixed with cement by machine to form roof tiles. There were also some handmade tiles. In employment with Frank Bulch he drove sand, sometimes from Garside’s, for roof and floor tiles. Dried sand was taken to Cole Glass Works at Wolverhampton. He also took two or three loads of dry sand a year to a printing works near Kew Bridge. There it was made into bird sand sheets. Sand was also transported to Birmingham, where it was dried on a hotplate to remove impurities, and used in horticulture. White sand was taken to nurseries who sold it in hundredweight or half-hundredweight bags for children’s play. The white sand did not contain iron, which would have stained clothes.
(35 min.)
Another use for the white sand was on muddy areas on football pitches. He drove to Luton, Wembley, West Bromwich and Walsall grounds. Sand was tipped into bunkers on golf courses, such as one the other side of Watford. It was used on the greens too. He referred to another man regularly taking sand to a big golf course the other side of Windsor. Informant transported gravel, in sacks, from Double Arches Quarry, together with sand, to a waterworks at Rickmansworth for filtering. The sand from Leighton Buzzard went all over the world. Letters in Double Arches Quarry indicated sand had gone to Saudi Arabia for water filtering, as Leighton Buzzard sand was different to that in Saudi Arabia. Informant’s acquaintance, Bill Delafield, visited Canada as their sand was similar to Leighton Buzzard’s. Whilst informant was with Walpole’s drivers, a geologist visited, searching for fossils at different local pits, and explained the changing landscapes over the centuries, and the Great Flood, resulting in sand in the Leighton Buzzard vicinity, chalk in Dunstable and Harefield, and gravel the other side of St Albans and in West Drayton. He referred to the demolition of houses to build a new wing on St Mary’s Hospital when sand was discovered underneath the houses.
(40 min.)
After Frank Bulch sold up, informant worked for about 13 years for Garside’s. When Garside’s was taken over informant was 65 and he had no option but to retire. He would have liked to continue working and he missed meeting up with other drivers for café stops and chats. Remarked that no tipper lorries until towards the end of the War. At Garside’s he drove lorry loads of sand from Grovebury Quarry to Double Arches and later worked full time running sand into the new Rackley Hills plant.
(45 min.)
[This was a washing and drying plant.] Informant describes this new process, which Bill Delafield had seen working in France. Water was used; there was a pump and pipeline. A lorry load of sand was tipped into a bin and, with the aid of an endless belt, transferred to a cone, and subsequently split between coarse and fine sand. The coarse sand was driven to Garside’s at Double Arches, where it was dried, graded and transferred into hoppers. Some of it was bagged. The fine sand went to the old brickyard. From there it was collected for the Readymix plant on Grovebury Road for use in Readymix mortar. Informant also delivered sand directly to Readymix, which had a hopper and an endless belt. Sand was moved into a storage bin and was used for concrete. Gravel went into another bin. The Brickyards sandpit, which became a quarry, was where Walpoles removed the topping to reveal sand. Informant shovelled that sand onto his lorry to take to Rackley Hills, where it was tipped into hoppers. Excess coarse sand went to Double Arches where it was drained.
(50 min.)
Unlike now, where sand transported by road is covered, in the early days it was open to the elements. Inevitably some blew away, affecting cyclists and bikers riding behind the lorry. The lorries were calibrated, to monitor how much sand was transported. Inspectors had the power to fine firms carrying underweight loads. Allowance was made for wet sand. A.C. Biggs’ sand, taken to different yards in London, was sold in barrow loads and bucketsful. Sometimes a ton was picked up by horse and cart. When sand was transported to London by boat it was mainly collected by horse and cart, as there were not many lorries around then. Informant saw many changes in the transport of sand. Initially everything was done by pick and shovel and a barrow. There used to be few bikes around, and men had to walk along Vandyke Road in time for the opening of the pit. Sometimes they had a lift in a lorry passing on the way to Double Arches. People were fit in those days. Informant spoke of men at Arnold’s shovelling sand all day into a screen over trucks, in order that the rough sand fell away. These trucks can be seen now at Stonehenge. In the evening the same men earned extra money, beer money, by planting fields for Charlie Munday, Vandyke Road. He had a horse and cart and a stable.
(55 min.)
Upon retirement in 1979 informant ended his connections with the sand industry. None of his family followed working in the sand industry. His older brother had worked for a firm at Brentford which transported goods, such as beans for Heinz, from the ships, using horse-drawn barges. From Brentford they went via Bull’s Bridge and onto Paddington and the Heinz factory, on the side of the canal. Then the horses were walked overland back to Brentford. Informant’s youngest son worked for Bill Forth and his older son spent about four years as an apprentice sign writer at Wolverton Carriage Works. He then earned more money working for Bradshaw and Horne as a painter and decorator. He continued in that trade on a self-employed basis.
(1 hour)
End of interview
Content Summary by Pat Aitchison (3 September 2008)