made in bedford - w h allen engineering association · 2019. 7. 10. · turbines, steam engines,...

MADE IN BEDFORD

Memories of Working at WH Allen & Sons Co. Ltd 1953-1989

An Interview with Mr Alan Battson of Bedford

Interview 4 of 15 completed for the “Made in Bedford” Project

Compiled by WH Allen Engineering Association

whaea.co.uk [email protected] © Copyright 2019

Bedford Creative Arts & Higgins Museum

An Interview with Mr. Alan Battson – Employee of WH Allen, Sons & Co. Ltd 1953-1989

Made in Bedford – Interview 4 Page | 2

“You mention the name of Allens,

‘Oh Allens of Bedford, yes, we know them’

and their machinery was always the best quality stuff.”

Mr. Alan Battson



‘Made In Bedford’ W. H. Allen, Sons & Co. Ltd. a joint project between BCA and Bedford Museum Interviewee: Mr Alan Battson (AB). Interviewers: David Deans (DD) & Kate Morrison (Sound Recording) Date of Interview: 2002

Contents

Contents ............................................................................................................................................................... 3

1.0 INTRODUCTION TO Mr. ALAN BATTSON & HIS APPRENTICESHIP AT W.H. ALLEN (1953-1959) ........ 4

2.0 SOCIAL LIFE AT ALLENS ............................................................................................................................. 6

3.0 INITIAL OVERSEAS WORK IN SOUTH AFRICA (1968) .............................................................................. 7

4.0 WORKING ON PUMP IMPELLERS IN SWEDEN & HONG KONG .............................................................. 7

6.0 UK & INTERNATIONAL OFFICES OF WH ALLENS .................................................................................... 8

7.0 A SURVEY OF SEVEN PUMPING STATIONS ON THE NILE IN SUDAN ................................................... 9

8.0 COMMISSIONING LARGE PUMPS IN NEWARK (USA) & CANADA ........................................................ 10

9.0 TESTING OF PUMPS AT BIDDENHAM WORKS ....................................................................................... 10

10.0 THE INSTALLATION OF A WATER TREATMENT WORKS & PUMPING STATIONS IN IRAQ ............. 11

11.0 CHANGES SEEN AT W.H.ALLENS – ALLEN GWYNNES, APE, ALLEN GEARS, NEI .......................... 13

12.0 FURTHER OVERSEAS WORK IN ZIMBABWE, IRAG, INDIA & CHINA .................................................. 14

13.0 SOLVING PROBLEMS IN BELFAST & SOUTHERN IRELAND ............................................................... 16

‘Made in Bedford’ Interviews: ............................................................................................................................. 19

© Copyright 2019 Bedford Creative Arts & Higgins Museum



1.0 INTRODUCTION TO Mr. ALAN BATTSON & HIS APPRENTICESHIP AT W.H. ALLEN (1953-1959)

DD Can you tell me your name? AB My name is Alan Battson.

DD Could you tell me your father’s occupation? AB Father’s occupation? He was a mechanic in a bus garage.

DD Could you tell me how you found out about Allens and when you started? AB Yes. I went to Bedford Modern School and more or less half way through I began to realise I was more

interested in engineering than perhaps any other particular occupation and I did the last two years in Sixth Engineering. They were encouraging us to apply at Allens to do a Studentship or whatever the particular grade we were interested in. So it really was the last two years of school which got me interested in engineering and particularly at Allens.

DD Which apprenticeship did you take on and can you tell me how long that was? AB Yes. I was taken on with three ‘A’ levels and you were taken on plus the interview, I think it was with

James Wooding who was Head of the Training Department at that time. We are talking about October 1953. And he suggested that we took what he called, a ‘special studentship’ to specialise in Installation and Service work would have been the ultimate goal. There were two of us taken on but I wasn’t allowed to do the normal run of things. A normal student would do three years training in the Works and during that time would study so that at the end of it he would be qualified to be an Associate of the Mechanical Engineers. But because we were doing outside work we had to forego that. But you would then become much more proficient at the practical aspects of Installation and Service work. So our particular role was to do one year intensive course through the Works itself and then two more years actually outside doing practical work on various sites around the country. And of course on all products that the company was dealing with.

In practice it actually turned out that National Service was still on the go at the time so I had my time extended first one year and then a second year so I finished up actually doing a total of five years. But I still went and did my National Service at the end of that which was in 1959.

So we went through the one years intensive course within the Works itself and we started with a chap called Ted Drake who was Foreman in charge of Steam Turbine erection and I worked with a chap called Alan Odd eventually on steam turbine driven fans for the Admiralty vessels. They also made on the same bench steam turbines which would drive pumps also for smaller naval vessels.

Following that I moved onto the Diesel Erection bench with a chap called Eric Sheldrake and he and I worked together on three different engines one of which played quite a significant part in subsequent events. The first engine we worked on was a S37 six cylinder for Port Line which was a generator for a ship. The second engine was a sister engine to the first one, (same again) and the third engine was a 6T47 which is a two stroke engine. He allowed me to actually build that up from the ground and he was doing all the sort of apprentice type jobs, tapping out holes, pulling studs, cleaning up the material ready for fitting.

DD You were on this special apprenticeship, was this because at the time that you joined … people have said that Allens started to change … there was less of the Marine and Naval stuff. You being chosen to do the outside installation work was that part of doing less ships towards more land based work?

AB Not really. No, not really. I did actually go on board ship on a couple of occasions, but no, they were still doing a lot of Marine work, particularly with the Admiralty. They had all products, namely diesels, steam turbines, steam engines, pumps, electric motors, both AC and DC and switch gear, gas turbines and gear boxes. In fact I did get involved in all of those products during that time so it was extremely good training and some really good guys to work with. They would allow you quite a lot of freedom to actually get on the job to see how you would manage the job.

I found it really really interesting you were going through with different chaps on different machines and the problems that occurred with those machines, right up to Commissioning. In fact on one or two jobs I was allowed to do the Commissioning as well. Which makes the whole thing much more interesting of course having installed the machine right from square one, actually put it together, building it up and having commissioned it at the end of the day. Of course you handed it over to the customer and away you go and do it all again somewhere else.



DD A lot of people who have done their apprenticeships with Allens thought that their training was very special because of the fact that they put a lot of faith in you, in terms of as you say you were allowed to commission it, how important was that you in your future career?

AB Extremely important actually because I did in fact achieve my ambition of becoming Chief Commissioning Engineer and of course that was much later in time. If you really want the progression of the job, I did do this five years training. I did two years in the RAF where a lot of the work that I did helped, because of the training I’d had in physically handling large loads, in dealing with electricity, and dealing with people. Because of course as you are on your own site, you are dealing with the customer or the customers’ representative as well as right through the whole of the trades right to the labourers. You needed to learn very quickly how to get on with everybody and to be diplomatic and all the rest of it, due to all the excellent training.

Following on from my National Service I changed from Installation and Service Department and I was offered a job in the Fluid Flow Laboratory which was a short term research section of the pump department. I worked under the Chief Designer called Arthur Guppy and directly with a chap called Jack Freeman. We were building scale models of installations that were going to be built to ensure that when they were actually built they would work properly. We undertook short term research where possible. If there was a little pump problem which wasn’t immediately apparent as to the cause we would look into it and do scientific surveys, construct models and do the whole thing in model form where you would be able to control the sort of things that were going wrong. From that of course you can go back and hopefully sort the problem on the real job, which did actually occur numerous times.

From Fluid Flow I was asked to take over the Technical Service Department from Mr. Ernest Clipsham, then I ran it, which was about 1974 I believe. He was approaching retirement age and I did that. He unfortunately died about three months prior to retiring. I took over the job. I was heading up the Technical Service Department which had quite a wide responsibility. I was really responsible for everything after installation which is checking the installation through, Commissioning, sorting out any problems, carrying out site tests, that sort of thing. That led on eventually; there was so much work for a relatively small group of people that the Department was split in two and a chap called James Samuel took over the Works side of it. I continued on Commissioning, right up until 1989 when I finished with the company.

DD Let’s go back to when you were in the Fluid Flow. The people you worked with, Arthur Guppy? AB Yes. Arthur Guppy was the Chief Designer and he was approaching retiring age too. Because in 1960 the

Company purchased the Gwynnes Pump Company and in fact moved the Pump Department up to Lincoln. Now there were two of us who didn’t go, Arthur Guppy was one because he was close to retiring and myself because I ran the Fluid Flow Laboratory at that time which took up a lot of space and space was at a premium up at Lincoln, at the Firth Road Works. So I worked at a little out station at Biddenham where we had a purpose built building and carried out an amount of test work there and the pump development work.

Of course, eventually in 1968 the Pump Department returned back from Lincoln to Bedford so I didn’t get that double move.

DD Could you tell us about Arthur? AB Arthur Guppy? Yes, his father was Headmaster of Bedford School and I think Arthur inherited from him the

ability to teach people. Quite a slender built man, always very neatly dressed, upright and had a strange approach which some people found difficult. He would breeze into your office and start talking about the job without saying hello or good morning or how are you, he was straight into the job. When he’d finished he would go, and that was that. But he was always open to answering your queries if you’d had a problem anywhere, and he had a natural ability to teach you. If you couldn’t understand something on his first round of explanation he would approach the whole subject from a different angle and inevitably you would soon learn what he was driving at, and this came quite naturally to him. I used to thoroughly enjoy working with him, he was a great fellow.

DD Were there any particular, any occasions or moments that you can recall working with him, springs to mind?

AB That’s a bit difficult because you are talking now really about, now the early 1960s, and the only memory is that he was always very helpful and to me very easy to get on with.

DD What do you think you took from your time working with him? AB Took away? Patience probably! Yes, he was extremely patient. I’ve never seen him get cross at all even if

you didn’t understand what he was trying to explain to you.

DD Can you remember the other chap you were there with?



AB Yes. Initially I was there with this chap called Jack Freeman who is still alive, lives in Renhold, in fact his wife died during this time and I was his best man on his second marriage. We still keep in contact with him. He too was a very patient man like Arthur Guppy. He knew what he was up to. After just a shade over a year of me joining the Fluid Flow Laboratory he was appointed Chief Tester at Lincoln so he moved up to Lincoln. I was left very much on my own in the Fluid Flow Laboratory, we had fitters and apprentices and so on who actually carried out much of the physical work and my job really was testing the equipment and the models.

DD Can you describe the sort of relationship between you and those that you specifically worked with because they are the sort of people who really understood the ins and outs of the machines, what was the relationship now between you and your apprentices?

AB Well I think generally speaking we got on pretty well, obviously I was in charge at the time and it taught me very much how to make use of people’s ability. Quite unusually on one particular occasion for example: we had three of the four trainees who were left handed. It’s good to have one left handed guy but to have three it was a little bit trying because I’m not. I can do things left handed but I’m not so good at it. Yes I think most of the guys at the end of their training, they would come to me for about three months at a time, they mostly went away with a nice feeling about pumps. One or two of the guys are still around and seem to be doing fairly well for themselves.

DD I think the thing with Allens training is that what you have there is almost like a passport to … AB To better things! Yes, Allens was very well thought of as a company by customers, particularly overseas

and especially by Marine companies. If you mentioned that you worked at Allens the attitude seemed to change, they immediately gave you respect and expected you to know all about what was going on. Laughter. Which of course helped in giving confidence. Yes, I’ve found this literally all over the world. You mention the name of Allens, ‘Oh Allens of Bedford, yes, we know them’ and their machinery was always the best quality stuff.

2.0 SOCIAL LIFE AT ALLENS

DD During your time, still in your early days, were you a member of any of the social groups at Allens? AB The only one I joined was the Cine Club. Normally speaking, Biddenham Works was quite separate from

the Main Works and its surprising how little contact we had with them. So we tended to be a little group of people on our own. From that point of view it didn’t really help from the social side. When we had to go to the Main Works to get things done we would see people, deal with them and you would get acquainted with where they worked you may not necessarily have known them by name. Of course in those days Allens was the largest employer of Bedford so you’d meet people in the town quite frequently, you’d know that they came from Allens you might not know what their names were. It was like being a member of a very large family.

DD Were you interested in photography before you joined the Cine Club? AB No, not really. It certainly wasn’t a particular hobby. I had taken some cine film, in fact I’ve still got them,

I’ve got various things, mostly trains. I’m a bit of a steam nut really there’s more of that later if you want to hear it! So I had taken some and with a view to improving them I did join the Cine Club and again you meet another circle of friends there.

DD How did that effect you? Did it always feel that you were Allens’ people? So that in a way did you feel that you almost didn’t have to necessarily have to go outside the Works for the social life and that sort of stuff?

AB No, not really no, because at that time I was married and the children were coming along and they would take a lot of time, I’m sure you would appreciate that. We had two boys and two girls and lived here and it took a lot of time and effort to bring them up. Particularly of course when they started going to school and you’d got school evenings and we did in fact I think I’m right in saying Mary, we had four school evenings all on one night didn’t we? You went to one and we both went to another and then split up again, it was quite difficult. It was a busy time bringing up a big family. Of course, living six miles from the middle of Bedford it means you’d got to turn out and do things there so socially I didn’t meet that many people really. Later on of course when I had to do work and Commissioning I was away from home quite a lot.

DD What were your first impressions of actually going onto the main Allen site at Queens Works? AB I think my first impression really was one of size although it’s only about 14 acres I think that was the

Queens Works site and then of course the Biddenham site was extra. It was one of size and of self-sufficiency. Whatever was required in the Works was made on site, right through from patterns, well obviously design first, drawings, then pattern, castings, machining, assembly, testing, the whole lot was done on that site, also it was self-contained.



3.0 INITIAL OVERSEAS WORK IN SOUTH AFRICA (1968)

DD So how did you get into the overseas work? AB The overseas work came along initially on model testing and we were testing a very high powered pump

for the Rand Water Board in South Africa where the machine had been rejected on site because it was extremely noisy. The customer, although he had rejected the pump, was actually very helpful and we initially sent a chap who was an expert in noise, a chap called Mr. Hutchinson who was Technical Advisor to the Management. He had previously been, I think I’m right in saying Chief Turbine Designer, lived up at Haynes, and he was sent out to carry out some tests on this machine and the results that he sent back and eventually brought back were very difficult to explain. Eventually it was decided to manufacture a scale model of the pump and a meeting was held with Mr. Norman Allen, Technical Director. He appointed various people to specifically work on this project to do the drawings, to do the patterns and to oversee the casting of the various parts, assembly and myself to carrying out the testing of the machine. It led to a whole stream of events and finished up with me going out to South Africa in 1968 to actually modify the pumps, well one of the two pumps on site, in line with the findings that we had discovered on the model. It turned out eventually to be successful. Eventually we had to make a new impeller to a slightly modified design and that worked entirely satisfactorily and the whole thing took several years from concept to getting it exactly right on site. Although we had consulted with an expert of cavitation which was Dr. Ian Pearsall of the National Engineering Laboratory after he’d studied all the facts and figures of the job he said, “Sorry, I can’t help. You’re on your own in this one”. I have some photographs of the test rig that we used and we had in the Laboratory. An extremely powerful stroboscope which we hooked up and this visually effectively stops the motion of anything that’s running and we were able to discover just what was wrong with this machine in South Africa. Of course once you’ve found the problem you can put it right, relatively easily!

But I finished up going out to South Africa a couple of times. The second time I was introduced to a chap called Dr. Dutkoviz who was Head of the Electricity Supply Commission of South Africa, at their Research Laboratory. Because I had been involved in model tests, and they were doing model tests as well there and he asked me to comment on some of the things they were doing. There is a report just there of the very thing I was involved with and eventually it led to a lot of co-operation between Allens as suppliers of very large pumps and the Electricity Supply Commission of South Africa. And many contracts were let to Allens and it was based on the work that Dr. Dutkoviz had started and aided and abetted by me a bit.

DD Excellent. What was it like travelling out, that first time to South Africa? AB Oh, really quite interesting, yes. It was the first overseas trip I’d ever done, June 1968 which of course is

winter time in South Africa. You are probably aware that Johannesburg is quite high above sea level and it’s extremely dry in winter and coming into land at Jan Smuts it looked as though the whole place had been on fire. But it was simply because everywhere was bone dry, tinder dry and still quite warm in winter but very cold at night. I was quite impressed with the place. The Rand Water Board Works is I think I’m right in saying, is the second largest water works in the world a lot of the equipment was supplied by Allens even in those days.

DD Your first overseas trip was a success? AB Yes, it was, yes definitely.

DD Did you feel a kind of renewed sense of confidence when you came back to continue with your work?

AB Yes. Yes when you’ve seen the work that you’ve done come to fruition it does give you a lot of confidence. You don’t get any medals of course, all you get is another job! But that’s fine, the next challenge to take up.

4.0 WORKING ON PUMP IMPELLERS IN SWEDEN & HONG KONG

DD Where did you go next then? AB I went to South Africa twice. The third time was thwarted by one of our children arriving so a colleague of

mine, a chap called Keith Lord, he actually went out and did that trip.

But then there was a long spell with more mundane bread and butter work. I then went out to Sweden. Again these model tests to do with two nuclear power stations that were being built out there. Forsmarck I and II, which are out on the Baltic coast and Ringhalls III and IV which were on the west side of the country and basically we were supplying the pumps to go there and we were asked to vet the results of the model test to ensure that we all agreed with the results. I just spent a few days out there on each one. But I was



subsequently called back out there after the pumps were installed because there was some rather unusual erosion taking place. I went out with a chap called Neil Wilkins who was the Chief Metallurgist and again we visited the power stations and examined some of the faulty parts.

DD What was the solution? AB Change of material. We had to change the impeller material which we thought would have been perfectly

OK to a much a harder stainless type of material, about 30% chromium content which actually then did the job OK. One of the reasons probably was the very low temperature of the water. Water probably in terms of cavitation is at its most fierce at about 4º and that temperature was quite common. It’s a material called veralium which is a very high chromium content alloy and the impellers were then made of that, it’s an extremely difficult material to work with but it lasts a very long time in service.

DD So within Allens you have the Metallurgist and yourself, you guys are almost the magicians of Allens?

AB In one sort of way, yes. I mean thanks for the compliment but yes one thing about Allens they did have a very strong back up team. I believe this probably came from the fact that they did a lot of Admiralty work so the work not only had to be secure but it had to be of top quality. We had not only myself on hydraulics but we had chemists, we had metallurgists and we had electronic engineers all working together as required on various problems. We were all allowed to ask and confer with one another if we felt that they could contribute and of course at that time there was a Research Department as well. So if you felt that one particular set of people could help you in what you were doing you could call them in. You were quite free to do that and it proved extremely helpful many times. For example in balancing the equipment the Electronics Labs had chaps who were very good at balancing moving machinery and they were as far as I was concerned frequently called out. Not only on our own equipment but when we used to buy in other people’s motors. For example, in the advent of the Hardy Spicer drive shafts frequently they were not able to be balanced at the speed that we were using them, so we had to carry out balancing work on site.

DD I remember when we spoke on the phone, probably the first time we spoke, you were in Africa and you were threatened with an AK47.

AB That was later on.

DD Let’s stay in the past, we’ll get back to that one later. AB After Sweden, gosh I’ll have to look at my notes, I think, to remember what comes next. Most of the 1980s

I was overseas in various places right up until I finished (in 1989). In 1980 we went to Hong Kong.

DD OK, what were you doing in Hong Kong? AB I was asked to go at extremely short notice to Hong Kong to a power station called Ap Lei Chou where we

had had a major failure of a pump impeller and we needed to get sight of the pump impeller before anybody tried to alter it or repair it. This helps us to diagnose what was actually wrong of course and how it failed. So I was over there for about 10 days and we did have an office there and whilst I was there I did the basic job and I was asked to go and have a look at several other jobs which tended to happen if you have a local office. Some of it’s just really to socialise with the customer and to keep him happy but he inevitably comes up with a query about his machines one way or another. But that was fine, learnt to eat with chop sticks at short notice in Hong Kong.

DD The majority of the time you would just be speaking English? AB Yes. I don’t think anywhere I went I was stumped for language. You’d always either have somebody with

you or the locals would speak an adequate amount of English.

6.0 UK & INTERNATIONAL OFFICES OF WH ALLENS

DD So they had other offices, like the Head Office in London, so what other places did Allens have offices in?

AB Well there was a main office in London itself, in the centre and then there was a small branch of basically workers in the docks at London, in the tidal basin. They had another collection of chaps at Manchester for servicing the enormous amount of machinery in that area.

There were some at Liverpool docks, at Newcastle on Tyneside and in Glasgow. Mostly just two or three chaps who would have an office as a base to keep records and so on and we would work from there mainly of course because of the huge amounts of work that was done for shipping. Mostly generators but we did do a few main engines, diesel engines for smaller vessels and inevitably pumps.



DD These small offices, would they have been the first point of call, for you know if they had a fault, would they go through them first or … ?

AB It depended actually. I mean if the guy was on the vessel working on reviewing the vessel the owners would know there was a representative in the area and it could be that they were the first to know. But they would get the technical information back from Bedford, drawings or whatever was required, like technical information. Then they would carry out the work or if it was a requirement for a specialist to go there then they would call in the appropriate specialist.

DD What international offices did Allens have? AB We had representatives in Canada and Hong Kong of course and quite a large contingent in South Africa.

They had a small factory there that employed about 200 people manufacturing locally to drawings sent out by the Head Office in the case of pumps. They didn’t make anything more complex, no steam turbines or diesels but pumps were deemed a practical proposition and they made quite a number locally.

Later on there was a representative in South America and in Zimbabwe and they did have Agents in many other countries, in Egypt and the Sudan.

DD What was the Agent’s job? AB They would handle tenders and forward them to the customer and of course if the order came through they

would obviously be involved in the negotiations with the customer. Once the order came through the work would be done through their offices.

DD That’s a whole chunk of stuff that I’ve really just found out! Can you tell me a little bit about your experiences in Hong Kong?

AB For the first instance I was only there for 10 days. We found out what was wrong the pump, a large chunk of impeller blade had snapped off due to fatigue. That was deemed to be due to very poor intake conditions and subsequently we made a model of it in the Fluid Flow Laboratory, improved it and supplied them of course with a new impeller in the meantime. Subsequently the pumps have run satisfactorily.

DD You say that you had to socialise with the clients in different countries, how did it feel to be the Allens representative?

AB In some instances it was quite awesome to know that if you make a technical decision and the thing is either going to go or not go and of course if it doesn’t go you are in deep trouble. But I think with the confidence gained through the training you have had and the increasing levels of responsibility then yes, it’s not that difficult. Because once you have a good working knowledge of the particular products and of course I specialised in pumps, once you have got that behind you, you know that the decisions that you are going to make will work. Obviously as I said earlier, you need to diagnose what the problem is first and having got that then of course the solution very often falls into place quite easily.

7.0 A SURVEY OF SEVEN PUMPING STATIONS ON THE NILE IN SUDAN

DD So where are you taking me to next then? AB Well there’s a photograph on the wall up there of an intrepid explorer which happens to be me and that’s in

one of the seven pumping stations which I was asked to do a survey on in the Sudan. This was initiated by the Overseas Development Authority through Crown Agents and I was asked to assess the conditions of the machinery in seven pumping stations on the Nile between a place called Shendi and Atbara along a stretch of the Nile there. The pumps are used to extract water from the Nile and pump it up into irrigation canals where of course it’s distributed through smaller channels onto the fields for agricultural use. Basically the livelihood of the people in the area depends entirely on the security of the supply of water. Every year, or, up to that time every year the Government had made a grant to the Sudanese authorities to use with these various pumping stations, it’s no longer the case at the moment but that was in 1984. You see the chap standing to the left of the pump, he happened to be a student that I’d helped to train about 15 years previously and he was Head of the Northern Area of Irrigation in Sudan. It wasn’t until we got off in a little aeroplane, a single engine, six seater aeroplane and two people met us and he was one of them. He recognised me and he insisted on driving me on everywhere I wanted to go and he wouldn’t let his driver take me anywhere. So it was quite an interesting few days in the Sudan during which time I did actually suffer from de-hydration at one stage which is not very pleasant. The temperature ranged between 42º and 44º all the time we were there.

That particular picture is of a pumping station called El Zeidab and it was installed in about 1926. Originally the pumps were diesel driven but I think the sand has got the better of the diesel engines and sometime during the late 1940s they were converted to electric drive which you can see in the photograph. They were still running quite happily in 1984.



DD That was still running in 1984? AB Yes, no problem at all.

DD They were original Allen pumps? AB Allen pumps, installed in 1926, yes.

DD Did you feel proud of the chap that you had helped? AB Yes and he was pleased to see me too. He insisted on showing me some of the machinery that he was in

charge of which were also Allen made and were still operating quite OK. Yes he was pleased to show me around, yes.

DD So to a certain extent, we are talking Hong Kong, the Sudan, South Africa, these are the last outposts of the Empire as well?

AB Yes, most of it was Empire. It has got to be said that since then the world markets have opened up, not all but most of them. If you can call America an outpost of the Empire, they wouldn’t say thank you for that really!! Canada of course, next door, a lot of equipment went to Canada and I was asked to go there and give technical back up to the Representative out there.

8.0 COMMISSIONING LARGE PUMPS IN NEWARK (USA) & CANADA

AB At the same time I was working in Newark, New Jersey commissioning what were the quite large pumps, 84” diameter outlet which were pumping the final treated effluent out from the fourth largest sewage works in the United States, the Passaic Valley Sewage Commissioners. I had four of these pumps which were under manufacture, pumping final effluent, which is the treated sewage with all the rubbish taken out and pumping into Newark Bay.

DD So you were commissioning work in Newark, so how long were you out there? AB I had three sessions out there. Once was the initial commissioning just to actually make sure that they

actually went, we had noticed a few problems during that stage. I went out a few weeks later to nail these problems that we’d noticed before and sort them out which we fortunately did. There was then going to be a gap between that stage and the final testing stage but I was actually called out to go to Canada in that intervening period having been more than half way there of course. I actually visited some Consultants in Calgary and then whilst I was there I had a look at an extremely large installation, Sun Dance Power Station just outside Edmonton. We flew back from Edmonton and I returned back to the site in Newark to actually carry out the final acceptance trials of these pumps, there were four, 3000 h.p. machines which all went very well.

9.0 TESTING OF PUMPS AT BIDDENHAM WORKS

DD In the final process of commissioning, in a potted version can you explain that? AB Yes. Not all pumps on site actually go through a complete site acceptance trial. Once the pumps are

manufactured, every pump that was made by Allens pretty well, apart from very small standard ones was actually tested to demonstrate that the pump was doing what the customer asked it to do. It was only on certain installations, and they were mostly the larger installations, where site trials were actually held. Because normally of course the Consultant, there would be a Consultant involved and he would see the test results of the official trials held at the Works and that would be deemed acceptable for what he wanted. It was only when you got very large installations where it was impractical to test the pump at the Works that the site trials would be held but of course the site trials is not just of the pump itself, it is of the complete system. So you are testing not just your pump but the whole system to make sure that the whole system works as it was designed to work. Generally speaking it did but occasionally it was possible that conditions were perhaps in a temporary state where it had to run a year or two before the final installation was finished and the full duty would be achieved. The sort of thing that you’d be testing on site would be power station pumps where you are pumping probably in excess of 200,000 gallons per minute. The test bay at Biddenham for example would test up to 160,000 gallons per minute but beyond that of course it becomes impractical, the pipe sizes and the necessary conditions to achieve satisfactory tests are just not present. So, a set of conditions have to be agreed before the test takes place and then you meet those conditions.

DD Where actually in Queens Park was the Biddenham Works? AB Go down Ford End Road over the bridge, past the Allens Works and then take a right turn by The Bell

public house I think it was called and then it was just around the corner from there, from that Bell public house. Originally the Plate Works and Foundry of Allens were established all in that area, the whole place is now built up. But there, at the time I was there, from the 1960s until about 1968, there was a small area



along there and I can’t remember which road it was opposite but there was a Works in there, it was relatively small.

10.0 THE INSTALLATION OF A WATER TREATMENT WORKS & PUMPING STATIONS IN IRAQ

AB After 1984 I think the biggest thing then was probably going to Iraq, a job known as Kharkh which was basically a complete new water treatment works and pumping station and distribution mains for the Eastern side of the city of Baghdad. The total output would have been just over 18,000 litres a second of pure drinking water. Obviously commissioned in a series of stages and I was appointed as Chief Commissioning Engineer for the project which involved six pumping stations spread quite a long way around Baghdad. The intake station was North of Baghdad at a place called Tarmiya where the water was taken from the River Tigris and treated and brought up to a very high standard and then pumped the 40 kilometers into a station called North Reservoir where it was re-distributed to other pumping stations. So the intake works comprised of the actual vertical intake pumps alongside the river itself which passed the water into the treatment works and then the pumping station at the main pumping station, called Treated Water pumping station pumped the water right the way down through into Baghdad itself. There were eight nine hundred millimeters (900 ml.) pumps of about 3000 h.p. apiece. Allens also supplied some back up diesel engine generators for the stations. The next pumping station (North Reservoir) and if I remember it correctly had 26 pumps and the station itself was 110 meters long and comprised four groups of pumps. One group passing water onto a station called South Reservoir, two groups of pumps passing the water into distribution and a further small group of pumps pumping to a station called Abu Ghraib.

DD What was your first impression of Iraq? AB When I first got there the weather was quite reasonable but at the end of the first three months we had just

reached the situation where the temperature reaches 50ºC which is quite a shock for someone coming out from the UK. The only slight relief you get is … that it is very dry so that any perspiration that you produce by the bucket load, does actually work to cool you down. I think after a few weeks of the temperature approaching 50ºC that you did get used to it and I think now I can work in temperatures of 45ºC for a period of about two hours at a time. But once it gets above that work becomes very difficult and very trying. Initially we were working outside so you were actually out in the heat.

DD What was it like having to work under conditions like that after being used to being in England? AB Well it’s very dusty and extremely hot, so hot that you have to wear gloves to protect your hands from

touching valve handles and all the metal pieces of equipment, you’d simply burn yourself. After about half past nine or so in the morning you cannot touch anything that is metallic if it’s been outside. They did have the main equipment in buildings and apart from the intake pumps most of them were in the basement of buildings so the temperature was only about 35ºC or so. We often used to go down there just simply to get cool. The drinking water temperature incidentally is about 31º or 32ºC that’s nearly body temperature.

DD Not very enjoyable then? AB Certainly is if you are in temperatures of 50ºC.

DD I suppose that’s why they had so much infection then because you couldn’t kill any bacteria in there?

AB No. We had very little problems from ill health, none of us were sick at all.

DD So what was it like going to Iraq? Was that the largest scale thing that you had worked on? AB I think overall yes. It’s claimed that the Kharkh Scheme was the biggest green field water works ever built

anywhere in the world. So it is quite a complimentary thing for Allens to have supplied all the machinery for that project.

DD Can you talk about the people who you were working with on that? AB The people generally speaking were quite friendly, there were one or two who weren’t, but generally

speaking most people accepted the British way of getting on and doing things. Obviously in a country like that where the whole ethos is different than it is in this country, very different, you had to pull every diplomatic stop out that you could so that you didn’t offend people. For example you wouldn’t be allowed to sit with your feet up like that because it was deemed to be quite disrespectful to show anybody the bottom of your feet. In the mornings they would offer you a cup of chi, which is tea without milk but with lots of sugar. You would never start talking about work you would always engage in some social chit chat and you would allow the customer to mention work first but once he’d mentioned work that was deemed to be the OK for talking about work. But generally speaking, yes, we got on pretty well.

DD So when you were up there were you put up in hotels? AB When we first went out we shared a camp with John Laing International who were just finishing a very big

civil contract. We were allowed to share their camp which was totally enclosed, self-contained and the



Iraqi’s in fact weren’t allowed to come in the door unless by invitation. Mostly we lived and ate and slept there. We each had a vehicle of some kind to get to the various pumping stations which were quite some considerable distances apart. Tarmiya for example was approximately 40 kilometers away from the walls of Baghdad. The nearest station to that particular camp was a place called Taji which was a small pumping station supplying a big Army complex. But most of the work was carried out at a station called North Reservoir which I suppose was about 10 or 12 kilometers from the camp.

But later on during the project Laing’s contract was complete and we had to move out and we then moved into the Babylon Hotel which was on the south side of Baghdad not very far from Saddam’s palace or one of Saddam’s palaces. We were treated quite well, no problems, we were allowed to go shopping out in Baghdad. We were allowed to go out and drive round to the various tourist spots, in fact I went to the site of Babylon twice and an ancient desert fort called Ukhaitha which was about 50 or so kilometers away. But we were never harassed, allowed to walk quite freely.

DD On these overseas trips were you working a lot harder than you would have been if you were in Bedford?

AB Well my particular job was Commissioning but I was also responsible for organising all the shift work for the operation of the plant for one year. I, normally at the weekends, worked one or two shifts so that the people who were working 12 hours on and 12 hours off because actually they worked from night work to day work so on those occasions I was probably working about 18 hours a day at weekends. But yes, basically when you are away from home you can’t like you can in this country, just come home and relax and ‘be at home’. You’d probably be either working or asleep and you’d divide your time up between those things and most of the day is work.

DD How did you cope with that, being away from home? AB Well I can cope fairly well I think. You get frustrated some times of course. We used to go for three

months at a time and I was relieved by a chap called John Green who took some of the Commissioning in the intervening period and also looked after the shift work. But a number of times I actually went back during the so called ‘off period’.

One particular occasion was the first official opening. It may sound strange but you can have, on a large project like that, you can have different stages officially opened. So the initial opening of the station we had a little ceremony which I had to attend and the Contracts Engineer, Mr. Digby who lives in Bedford he had to attend and several others. We then had a grand opening when the whole place was operational.

DD What was the grand opening like? AB The grand opening obviously had been arranged well in advance. Some very large tents had been

erected on the site, this was held at what we called Head Works, which was the Intake and the Main Treatment Plant. I think I’m right in saying I worked the night shift the night before and was required to attend all day during the Opening, first to ensure that the Mayor of Baghdad pushed the right button in the Pumping Station. And that the people, I think there were six pumps ready to fire off and the fact that there were 14 in the station did cause a bit of confusion. But the treatment plant at that time was only capable of dealing with the output from six of the pumps so we had to restrict the numbers to six and this caused a bit of consternation among the locals. We actually had to show them which button to push because nobody came through and did a dummy run as you might do in this country.

TV crews of course crawling all over the place and we had to start a ceremonial fountain when the opening tape was cut. It was something we built up for the locals just to give a show. It was a small submersible pump hidden under a huge pile of stone it all looked quite pretty in the end. I then had to dash from one station to the next to make sure it was going OK there. Because my Deputy, who was there at the time, I think he’d also worked the night before as well, and he was not quite so confident that everything would go so smoothly but in the end it all went fairly well.

DD Did you do an interview for TV while you were there? AB No. There was an entry in the paper and I have a copy of the Baghdad Times, Baghdad Observer sorry,

which is printed in English and on about the sixth page there was a small paragraph saying that ‘New Stations were inaugurated on this particular day’ which was an anniversary of one of the Revolutions, I think it was 31st July. The whole place had been designed by the Iraqi’s and built by the Iraqi’s and operated by the Iraqi’s which unfortunately wasn’t quite true. It had been designed by British Consultants, all of the contracts were either British or Indian and there were 3,500 Indians on site to build the place plus 2000 Chinese and the whole lot was Commissioned by British guys and Operated by British guys.

DD Had the construction been going on a long while before you got there, or was that something separate?

AB No. The construction was going on while we were starting it off, so it was progressive.



DD Workers from India? AB Yes. Workers from India. It was the company …I have a little booklet over there, the Continental

Construction Company, which is Indian owned, they provided all the labour and expertise to build the Treatment Works and there were 3,500 Indian artisans employed on site. The other stations were built under the control of the Iraqi State Construction Company but they employed 2000 Chinese labourers to actually do the work.

DD Interesting. AB It was a very big site. One of the terms that you might be more familiar with, I mean 18,000 litres a second,

18 tonnes a second drinking water is 300 million gallons a day.

DD I can’t imagine it! AB It’s a lot of water. The pipelines, there were two pipelines carrying the water from the Treated Water

pumping station to Baghdad, one was 1.2 meter diameter and the other 2.3 meter diameter.

DD You could stand up in it then? AB Very easily.

11.0 CHANGES SEEN AT W.H.ALLENS – ALLEN GWYNNES, APE, ALLEN GEARS, NEI

DD Can you tell me a little bit about some of the changes that happened within the Company while you were there?

AB Oh, yes. There were an enormous number of changes. Going right back to 1953, end of 1953 when I started of course it was purely a family owned Company. Many of the employees were sons of previous employees and of the elder ones often had their children working there as well, very much a family Company all the way through.

As far as I was concerned on the pump side in 1960 which was while I was away on National Service, W H Allen purchased William Foster Company which was the Gwynne Pump Company effectively. So the hydraulics side of the business was ever so slightly separate and eventually the company called Allen Gwynne Pumps was formed which was the amalgamation of the two. Which actually worked quite well because we did cover different ranges of the products which we produced all over that were required. Both companies really did better at the larger pump end of the business.

I think in 1968 it was when APE was formed, Amalgamated Power Engineering, which meant that control passed from the Allen family. Three other companies were involved, Crossley Engines, Belliss & Morcom and Arca Valves and I think there were one or two other minor companies involved as well at the time. Once the control from the family had changed then you saw different practices coming into use.

It was still essentially a family company but you could see changes coming in and of course not only were the working practices but the market changed. Initially steam engines were produced quite regularly they were reducing of course at the time. New diesel engine ranges were introduced a different kind of steam turbine was also produced at the company, the KKK turbines. I’m not really qualified to comment much about turbines and diesels.

And of course there was the Allen Gear business which moved out to Pershore.

I suppose after 1968 the Company was reducing in numbers slightly and there was a tendency to buy minimal standard parts in from outside, for example nuts and bolts and studs which were all originally produced on site. It was found much more economical to purchase those in. Of course the castings from, I can’t quite remember what year it was, I think again it was very early 1960s that the Foundry was closed and castings were all bought-in from outside which caused a little bit of a problem in one or two instances on delivery. Once you’d lost control of a primary supplier it becomes a bit more difficult. You have to wait in a queue if you want another one off of one of the same or if one fails a test and you want a replacement, you have to join a queue instead of being able to say, ‘Yes, we want this one urgently.’ And quality too tended to suffer a little bit because of course you were very much more concerned about the price of items and quality and price are often in conflict. Allens had always been known for high quality equipment and to try and maintain the high quality was much more difficult when you had to buy things in from outside because of course quality carries its price.

Later on control passed to NEI, I think that was round about the early 1980s, that NEI took control. There wasn’t very much change for the first couple of years. Then one particular contract didn’t go too well and the accountants came in and started sorting things out and changing the way things were priced and that was as far as I was concerned the start of a rather steeper slide.



DD In the early 1950s members of the Allen family had direct input, Norman Allen was … ? AB Mr. Norman was Technical Director.

DD So the Allen family members had direct working knowledge of exactly what went on? AB Oh, yes. I’m not suggesting that the others didn’t know what was going on but Mr. Norman was really

approachable and was very knowledgeable. On the occasions that I spoke to him I found him very easy to talk to and very helpful.

DD So you were asking him questions? AB Not necessarily, occasionally I did, it was normally the other way around. Mr. Norman would be seen

around the factory quite frequently which of course later on you rarely if ever saw the Management. I think there was a loss of family feeling when that occurred. Certainly, when I first started there the Management knew the location and situation of virtually every job that was going through. So you didn’t have to have production meetings and things like that because they knew, a superior advantage. When production meetings started coming in of course if someone dropped a faux pas somewhere you could cover it up by not mentioning it at a production meeting but with the original family concern they would know the situation on every job. Of course if the job for any particular reason started to run late then you just automatically worked on it until it was put right. That feeling of responsibility slowly diminished as management became further detached from the factory floor.

DD It was the actual change of the type of people who were in the Management positions? AB Yes, I would think so. Yes, they were more professional management than engineers per se. Mr. Norman

would go along to the Drawing Offices and be around the Laboratories as well as around the Works. He knew exactly … if something had gone adrift somewhere he would not only know something had gone adrift but he would know why and know how to fix it. Whereas later on managers, who were shall we say were professional managers would wouldn’t necessarily know what had gone wrong or how you could put it right, there would just be a certain amount of jumping up and down and words said to put it right. It instilled a totally different feeling in the work force.

12.0 FURTHER OVERSEAS WORK IN ZIMBABWE, IRAQ, INDIA & CHINA

DD Back to overseas travel now. AB After 1987, the Iraqi job lasted from 1985 through to 1987, and at the end of 1987. I’ve missed out

Zimbabwe somewhere, Zimbabwe happened in 1985. So I went from Zimbabwe to Iraq if you want to cut and paste this bit!

A large set of pumps which were illustrated in that diagram that you saw a little while ago, some quite large pumps for a power station called Wankie which is in North West Zimbabwe not very far from Victoria Falls. And these particular pumps were rather noisy, although they were large at least the customer said they were very noisy, which in practice they weren’t too bad at all. We had carried out some testing in the Fluid Flow Laboratory to have a close look at it. We thought we’d found a small problem and we had re-designed the bell mouth in-take which originally had been a rather crude conical inlet mainly because it was cheap to make locally, that is out there. But we had found that that had caused a problem with the flow entering the pump. We devised a method of changing the shape of the bell mouth by bolting pre-formed pieces of glass reinforced plastic, then the voids of which were filled with a plastic filling compound, not quite as bad as concrete because we didn’t want the weight. But something broadly akin to car body filler and yours truly was sent out there to do this work. It lasted, instead of just a few weeks it lasted four months and a large part of that is because the consignment of chemicals were impounded by the Customs in Harare. They were flown out and it was claimed that it was due to some small spelling mistake in the paperwork a lot of us doubted that this was true but this was the explanation that was given. My colleague, who was a local Rhodesian spent many hours looking at Victoria Falls and around the Hwange Game Park waiting for the consignment of goods to arrive on site. There also happened to be a railway, a local railway shed quite near called Thompson Junction which got my attention. A privately run railway on the colliery site which we could go and spend days on, on the locomotives, just riding up and down on the locomotives which was all very well. We never actually disappeared from site we would always turn up every morning and make sure that the equipment either hadn’t arrived or wherever it was, before actually disappearing off and enjoying ourselves. So unfortunately for the customers it did cost quite a lot of money. There was a certain amount of preparatory work to do which we did get on and do and once the equipment did turn up the job was all done in a matter of days which is the way it should have been in the first place.

But trials on the pumps showed up a number of other faults which were nothing to do with Allens but we were asked to help and put them right. That was quite an interesting little exercise. One of the pumps



actually, there were five pumps, one of them had moved on its own base quite substantially. We were asked to have a look at this problem and we found that a pipe joint right next to the pump was totally unsupported. It was the thrust from the pressure in the pipe work which amounted to well over 40 tons that was actually gently pushing the pump off its foundations. So I was asked to design a support for this joint, which I did. We put it all into action and as far as I know the pump has stopped moving now.

DD Where was that support built? AB We did it locally. I specified roughly the design, on the back of an envelope as you might say, and did

some quick calculations to make sure it was all safe and we actually got it made locally.

DD Would you use local expertise? AB Oh, yes that was important that you did things like that quite quickly. Largely to assist in relations between

you, the Company and the customer.

From Zimbabwe I went out to Iraq, the story of which you have heard.

From Iraq I went to India to a large power station called Rihand which had six quite large pumps. I think in fact they were the largest vertical mixed load pumps that Allens had produced and included very large electric motors and gear boxes, epicyclic gear boxes produced by the Pershore Section of the Works. It included about 30 smaller auxiliary pumps, valves and pipe work and filters that all had to be commissioned and set going before we could run the main pumps up.

I was out there for four months as well and that was very hard work, working very long hours. Originally I was contracted to work 60 hours a week. But after about three weeks on site the contract was over ruled and we had to work 70 hours a week, that’s ten hours every day none stop and in temperatures which ranged from about 35ºC to 40ºC in fairly high humidity conditions is not really pleasant. In the evening of course you couldn’t work near a doorway because the mosquitoes would come in but they didn’t venture very far into the pump house so you moved from number one pump and worked on number two in the evenings.

DD Didn’t they like the vibrations or something? AB No, mosquitoes come in and bite you.

DD I just wondered why they wouldn’t come in. AB I’ve no idea why they wouldn’t come inside, absolutely no idea.

DD You were there four months installing the pumps … AB No, this was purely commissioning.

DD Where did you stay while you were there? AB There was a camp, there was a purpose built camp which included accommodation and a fairly large

canteen about two miles from site. We were driven on buses backwards and forwards between the two. Food was all provided by UK staff, the UK staff were the hierarchy, Indians would run in and out as waiters, very efficiently run. Again it was a very large site and unfortunately no telephones on site to the outside world. If you wanted to make a call to the UK it was a five hour drive in a car to the local city which was Veranasi. Because of the time scale by the time you’d got there all you could do was phone and then stay in the local hotel. It was unlikely that you would get an answer if it was a difficult technical problem so you’d then either get it written down, the answer would be written down and faxed or something to you locally on site.

DD This is the 1980s we are talking about? Laughter AB That is correct!

DD No mobile phones? AB No, not allowed, the Indian Government refused the Company a license to have satellite telephones.

DD Right. AB For whatever reason, I don’t know. But it entailed more problems and a lot of wasted time.

DD Yes. Did you also find that you would come up against problems that you couldn’t necessarily get around, part of it because you were the Head Man from a British Company?

AB You’re not the Head Man, you’re the ‘Only Man’! You were working with Indian labour, all locals who speak probably only two or three of the 1400 or so local languages and you hoped to goodness one of them was English, it usually is. English is lingua franca out there. We were not only commissioning your own equipment you were commissioning all of the auxiliary equipment which is not necessarily of Allen manufacture, all the gates, the drop gates, the screens all this sort of equipment was of other people’s manufacture supplied to Allens for that project. We had a particular problem with a rotating screen which



was claimed to be the largest screen that these people had ever made. We had a lot of problems with it overloading the drive motors and we think it was because the whole system was flooded at one stage and water and silt got into many of the bearings making them extremely stiff. The phone calls, backwards and forwards were mainly about the screens.

DD Taking five days or whatever it was! AB But the actual plant itself we did successfully get it away. One had to be started up on manual, once it was

started we weren’t allowed to stop it for several weeks to wire in all the automatic controls. But we were able to commission the second and third pump on full automatic which gave it complete protection when it was operational. It was only when afterwards that we could close down the first pump that was commissioned and wire in all the full automatics. Basically the job itself went OK, certainly our bit of it did anyway.

From India to China to sort out a problem on the installation side of the large pumps these pumps were 3 meter diameter pipes, flow rate 26 tonnes a second each. Unfortunately the wooden pattern which was used to form the core of the pump around which concrete is poured actually it wasn’t aligned correctly originally. Whilst our Installation Engineer had twigged what was wrong, a chap called Charlie Winterford, Charlie had twigged what was wrong and had told the people what needed to be put right unfortunately Charlie wasn’t in a technical position. They needed, because it was a nuclear power station, they needed someone who had technical qualifications to actually sign the paperwork and agree what was going on. I happened to be standing over the balustrade at the time and off I went.

As a result of that I went out to China on an average about every six weeks just for one day’s work. On each occasion, apart from twice I think, where we had unearthed a problem and I had to stay quite a bit longer to sort it out. Again quite a large collection of photographs.

I met some really interesting characters in China. It was very interesting too that whilst the main civil contractor was a consortium between Japanese and Chinese the machinery was supplied through Electricite de France and GEC the official language on site, in the middle of China, was English. So Japanese had to learn English, the Chinese had to learn English and much to their chagrin, the French had to learn English! So I was used as an interpreter quite a lot. Laughter.

DD So you’d studied French at school? AB Yes, basic French. I had passed ‘O’ level at French. It was quite interesting going out there. Mary used to

take me to Midland Road railway station I used to catch the ten past seven (am) Thameslink train down to Gatwick, get on the Cathay Pacific flight which left at quarter to ten10 (am).

You arrive in Hong Kong at quarter to ten the next day because it’s sixteen hours of flying and you get eight hours of time shift. Went down to the local office, pick up a little luggage trolley. Have a bit of lunch usually with the Manager of the office there and then catch the train from the Hong Kong station up to the border at Lo Wu and then go onto a bus which the site organised and drive to Da Ya Wan which used to take about an hour and a half. There was a fully furnished flat included in the contract and we would collect the keys from the office go to the flat and have a cleanup and then down to the local restaurant which was all within the camp, again all English speaking. We had a wide variety of food, Chinese or English or French.

DD I wouldn’t have minded that job! AB I’d go there Tuesday, get on site Tuesday evening, site work Wednesday morning, all the paperwork

Wednesday afternoon and then travel back Thursday morning. You’d get back here Friday just about with your eyes hanging out. Laughter

DD We are getting short on time, but I don’t want to miss anything. AB We’ve missed out Thailand unfortunately.

DD I’ll have to come back.

13.0 SOLVING PROBLEMS IN BELFAST & SOUTHERN IRELAND

AB Then there were a few trips to Ireland and various other places. Belfast Harbour Company, it was the pumps that drained the dock in which the Titanic was built at Harland & Wolff, yes. They had some pumps which had worn out rather badly and they wanted to pick our brains as to how we could alter the pumps so that they could put up with new conditions. The use of the dock yard had changed from building new plant to repair and repairing ships often means a lot of shot blasting and grit blasting and shot and grit were getting into the pumps and causing excessive wear and we modified the pumps to overcome that problem. Basically we went over to actually make sure that they were modified as we had intended and that they



worked properly and re-commissioned them. There were three pumps also getting involved in a pumping station which had been built by a local contractor who wasn’t really an engineering contractor. This was in Portadown and they made rather a lot of mistakes. I was asked to go and try and sort this one out. I put in a report but what happened after then was up to them.

I had a very interesting trip to Southern Ireland too where there where three quite large pumps on the estuary of the River Boyne at Drogheda. They would start up two hours before high tide and run until two hours after high tide because that stratum of water contained a high proportion of magnesium salts which were extracted to form the raw material for fire bricks. These large pumps would start up at this period which obviously related to tide and after about half an hour running perfectly satisfactorily would suddenly start to produce some odd noises. The noise level would increase to a point when it actually got frightening and I had to go out there and witness some of this I mean, diagnose what was wrong. We actually carried out some model tests at a scale of 12” to the foot (full size). We actually did the model test every time the tide went out the intakes would actually run dry so we could actually get down into the intakes were we built some scenery of very heavy plywood and then on the next tide cycle we would see what the results were. We did sort out what the problem was and they finished up running quietly and once we’d established the shape of the scenery underneath that was measured carefully and reproduced in concrete. But very unnerving because you were working out on an estuary perfectly quiet, not a sound and then the pumps would suddenly grumble and the noise would then progressively increase taking us up to a point where it really was quite frightening.



Part of the WH Allen Display at the Higgins Museum, Bedford



‘Made in Bedford’ Interviews:

No. Interviewee Job/Roles WH Allen Employee

1 *Mr Charles Allen** Group Sales Rep. etc. 1959-1974

2 Mr John Newman Training Manager etc. 1939-1989

3 Mrs Sybil Dennis Accounts Offices etc. 1946-1969

4 *Mr Alan Battson Chief Commissioning Engineer etc. 1953-1989

5 Mr Dave King & Mr Vic King

Machinist (Dave) & Fitter (Vic) 1951-1984

6 Miss Marion Field Secretary & Personnel Officer 1945-1974

7 Mr Charles Hills Turner, Audit Engineer, HS&E, Photographer

1974-2000

8 Mr Derek Jones Milling Machines, Shop Steward, CNC Milling

1968-2001

9 *Mr Michael Panter Coppersmith, Spares Engineer, Account Manager

1977-2001

10 Mr Paul Stokes Pump Fitter, Chargehand, Spares Controller

1969-2001

11 Mr Sid Williams Fitter, Works Convenor, Training Dept., Safety Officer

1949-1999

12 Mrs Purcell about her mother Hilda May Harvey (later Halls)

Typist and Office Worker 1919-?

13 Mr Terry Youngman Print Department 1964-1987

14 Mr Bruno Dukic Photography Department 1964-1986

15 Mrs Rosa Ames & son Mr Tony Ames

Electrical Shop Pumps, Inspection, Clerk, Typist

1939-1945 1964-1973

*WH Allen Engineering Association Member **Not available for distribution

When WH Allen announced the closure of its engineering works in 1999, there was a real sense of shock in the local community. This was the factory that at one time employed 3,500 people. Much of Queens Park was built to house the work force. So, in commemoration of the national importance of the factory, latterly Rolls Royce, BCA co-ordinated a 2 year oral history project called Made in Bedford.

The project culminated in an hour long DVD, featuring interviews with the factory’s employees and a range of other archive material. All the information collected as part of the project was then handed over to Bedford Higgins Museum for a future display.

This booklet records the interview with Mr Alan Battson who worked for the Company for 36 years from 1953-1989.

Mr. Battson undertook a Student Apprenticeship at W H Allen, Sons & Co. Ltd. in October 1953 specialising in Installation and Service work. The apprenticeship was completed in 1959 when Mr. Battson undertook his two years National Service in the RAF. Mr. Battson took up a position in the Fluid Flow Laboratory under the Chief Designer, Mr. Arthur Guppy. Mr. Battson subsequently took over the Technical Service Department in c.1974. Mr. Battson became Chief Commissioning Engineer and held that role until he left the Company in 1989. Mr. Battson describes a variety of his overseas Commissioning trips to South Africa, Sweden, Hong Kong, Sudan, Canada, Newark in New Jersey, Iraq, Zimbabwe, India, China, Northern and Southern Ireland

MADE IN BEDFORD

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