Cherry Rogers, remembers working in Calders wood yard …

“I would like to share one or two memories of my times at Calders.

I started work there at the age of fourteen in the July of 1959.  My birthday was in September so I was not really eligible to leave school until Christmas, but my Dad wouldn’t let me go back to school as I had the job in Calders Office as a junior – making tea, answering the phone and doing all the mundane jobs no one else wanted to do.  Calders was a bigger set up than most people knew about and had branches in Rotherhithe, Epsom and several places north of us.  One place made top quality parquet flooring.  The head office was Eros House, Regent Street and the company was incorporated into several large concerns over the years but that is by the way.  When I started work the company belonged to Sir James Calder who lived at Lynford Hall.  Sir James died a few months after I started work and I remember the funeral with representatives from all the branches attending.  I believe it was held at the Catholic Church.

The trees were bought in parcels, felled by Wally Poplawski and hauled into the yard by Jimmy Drew and his brother Curly.  They drove a large red oxide coloured timber drug which was an old Scammel, like the ones used in the desert during the war.  That timber drug could be seen driving down the High Street and over the bridge nearly every day.  The timber was then milled and used for gates and fencing.  We were well known for the high quality of our gates and they were shipped to most parts of the country.  We did top quality fencing for studs in Newmarket and Surrey, and for the Queen.  We also did motorway fencing and our erectors were sometimes putting up guard rails in the central reservation while the traffic rushed past – they wouldn’t do that today.  We did at one time have a railway siding by the creosote plant and our gates went off by the truck load.  All those consignment notes to write out, they would be computerised now.

At one time the logs were hauled by horses.  They were stabled over the road where the Lignacite factory was built.  Jock Bain came down from Scotland to live here and look after the horses.  There was a blacksmith forge in the yard, but wasn’t used when I was working there.  We had teams of fence erectors, some who stayed out all week and only came home at the weekend.  Alfred Zelke and Joe Zawiasa had a caravan parked by the motorway or wherever they were working.  A tiny thing with sausages hanging from the roof.

Lots of families had two generations working in the yard or mill at the same time and several brothers worked there.  The Challiss family, the Smith family, the Elmer’s , Adams, Ted Beales the boiler man (who when I was a child lived with his family on Calders site and was night watchman) and his son Harry Beales.

My connection to Calders was that my grandfather, who was a builder and undertaker, at one time made gates for Calders.  He also built the office and sadly my great uncle, Clive Dove, was killed while driving the timber drug in 1947.  He was 34, the load slipped and a large log went through the cab.  I don’t remember much about him, just vaguely remember sitting on his knee at Aunty Nell’s house.   We had some real characters working in the yard, one was Harold Lockwood, who had been a Japanese prisoner of war.  He was our maintenance man.  Nothing fazed Harold and he could swear for England.  We had funny, happy and sad moments.  Sad when poor Hector Elmer was knocked off his bike in front of the office and sadly died from his injuries.  Funny when Jimmy Hulme the creosote plant operator dropped his teeth in the tank.  He gave them a full overnight charge with the fencing posts and then rinsed them off in the morning and wore them usual.  They would have been preserved for a lifetime!

The conditions the men worked in was not good, nothing was spent on anything new and everything was bodged up.  I suppose that went back to wartime.  Men wouldn’t be allowed to work in those conditions today.  They worked on those saws in the freezing cold and couldn’t even feel what they were doing.  I even heard one man apologise for cutting off two of his fingers.  The office wasn’t wonderful.  One end was lovely with parquet flooring and wood panelled walls, while the other end, our end, had walls made of asbestos.  Yet I had some happy times and over the thirty-two years I worked there I made friends with some lovely girls, mostly grandmothers now.”

Here is a photo of some long service awards at Calders.
Back row left to right –  Jack Knight retired Manager, Jon Bullivant Head Office, Fred Crozier New Manager, Bernie Challiss Carpenter, Ted Beales Boilerman, Jack Adams Foreman.
Front row –  Harold Lockwood Maintenance , Geoff Southgate Office Manager, Sam Ridgeon Sawyer, Tom Martin Crane Driver and Lennie Smith Storekeeper.