Hyders
Plaxtol was a highly successful company that served people like
Harrods and had a brilliant reputation for making the best quality
Art Metal work and employed the traditional blacksmith who would
forge weld ironwork rather than modern day Arc welding.They had
eight tied flats and four tied houses in Bourne Vale and in my
opinion it was the only way they could keep employees as the wage
were not good.
I was at Hyders from 1965 to 1972 and was trained in the traditional
pen and ink by Vic Powis, he also taught me a lot about perspectives
and wrought iron designs and really gave me a head start in design
and graphics work.
During that time I had the pleasure of meeting a few celebrities
including film actresses and actors, politicians and even a famous
ventriloquist. The most pleasant celebrity I met was a very young
Michael Crawford (Some Mothers do have them).
The funniest incident
that ever happened was when an explosion rocked the place , dust
fell from the rafters onto my drawing board and Harry Lacey the
Blacksmith foreman came running into my office shouting "Where
is the ****er" looking for the apprentice that had filled
a football with acetylene and then placed it on the forge.
The most striking thing about Harry were
the glasses he wore with plastic frames that had melted from the
heat of the forge and had left minimal space to see through.
Charlie King was another
traditional Blacksmith, a kind gentle man who could create absolute
wonders in iron, it was easy for me to draw elaborate designs
but he would make them come alive. He used to work weekend evenings
in the Forge restaurant Plaxtol giving the diners a demonstration
of Blacksmithing with a small working forge they had.
In the early days Hyders
did not have the frontage as seen in the photograph above but
had a small scruffy drawing office and a nissen hut to store the
patterns for chandeliers and such like. When the old drawing office
was demolished and building work started on the new I was given
a temporary office in the Nissen Hut. One day I was called away
to see Vic Powis in the main office around the corner. While I
was away the whole building collapsed and the first I knew about
it was when Vic answered a telephone call asking if I was there.
It was Dave Hyder ringing and I heard him shout down the line
with relief when he realized I had not been buried alive. My good
friend Joe Bishop had ruined his suit thinking I was buried and
had tried to dig me out. The collapse of this building might have
had something to do with the apprentices who used to fire old
bits of metal from their catapults piercing the brittle asbestos
sides of the hut.
As
much as I enjoyed working for them in Plaxtol I had to leave as
I had two young children and the wages could not support them.
They were terrible days as I lived in a tied flat and was taken
to court and faced with eviction. Luckily the Kent County Council
came to my rescue and gave me a council house in St Hildas Plaxtol.
On leaving Hyders I got a job as a milkman with almost double
the wages, bought my first car, and really enjoyed the life in
the open, talking to housewives and delivering milk.
People I remember are Harry Lacey, Charlie King, Tony Broad, Vic
Powis, George Sharpe, Fred Bone, Joe Bishop
John Martin, Ted Bear, Joan Martin, Irene Fox , Rosalind Syme,
Tom Drummond.
If you have comments to make or information you would like added
to this page or if you worked at Hyders contact me here
Meditate on the joy of
wrought Ironwork considering the while that anything made by us
will be a thing of beauty and a joy forever was the advertising
slogan that was on all the brochures.
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