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Our meeting on 22nd October 2005
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We held our meeting in the Holy Trinity Social
Club, which is attached to Holy Trinity church in Oxford Street.
Our theme was the larger companies which had flourished in Bilston in the last fifty years but which had now closed.. |
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We hoped that a lot of people who had worked in these companies would come along, so that they could meet old work friends and also tell us about those companies. Thanks to Jim Speakman, Reg Aston and Gerald Hanrahan, and others, we got a great deal of publicity in the local press and an local radio - as well as on the usual local notice boards! And a lot of people did come! |
| They shall not pass! - anyway without being given the chance of making a donation and buying a raffle ticket. Barbara Presland, our Treasurer, and Bill Pope, took up their usual station by the door and, helped by Alma Darby, collected subscriptions and donations and sold raffle tickets - all to such great effect that we did very well financially, more than covering our expenses. |  |
We started setting up the exhibition at 10.00, to open at 10.30. But it was a sign of how popular the show was going to be that several people came in before we were supposed to start! As usual Reg Aston - ably aided by Sandra - provided an amazing display of photos of local industries. |
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We had also managed to borrow, from the depths of the city council's stores (many thanks to Michelle for heaving it out into the light), the original name plate of the Elisabeth Furnace - the great icon of industrial Bilston. |
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Reg's display was not only of photos but other things as well - including this remarkable collection of labels which illustrate the range of welding rods produced by the Quasi-Arc. |
| Frank Sharman had a display
of products from Beldray - the latest, and we hope the last, of the
big local firms to close. The display included their "art metalware"
and their better known domestic items. |
 | Kath Keily not only brought along a Beldray step ladder but also some Phoenix ware from British Heat Resisting Glass. Your reporter has chosen this one for illustration because he has never seen this particular design before. |
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Henry Metzger, the well known videographer, brought along and showed - and sold for club funds - videos he had made of many of our previous events. |
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In the church hall - where he could keep an eye on them from his vantage point at the refreshment stand - David Fitzgerald-Plummer was showing a number of interesting local items, including a vast book of plans for the construction of a new pipe line from the Bilston pumping station at the Bratch to the reservoir on Goldthorn Hill. |
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