Click on the photograph to enlarge the image.
Back row (standing L-R)
Dave Howells; Richard Webb; Chris Gwilliam; John Smurthwaite; Mike Parker; Lothar Zink; Nigel Silvey; Andy Whitehead; Martin Carter; John Harding; Pete Charlton; Dapper Fleming; Martin Luther; Roy Beard.
Back row (sitting L-R)
Andy Dobson; David Tucker; Roy Breach; Ron Wilmot; Barry Degge; Bill Wilde; Martin Jones; Pete Badham.
Do you remember this apprentice intake or are you in the photo? What was was it like to join the company in 1969 and what sticks with you from your apprenticeship today? If this photograph brings back memories please share them in a comment below.
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These were great times and 50 years on the lads in our 1969 intake still meet up once a year. We always have a good turnout meeting at a pub, usually between 10 and 14 of us meet up, and now were are all 70 years old. Still can’t find Bill Wilde who lived in the Forest of Dean, so anyone who knows of his whereabouts please give me a shout.
Ed: Thanks for posting this, John. Let’s hope someone will know Bill’s whereabouts and get in touch. Now 70 years old eh! The passage of time waits for no-one! John B
Great bunch of lads in our year, Barry and Roy were good instructors, great fun doing ’the block’. Remember John Smurthwaite using a file on it without the handle, the tange went through his palm and out further up, happy days, eh! Someone opening the window in the welding room and it became detached from the frame and crashed from the Craft School down on to the main driveway below narrowly missing some people. Fielding’s was a great place. I worked there until 1981.
Thanks John! It’d be great if you could share some of those memories of the Apprentice School in 1969 – the fun you had, what you learnt, and the what your fellow apprentices were like!
I’d be very interested to hear about the education you mention too. As you might’ve heard elsewhere on the site, many people have spoken about the Apprentice School in Bert Ravenhill’s day but we haven’t got any memories of Roy Breach and Barry Degge as yet so it would be good to hear from you what the instruction was like in the school under them and what they were like to work for.
Yes I remember this photo as I am in it (John Smurthwaite) but the person you have down as Keith Parker is actually Mike Parker.
I have very good memories of working at F&P and particually the 1st year as we were in the apprentice school working with a great bunch of lads. It was only after F&P closed and I had to get a job somewhere else that I realised what a great education we had actually had.
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