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Fort Dunlop
Along with thousands of other Birmingham citizens my family worked at Fort Dunlop. My mother worked for the firm when it was situated at Aston Cross, she told me that when the wind was in the right direction the workers received the combined smell of rubber, beer and HP Sauce. As a Comptometer operator in the wages department she moved to Fort Dunlop when it relocated to Erdington. In those days the act of counting out the workers' wages in cash each week left them with totally blackened fingers.
Shortly before the start of the Great War my father came form Hereford to work as an accountant in the same department, they married in 1918 when he was a serving soldier. After the war they lived in one of the wooden houses provided by the firm, on what was Castle Bromwich aerodrome, now Castle Vale. There was a bus service to Erdington three times a week; my dad got to work on a motorbike. When Tyburn Road housing estate was built the family moved there.
Dunlop was a family firm and cared for its employees. In 1935 my father accepted a post as Works Accountant at the new Dunlop factory in Cork, Ireland, but sadly died of a heart attack when he had been there for three years. The firm brought us back to Erdington and gave employment to my eldest brother, then 18, and later to me, in the newly formed Technical Photographic section, as a photographic assistant in 1947.
I have many memories of the work place as I used to photograph tyre construction processes for the technical reports. One particular day I had to go into the 'Black Hole' where the carbon black was stored, in order to photograph the storage hopper, which was to be replaced. The cables of the floodlights that I used, marked my hands with black grease for weeks afterwards. The fellows told me that they knew of only one other woman who had gone in there; and that was a curious secretary who had just poked her nose in.
As well as work, there was a tremendous social life; sport of all kinds on the playing fields; Saturday night dances every week, put on by the various social clubs; plays produced by the Dramatic Society, and much more. I met my late husband at Dunlop's when I went to photograph the Rugby Club, which was playing away at Speke in North Wales. Like many more families I think I have a bit of latex running through my veins! Sad to see it all go.
C. Bartlett |
