Memories of the sights, sounds and, above all, the smells came flooding back as retired police officer Mike Bartlett visited Lighthouse to see Men Of Iron, the exhibition of photographs taken by students from Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design during the final weeks of Poole Foundry before its closure in 1985.
“It was the smell – just seeing those photos, I could smell the Foundry again!
Mike’s father Bill, who features in two of the photos in the exhibition, worked there from 1953 until it closed a few weeks short of his 65th birthday when he could retire.
“It was dark, dirty, smelly work – hard work and dangerous. He had gloves, leather gaiters and boots but it used to spit and sparks would go down inside his boot and burn. The smell of the Foundry used to hang in the air over the Quay and no matter how hard Dad tried to scrub it off in the showers after work you could still smell it on him when he came home.
“I remember I had to go in there once to get Dad for something and you could barely see in there it was so dark and filled with fumes. I don’t think it would have been much different in a foundry in the 18th or 19th century.
“He used to shovel sand all morning to make the mouldings then pour the iron for the castings in the afternoons. He was a strong man, fit as a fiddle, but how he lived as long as he did having inhaled all those fumes I just don’t know.”
Bill passed away in 2008 at the age of 87. Thirty years before, he had received a gold watch to mark 25 years’ service; and in 1955 he was awarded a bonus of 10 shillings (50 pence) for completing a full day with 100% successful castings – a rare thing.
“Those were the only extras Dad got from his time at the Foundry. The only time he had off was when he had a cartilage operation on his knee – he played football for Hamworthy United – and the Foundry manager Arthur Mason came round to ask him to go back to work early as production was slipping!
“Dad worked piece work – he was paid by the number of pieces he made – that was how he made his wages up. He was on the buildings before that, he worked on Poole Power Station in fact, but he didn’t like getting laid off when the contracts finished. When the job at the Foundry came up he took it because it was a regular wage.”
Bill worked from six in the morning until four in the afternoon, riding to work from Hamworthy on his bike. In the evenings and at weekends he played football and tended his garden.
“I remember him saying something about the students and I know he went to have a look at the photos when they were put on show. I think there was something on television about it as well, local news I expect, but Dad didn’t talk a lot about his job and he was never one for the limelight. Those students must have been quite persuasive to get him to pose – and in a white shirt as well!”
Forty years later, the photographs are on show again in a fitting tribute to Poole’s industrial heritage and to the hard work and craftsmanship of the men who worked there.
“It’s quite odd seeing the photos exhibited like that and the esteem attached to the Foundry because at the time it closed it was considered a blot on the landscape and most were glad to see it gone, especially after they started to build expensive flats near the Quay.
“Having said that, the photographs are incredible. There’s not a lot of smiling in them but they really capture what it was like in the Foundry and what the men were like that worked there.”
:: Men Of Iron is free to enter between 10am and 8pm when Lighthouse is open, with visitors advised to check before travelling. It is on show until 22 February.
(NC)