John worked at Underfall Yard for 32 years, working as the Senior Fitter in the Docks Maintenance Workshop. In these recordings, he shares a few of his memories from his career as a Docks Engineer at Underfall Yard.
Getting His Start – John shares how he began his time at Underfall Yard in the 1980s and what the Docks Engineers’ crew looked like at that time…
As a Docks Engineer, John and his team were responsible for the maintenance and repair of the Floating Harbour’s essential machinery and infrastructure. This includes the Underfall sluices, the locks at Cumberland Basin and Netham, and the harbour’s landmark swing bridges and cranes.
Trouble at the Weir – John remembers a mishap at Netham Weir with a dredger and several bales of hay…
The weir that John refers to here is Netham Weir, which steadies the flow of the River Avon as it diverts into the New Cut. The weir is viewable from New Brislington Bridge, but we certainly don’t recommend getting as close as John and his colleagues did!
The Pump House – John recalls the Pump House and a certain character who worked there…
The yard’s Pump House was decommissioned in 2010 but the pumps themselves are still run for public demonstrations by Underfall Yard Trust. They provided hydraulic power to the machinery of the Floating Harbour, including the sluices and patent slip at Underfall Yard. The pressure in this system reached 750 psi (52 bar), with a 100 ton accumulator to maintain the pressure and reach the swing bridges and cranes up to 4km away. The Pump House is now used as the Visitor Centre and Cafe, with the pump room left intact with its original machinery.
This interview was recorded in 2015 as part of the Oral History Project, coordinated by Underfall Yard Trust. Our thanks to Alan and his family, as well as the volunteers who supported the project and “Voices of the Yard”.
Read more about Underfall Yard’s Recovery and Reinstatement Project…
TRANSCRIPT – GETTING HIS START
I done my apprenticeship down at Avonmouth as a Fitter/Tuner worked in various places down in Avonmouth like Dalgety Spinners and a couple of other places, then I worked for the Merchant Navy for a couple of years. I went to sea, seen a bit of the world, came back and I couldn’t find a job that I really liked much, then I applied for a job up here as a temporary fitter for 6 months. I got interviewed up at the Council House and managed to get the job for 6 months. That 6 months then lapsed into over 6 months and apparently in those days the Union Officials were straight on that type of thing and if there wasn’t a break then you had to be taken on full time and so they took me on full time and that is how I started my 32 years.
So there was a blacksmith, a shipwright, two shipwrights, the blacksmiths’ striker, a supervisor/fitter, roundabout 4 or 5 other fitters, an apprentice and a handful of mates and engineers to give you a hand in those days and so there was quite a big crew there and they would do all the maintenance of the lock gates right the way up to Netham so if there was anything went wrong in those days then we would put our tools in a wheelbarrow as it was in those days and off we would go to try and fix whatever had broke. 9 times out of 10 it was normally the water hydraulics and something would go down on that as it was beginning to get aged and dropping out – fire fighting basically as it was difficult to get hold of parts ie a lot of it was cast, cast-iron wheels, brass bushes and things like that. It was becoming difficult to get these parts and we had to try to modify them a bit and repair anything that went down. So you never knew from one day to the next what you were actually going to be doing or what you would find to do out there or what problems you would find so it made it a really interesting job and I liked it and that’s why I stayed here for 32 years.
TRANSCRIPT – TROUBLE AT THE WEIR
…they use a very small version of the Samuel Plimsol which is a sucker dredger. So it puts its nose down and sucks the mud up, goes through a pipe and at the Feeder they use a small version of that which they hire in, so it has to be transported by road, lifted off and put in up at the Dry Dock. They might put it in up there and then transport it up there. They put a big pipe which goes out and all the way round and then back over the weir – if you picture that – so you have the feeder and it has to go up over the lock gates, and then it has to go up and around then it goes all the way down to the weir.
Me and my friend Tony Perry, we were called up to there many years ago, well not so many years ago, when they first started doing this so it must have been about ten years ago I suppose. And we had to go up there early in the morning so we could lay a Dory because what had happened was that loose bales of hay – some farmer must have lost it all – had gone into the river, and it had all come down, and it was all stuck on the weir. We were told to go up there and cut all the bindings to let it all go otherwise it was all going to cause a blockage in the paddles up there. There were about five or six of them.
We went up past this sucker dredger. Now I was told that it was not working that day, it was weekend, a Sunday morning, it was just becoming light. So we went up there, there was nobody on there or anything like that so we thought that’s fine, so we went through the lock, round to the weir, and the tide was just beginning to go down, so you had the water just beginning to show over the weir which was the best time for us. So we went up there and we cut two or three then we tied up to this pipe that the dredger was using, so we tied up to that while we cut the last one. They must have come in and started up this pipe and we went up into the air like a snake, up into the air, which took us out of the water – our outboard engine stopped because we were out of the water – we have almost got tipped in and over the weir, and then it settled back down again. By this time the tide has now receded so the water is rushing over the weir and we’ve got no engine, nothing like that ! So we had to get the engine started, cut the line and steam back out again. But I have never been so scared in my life!
TRANSCRIPT – THE PUMP HOUSE
The Pump House is always a nice place to work and do repairs on. You have to remember that that pump house was running when I first came up here. That it was manned 24 hours a day and at night the pumpman in there they had to phone in and check in with the Police as they would be on their own in there. There would only be one man in there and his job was obviously to make sure the levels were still correct. Whereas it is all automated now. We have sluices in there now that as soon as it goes -1 they open and they are up and down like a Fiddlers elbow whereas before you would have to walk from the pump house, come over to this side and all that was water pistons and you used to have to physically open it for 10-15 minutes, wait for it to go down, shut it down again, go back over and check its level and if it’s not right then go back over and do it again. So they were like that all the time. So some of the chaps who used to come up here were not for the Council, they would come up from the PBA.
I remember one of the chaps there was Tony, I can’t think of his last name but it might come to me in a minute, he used to drive a big American car. The reason I remember him is he used to work on the dredgers down at Avonmouth, and they dredged up a bomb and he had a hammer and hit is with the hammer and it exploded and blew his leg off. So he was given a job then for life where he was offered a lot of money to go, if he wanted to take early retirement, but he had a wooden leg and he opted to take the job for life. So they sent him up here to run the pumps because obviously he didn’t have to travel or run around or anything like that. So that is what he used to do and he was a character. But I think in the end I think he took the money in the end after about 2 years and he got back to them saying this is not for me and so they gave him the option to take the money and he left. We used to get characters like that coming up all the time, yeah, and wandering around the yard which was good.
But you have to remember that that pump house used to go from there, run through this car park all the way up to Prince Street and you could actually swing Prince street by running the pumps down here. But now, Prince Street itself now has got its own Accumulator but it has also got its own pumps. Up there is an old wooden gear wheel pump set up that used to be run from the water hydraulics from here but because the line that goes all the way up past the Museum has burst so many times it is now isolated in this car park. If you ever wanted to get power back up to there water wise you would have to dig up underneath houses and railway lines and I think it is a no-no! But you could put in some sort of pump that could run the old pump, but the old one is still there but it needs to be looked at and be repaired because obviously if you put a modern pump in alongside it which operates the Accumulator which does exactly what this pump house down here used to do.