Ex-Bideford Black miner Gerald Ford sent this excellent account to the blog about his early years at the Chapel Park processing plant - in his own words...
"I will begin to tell you of my life
as a worker for the Paint Mines (Bideford Black Pigments) . It started on a day
in 1957, when I was 1st employed as a factory hand. The first thing was to meet
all the employees there, and if I can, I will remember all their names. First
of all we will start with the men underground (Miners). Wally Mugford( Underground
Foreman). Bill (Bronco) Cole. Ronnie Short. Donald Glover. and Bert Bowden.
In the Mill and on the surface ,
men workers. George Arthurs(Mill Foreman). Vic Hookway. Martin
Pascoe and Johnny Bissett In the packing shed and John
???????.
In the office was the Boss Howard St
Louise Cookes, who we all had to call Sir, but behind his back we refered to
him as Cooky beside other unrepeatable names, and the secretary then a
miss Janet watts. But after being employed there on and off for 10/11 years
there was a great number of staff changes, to many to put in this. Names, I
will and may say later in this story.
Gerald Ford back at the 'coal' face (p ward 2013)
I was first taken to George to be
given my job, which was on the nozzle in the mill taking off bags of ground
pigment at 1/2cwt at a time, about 20 per hour (Lovely and warm to sit on in
the winter,as it was not the warmest place to work.
To get to the nozzle the culm or
pigment had to go through the following proceedure. Firstly it had to be mined,
using ,picks,shovels, and pneumatic drills. Then brought to the surface up the
Inlcline (1 in 3) by hoisting trams which were the trucks,a matter of 400-500
yards, using a bell system for go ,stop etc.
Once the trams got to the surface
they were unhitched then pushed 250 yards using 2 men along the tracks to where
they were tipped onto the Feed Bed area awaiting to go through more production.
The pigment was then shovelled on to
the feed belt so much at a time so it was not to fast , clogging up, not to
slow as to run empty,causing damage to the rollers in the Mill.
At the end of the Feed belt it was
tipped in to a very large turning roller drier, which would take approx 1 hour
to go in one end then come out the other.
Then it would go onto another belt to
take it to the hopper which was to allow the culm to enter the very noisey
grinder (large heavy rollers) to be crushed to a very fine powder
(Biddiblack) then blown to the Nozzle, paked awating shipment.
I spent a few years working on this
part of the of the production of Bideford Black Pigments and went elsewhere to
join the army etc. I returned to the paint mines several years later, to start
again, but this time I was underground, starting as a miner working my way up
to the underground foreman. Cooky was still there as the Boss."
Ex-miner Gerald Ford, 4413
Could the John ???? referred to in Gerald Ford's piece be the late John Devereux? I knew John Devereux well and he often talked about working at the Paint Mines. I'm not sure that he was employed by the Paint Mines but he certainly carried bags of the product from the mines and hauled it to the railway station. He had several employers in his life and almost all employed him as driver. I remember him saying that the sacks of material from the mine were the most dificult to handle because the contents would slip around within the sack almost like a liquid.
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