My father spent ages looking around trying to find some alternative premises that were more suitable to those in Harden Road. Eventually, he found some land in Leamore Lane and bought it off Wasall Council.
He then proceeded to build 4 units on that land, each of 5,000 sq ft. He sold 2 immediately and kept 2 for ourselves. He made more money doing that than in the contracting. Unfortunately, the stress of making this happen combined with the flu gave him a heart attack. He refused to go to hospital, went to bed for a fortnight, got up and then went about his life for the rest of time without thinking about it. When I joined the business full time in 1976 we’d already moved to Leamore Lane.
The premises at Leamore Lane consisted of an open plan area at the front where the administrators, and typists worked. Then down the right side of the was where the engineers worked. At the left was my father’s office he had built for himself and he gave himself the privilege of having his own toilet and wash basin. At Christmas every year we used to buy bottles of wine for customers. The toilet was jolly useful to keep the booze in.
At the rear of the premises, there was a storage area where we parked vans at night. There were millimetres to spare between the vans and it was a matter of real skill to put them, away. It was beyond me.
We employed a mechanic to keep the vans running. He used to arrive at 8.00 am every Saturday and work like a trooper servicing the vans. Quite often he’d take out an engine, it would be rebuilt during the week and he’d reinstall it the next Saturday.
We, the engineers and I used to work on a Saturday morning rota. Strangely the rota didn’t include my father. I have no idea what the purpose of this was except to allow the mechanic to work. The phone never rang and no one else was working.
We rearranged the offices several times during the 10 years, there as the need required but we were running out of space. The storage for files, especially was none existent.
I spent considerable time looking around trying to find new premises, until I found them in Green Lane. You can read more about that on the Green Lane page.
