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I was
born in Nechells, Birmingham in 1941 at 44 Elliot Street. In 1943 we got bombed
out of there and spent a short time in a flat in Yardley on Stony Lane. After
that we moved to Morris Road, Ward End, and I’ve lived in Ward End ever since.
My first school was Ingleton Road Infants and Juniors and my senior school was
Sladefield Secondary Modern. In 1957 I started work at a place called Ward End
Timber Supply in Ward End, Birmingham. It was situated in a building called
Cock Sparrow Hall although there wasn't much left of the original building. The
owners were the Janes brothers, Wilf and Les. Some of the happiest years of my
life were spent working here. You had to do everything from lighting the fire,
and making the tea to cutting up the biggest logs on the ground, and some of
them were big! This yard held the record for many years of being able to
accommodate big logs, some as big as six foot in diameter. A boring job was
called sticking! After the logs were cut, which could have been planked or
quarter sawn, you had to place each board on a row of sticks and it stayed like
that for about three years. Some of the types of timber we cut were Oak, Ash,
Elm, and Beech, and they all came from Packington Woods. The Janes brothers had
all the cuttings rights to these woods. Cutting could be dangerous, not just
due to the obvious dangers! Sometimes you could hit a piece of shrapnel, a
piece of metal from an exploded bomb, which had stuck in the tree, so before
cutting we had to go over the tree with a metal detector. Happy Days!
Ø Frixo
Birmingham Sites
Ø 2nd City Birmingham Ø Bromford races Ø Brummagem
Ø Birmingham Words Ø Birmingham Photos Ø Handsworth
Ø Aston brook-through-Aston manor Ø Birmingham Forum Ø Birmingham Airport
Ø Birmingham Heritage Ø Birmingham History
Ø Pictures By Keith Berry Ø St.Margarets Community Trust
Ø Pictures By William Dargue Ø old-maps
mailto:harry.deakin@blueyonder.co.uk
Ø Disclaimer :-
If any graphic or text is yours copyrighted and you don’t want me to use it on
my site,
email me and say so or just produce evidence of copyright ownership and
I will remove it immediately.
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by Harry Deakin 1995/2012