Jack Fell shares with us a handful of memories from his early working days.

After school I was apprenticed at Chivers on the steam engines when I was fourteen years old. In the 1930's Chivers were still heavily involved with steam power. I got five shillings a week, which went down to three and ten pence after insurance.

I gave it all to my mother and she gave me back a shilling. I couldn't afford to drink or smoke, but I usually went to the pictures each week.

My father was a foreman bricklayer with Chivers and had started with the firm right at the beginning. I learned welding on the fireboxes, at that time no one else did any welding there.

W E Chivers' sawmills in Nursteed Road c. 1918

I did some amateur boxing in my spare time, sometimes doing three fights in one day, for which we trained at the Territorial Army Drill Hall.

I was with Chivers for about five years, but when I finished my apprenticeship I didn't want to stay any longer, after all that low pay, so I went up to Birmingham and worked for Brightside Engineering.

I stayed with them right up to the war and then stayed to work on tanks and aircraft. I welded manifolds on damaged Spitfire engines using old hacksaw blades and borax which was all we had to do it with.

Much later I had my own workshop in Devizes; it was up the side of the Candy Store where the old slaughterhouse used to be. The iron rings in the floor where the cattle were held are there now, as far as I know. I remember when I was a boy seeing a young bull come charging out of there and run off up towards the assize courts where he got himself caught on the railings.

Later I made all sorts of ironwork, gates and brackets and my work can still be seen all over town. I made a new lantern for outside the Artichoke Inn. The original one was made of lead and was badly worn. I think they still have the old one at the back somewhere.

Jack in his workshop at Lower Wharf completing a new lantern for the Artichoke Inn in the mid 1970's.

From: Devizes Voices compiled by David Buxton Tempus Publishing ISBN 0 7524 0661 2 £9.99 For a complete list of local history books published by Tempus Publishing visit: www.tempus-publishing.com