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Born the same year that Harry Houdini, the American magician died, Harold Taylor recalls his time with the Chichester Electric Company. Harold is the youngest of six children and at the time of this story, during the Second World War, he was living in Alexandra Terrace, Chichester.
During my period in the Home Guard I changed my occupation. It came about in this manner. The other plumber at Clemens got his calling up papers, and I suppose my brother, Bill got worried he might get his. He therefore left and went to work in a war factory, Smith and Jewel. They had two, one on the corner of St. James Road, and the other down in Quarry Lane, in the Whyke gravel pits. They made exhaust manifolds for Spitfires, Hurricanes and Whitleys.
This left me as the only one doing plumbing jobs and I was less than half trained. I was OK for most of the repair work, but at the same time I had no tool kit. The firm bought me three tools to enable me to do minor jobs, although they deducted payment for these from my meagre earnings. I was only getting 10/- for a 51 hour week. I could have insisted on only working 48, but as it was pointed out, if I wanted the job I had to do the hours. The firm were not making any efforts to acquire another plumber either.
With this dissatisfaction I was eager for another employer, but could not find a position. My father helped out here and got me a job with the Chichester Electricity Company. He was obviously in touch with Bob Hunter, who was the wiring foreman of that undertaking, and found they were in need of a wireman's mate, and that is how I started.
The main offices were at 43 North Street and the two cottages between that and Fernleigh were administrative offices for the wiring department and the mains laying department, whose cable yard was in North Wall, now the site of more housing. The generating plant and workshops were at the Canal Basin next to the Ice Works. The wiring department was in Priory Road, where there is now a new cul-de-sac between Guildhall Street and St. Peter's.
One of the interesting things that I chanced upon whilst working at the Electric Company, was that Douglas Bader, the air ace, lodged around the corner at 4 Guildhall Street. He used to come home every afternoon at about 4 o'clock.
He would come by cycle and stop just outside our workshop to prop himself up against the wall to get off his cycle, because of his tin legs. He would leave his cycle there and go round the corner to his digs. So the day he went missing and was captured, we knew before it was announced, as he did not come home that afternoon. In all the time he had been leaving his cycle there unattended overnight, it was only stolen once, and that was by a Canadian soldier.
Some of the jobs I did involved supplying light, heating and warning bells for fire watching points. One of these was the room below the spire, an area I was already familiar with, but it involved me wandering the building inside and out. On the roof, besides the crawling ladders, at strategic points there were buckets of sand and water. Now that fire watchers were present, they had put a flimsy rail around the open space below the spire to stop people falling out, but I would not have liked to trust its strength.
One day whilst we were on this job, my tradesman, George Godwin, had brought to work a cine camera, and whilst we were there he was fortunate enough to be able to film a 'dog fight', although I never saw the results.
We also installed lighting in the room under the bell tower, which was an air raid shelter, and later used by the cathedral as a bookshop. We did a similar job at the Crypt in South Street, which was also a shelter.
There were three other jobs of importance that we carried out. One of the Air Operation Control Centres was at St. James School, and three emergency ones were set up in the town. One of these was in Little London, behind the first shop west of that road, in premises that lays back a bit.
The second was over Fosters, the gent's tailors, which was near the Westminster Bank. The third has me guessing a bit, but I believe it was over the International Stores, which is now the site of Superdrug in East Street.
It was whilst with the Electric Company, that I made extensive tours of some of the service camps that served the various airfields and defence units, such as RADAR and Ant-Aircraft Units.
The biggest job I got engaged in was the re-wiring and installation of new pumps at the Sewerage Works in Apuldram Lane. We were there for an interesting, though smelly three months. During the main part of the job, most of the effluent water was being discharged into the sea, untreated.
The town's sewers entered the building at the front of the building near the road and flowed underneath, where they emerged into some settling tanks. After a short period, quick lime was spread over the encrusted surface, which by now had developed all sorts of crawling 'nasties', some from the excrement itself and others from flying hazards around.
After a time the whole matter was sucked through a compression process. Firstly it went into two large vats in the main building where it was mixed to a sludge, before it went into the compression unit.
One half of the main building housed this unit. It comprised of numerous removable leaves, which were man handled by the staff. They were at a guess about 4 feet square and about 4 inches thick. These leaves were interspersed with layers of sacking and slotted onto the machine over a set of bars. When the machine was all clamped together, another pumping process began to pump the sludge through the compressor, during which time all the water was extracted and went back into the system.
After this the compressor was stripped apart and the dry compressed remains were carted out and dumped on waste ground. Sometimes fertiliser firms bought some of this dried residue. This very large field was covered in this refuse, but there was no smell.
A less enjoyable job must have been for those engaged in collecting the effluent from temporary camps that were not on main drainage or equipped even with cesspools. There were a variety of lorries and vans doing this and they would arrive at the works with dustbins full of the effluvia, which was dumped into a manhole at the road end of the works. You could see that at times, depending upon the journey, many of the bins had spilled.
I remained at the Electric Company for about a year, but with the shortage of supplies, we were creating our own work. Also during slack periods we would be engaged upon salvaging old cable that we had removed from installations. This meant us boys stripping the lead covering and saving both lead and copper, whilst burning the rubber and cloth.
We also created work in another way. Main switches for cookers and other electrical units ceased to be available, so it was decided that we would forage for our own spares. This meant going down to the beaches at the Witterings, Bracklesham Bay and Selsey, where we entered the prohibited zones to remove electrical equipment from the beach houses, and converted railway carriages. These were used for summer residences, but were no longer used because of Defence Regulations.
Some of these had been used by the military at some time, whether officially or not I cannot say, but in most cases the electricity was still on, and in some cases we found that things like water heaters were still heating.
We removed water heaters that were rented, and probably some that were not, also cookers and the meters. All of these went back to the Basin Road Depot, where they were renovated for people who were on a long waiting list. All the switch gear was also removed, and one of the electricians was more or less permanently engaged in stripping these down and repainting. There seemed to be enough cable about to do the work, and it kept us all busy.
One of the time consuming jobs we did whilst we had no work, was to go out on cycle expeditions, known as 'Kelly's', which I suppose was engendered by the directory of that name. We would go off by van and be dumped in the wilds of Birdham and other villages within our working area, between Chichester Harbour and Bognor, where we would note every house and street number to keep the office's directory up to date.
I do not remember if we called at all houses to establish if they had electricity, but certainly we called at most. For this tiresome work we were able to claim 1 1/2d per mile.
I found this information useful later on, however, as I now know a lot more about the country lanes and hamlets than before.
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