For anyone interested there are more photographs of Brown”s Foundry on this Newcastle University website with details of equipment and a report of a visit in 1979, a year after it closed. http://sine.ncl.ac.uk/view_image.asp?digital_doc_id=2590
Thanks for the memory jog on don”s name – How could I ever forget it. I don”t know if it has clicked Barry and Sue, but my mother was Lil Peacock who worked with your mum at Hardwick Junior School kitchens. When the foundry closed the Council took some of the equipment and intended to use it in a museum setting at Preston Hall Museum, but I think lack of funding meant it never happened. Thats a shame as the machinery was older than some of the exhibits at Beamish and were all still fully functioning up to the very end. I think the outside lathe is rusting away at the back of the museum.
I was the last engineering apprentice at George Browns, it closed in my third year. Just before the HSE would have closed it I imagine !! The Shop Foreman was Benny Luke. Others in the fitting shop were: Stan Green, Norman Doyle, Ken Smith, Don ? Derrick “Dodger ” Simpson, Vernon Alderton, Alfie Wood. The welder was George Stephenson. All great characters. Most of the lads kept the Newtown Social Club in business!!
My great grandfather Patrick Hoey worked as a puddler at Brown”s Foundry in Portrack during the very early 1900″s and lived in Brown”s Row with his family. As a small boy during World War II I can remember going past the foundry with my grandfather James Hoey who kept an allotment somewhere behind the foundry near the end of the black path.
For anyone interested there are more photographs of Brown”s Foundry on this Newcastle University website with details of equipment and a report of a visit in 1979, a year after it closed. http://sine.ncl.ac.uk/view_image.asp?digital_doc_id=2590
Thanks for the memory jog on don”s name – How could I ever forget it. I don”t know if it has clicked Barry and Sue, but my mother was Lil Peacock who worked with your mum at Hardwick Junior School kitchens. When the foundry closed the Council took some of the equipment and intended to use it in a museum setting at Preston Hall Museum, but I think lack of funding meant it never happened. Thats a shame as the machinery was older than some of the exhibits at Beamish and were all still fully functioning up to the very end. I think the outside lathe is rusting away at the back of the museum.
My Dad was Benny Luke, and I remember Don”s surname to be Radcliffe.
Ian, it was strange to see my dads name being mentioned he had fond memories of Browns.
I was the last engineering apprentice at George Browns, it closed in my third year. Just before the HSE would have closed it I imagine !! The Shop Foreman was Benny Luke. Others in the fitting shop were: Stan Green, Norman Doyle, Ken Smith, Don ? Derrick “Dodger ” Simpson, Vernon Alderton, Alfie Wood. The welder was George Stephenson. All great characters. Most of the lads kept the Newtown Social Club in business!!
My great grandfather Patrick Hoey worked as a puddler at Brown”s Foundry in Portrack during the very early 1900″s and lived in Brown”s Row with his family. As a small boy during World War II I can remember going past the foundry with my grandfather James Hoey who kept an allotment somewhere behind the foundry near the end of the black path.