This photograph is of the Shop Stewards who attended a course on Work Study (Left to right): Back row: Walter Furphy, Peter Goodall and Robert Gibson. Front row: Raymond Tippey, Gordon Basford, Mike Cassell, Fred Wastell and Ray Morris. Taken from from the in-house magazine, The News Magazine of F Hills & Sons Ltd. Edition No 6 Summer 1974.
Photograph courtesy of Janine Connor.
Picture Stockton Archive 
In the photograph it mentions Bob Gibson as the man far right at the back. I don’t think it is him although he was a shop steward there at that time.
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Mike Cassel lived in Billingham and was a member of staff with Stockton air cadets . When Hills ceased trading or possibly before then , he left and became a woodwork/machinery instructor within the prison service . I presume that Robert Gibson and Councillor Bob Gibson are one and the same person ?
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Dave Seaman became a woodwork/machinist Instructor at the Portrack Prison and is still there. He also lived in Billingham and left Hills when the firm closed for good. David are you getting the 2 people mixed up. I left on the final closure in 1997 and I can’t remember a Mike Cassell being one of them.
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Hello Bob and thanks for that . I knew Mike Cassel very well and I’m certain that he went into the prison service too ? Perhaps there was some sort of recruitment policy at the time that kept the lads in work and in their same trade rather than lose their jobs if it was around the time that Hills started to decline ? He lived in the Rievaulx Avenue area of Billingham and being a single lad the world was his oyster . I seem to remember he was last heard of in the Hull area ! !
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Ray Tippey was from Thornaby. He died from a heart attack in 1982 aged 35 years.
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He was my Shop Steward in Factory 6 when I joined the Company in 1973. Just couldn’t believe it when we arrived at work the next day. It was stated then that his father had died at an early age with similar circumstances.
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His father, Mark died when he was 38 years old and yes, he died the same way.
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