Maurice Clyde
Maurice belongs to: The Doxford Engine Friends Association
Maurice left school in 1955 and started his apprenticeship at Doxford's in February 1956. After a motorbike accident in 1958 Maurice worked in the Drawing Office until the closure of the engine and shipyards in 1989.
Maurice was interviewed by Carl Greenwood on 7 December 2005. The interview took place at Beamish Regional Resource Centre and lasted 27 minutes and 41 seconds.
The Doxford Engine Friends Association
"I saw something in the local newspaper "
I saw something in the local newspaper that John Clayson had built this Tyne and Wear archive stores at Beamish where they were storing all kinds of material and items which were a hundred years old, except for a Doxford’s engine which they had been able to save and were put into this store for posterity, I suppose you could say, and I rang John Clayson at the museum and he said they were having an open day for people who had helped with the installing of this engine in the store, and if I’d like to come along. And when I got there, there was a lot of my colleagues from Doxford’s there.
And after the meeting, and looking at the engine and going around seeing everything, I thought, “it would be nice to set up an association that all these ex-engineers and people who had worked at Doxford’s could come along, and get together and talk about old times and all the memories which we had.”
And so we have done and we’ve now got, I think it’s about 140, forty odd members worldwide- Canada, New Zealand, Australia and we’ve had enquiries from far away as Iceland and America, but due to international monetary it was going to cost more for the banks to pay the £5 membership so a lot of them never bothered, but others have done it from Australia and Canada and we’re in touch with them. Just one little incident, two guys worked with me in the 1950s, they finished their apprenticeship, went away to sea, came back, got married, emigrated to Canada and through looking at our website, they found that they only lived about 40 minutes from each other and hadn’t seen each other for 40 odd years.
Maurice has 7 memories in the memorynet:
Maurice's memories with a Community theme:
Motorcycle accident and move to the Drawing Office- The Doxford Engine Friends Association
Maurice's other memories:
This memory has these themes:
Community | The North East | Volunteering
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