Stan Holford
Stan belongs to: The Diving Centre Ltd
Stan became fascinated with diving from an early age from reading stories about the frogmen. He started The Diving Centre Ltd in 1959.
Stan was interviewed by Carl Greenwood on 7 November 2005. The interview took place at the Interviewee's living room and lasted 1 hour, 27 minutes and 45 seconds.
Early wetsuits
"The diving in the North East was governed by people who could first afford the gear and then secondly the availability of the gear"
The diving in the North East was governed by people who could first afford the gear and then secondly the availability of the gear. If I may give you an idea, in 1959, 60, something like that, wetsuits were unheard of and what had been used until then was membrane suits, which were just, we used to class them as clammy death, they stuck to you and they didn’t give you any heat whatsoever, they just kept you dry. Bloody horrible things.
But we, I heard about a firm in France which were manufacturing wetsuits and they were called, I think, La Spiro Technique, so through Charles I acquired one of these suits which I think in 1960 cost about 200 quid which was a hell, hell of a lot, but with that suit, I opened up every seam, I cut the suit up, in other words, and laid it out and their copyright I took over and my patterns and I made subsequent patterns to fit different sizes from them and then put the suit together again and I used it for five years afterwards.
But from there on in, we started buying in neoprene and making suits for whoever wanted a suit made, custom built suit. And I like to think there’s still customers come in and ask me to make them a suit personally, to this very day.
Stan has 19 memories in the memorynet:
Stan's memories with a Equipment theme:
Starting The Diving Centre- Early wetsuits
- Commercial diving gear
Commercial diving- Treasure Hunt
- Hard hat
Stan's other memories:
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