Re: W C French
Hello,
W C French were a very well known Essex Civil Engineering firm, which was taken over by Kier, and was known as French Kier until about 15 years ago.
It was started before World War I, and I believe the original Mr French died in that war. For many years it was run by a Mrs French, who eventually handed it over to her sons.
They built a lot of East Anglian airfields during World War II.
These airfields were usually fitted with concrete taxiways and hardstandings, and French was probably issued with these batchers during the war.
Many wartime issued concrete batchers worked on into the 1970's. I worked for Fitzpatrick in the 1980's, and they had been a smaller competitor of French during WWII. They employed people who had worked with WWII batchers, that had been issued to them during the war, and which were used by them on into the 1960's, when they were used in building the M1 motorway out of London, from Scratchwood to Hemel Hempstead.
Many civil engineering companies were given trucks by the services to ensure that the airfields were completed on time.
There is a very large haulage company that still operates today, called P C Howard from King's Cliff near Peterborough that was founded during the war when the US Airforce was building Kings Cliff Airfield, local legend told to me by older construction labourers in the 1980's, has it, that Percy Howard (then a young man in his late teens or early twenties), bid for the muck shifting contract using two tractors and trailers.
The American's realised that he could not possibly complete the project on time, but they had no spare labour, so they issued him with trucks, which he kept on after the war.
The first foreman I worked with in the 1980's, Peter Newton drove these as a fourteen year old, when he was supposed to be in school.
His mum got a note from the Kings Cliff school mistress that he was absent from school.
She couldn't understand this because he was going off apparently to school everyday, so after checking this out, it was discovered that he was in fact nipping onto the airfield on his bicycle and driving trucks on Harringworth airfield.
His mum was furious and got up to the airfield only to find that the guards wouldn't let her in, and they wouldn't let her son out ether.
It later turned out, to be the day before parts of the Polish airborne flew out of Harringworth (also known as Spanhoe) into the Arnhem battle, and a security clampdown was in place, because paras had been briefed, but the flight had had to be delayed by the bad weather.
Peter Newton was uncelemoniously hauled back off to school the following day, by his irate mum.
It looks like that CMP was hauling water, which batching plants need in large quantities.
Regards
Nick Balmer
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