Podcasts: Voices of Tower Bridge

David: Thank you for joining me for another episode, in this series, on Tower Bridge. My name is David Laird and I work as an Education Officer at Tower Bridge. Over each episode, we dive deep into our oral history archive to bring you interviews by former employees and their families and explore their connections with London's defining landmark.  

Today, we will be speaking to Audrey Hudson about her father, Bill Skinner. Bill worked at Tower Bridge for over 30 years. Join us as Audrey describes his memories of working across the Thames. If you wish to catch up or explore more of Tower Bridge’s history, our podcast series can be found at www.towerbridge.org.uk/stories/podcasts-history-of-tower-bridge. And so, we join Audrey as she introduces us to her early life growing up in South London. 

Audrey: I was born in London, in Brook Drive Hospital, which wasn't far from where we lived as we lived in Lambeth Walk. Yes, I am a South Londoner through and through, and my local school was Saint George's Cathedral, which is just off St George’s Road. So, I'm a local girl.   

Life was nice. I had a cosy home upbringing. You know, family, always around me. 

David: Audrey went on to describe how her parents met. 

Audrey: Well, my mom was from Malta and my father was from Aberdeen in Scotland. Mum and Dad actually met at James Burrough, which is in Vauxhall. You know, the Beefeater factory? And my mum was there as part of a working holiday. And my dad was on leave from the Merchant Navy at the time. That's how they met, basically. They were working in the same place; my dad asked my mum out for a date and from there...that's how they got together.  

My dad was a real character, and my mum was as well. Sometimes it was very difficult between the two and when they were talking, my dad used to look at my mum to see what she was saying and vice versa. My mum said: ‘what did he say?’, because they couldn't understand each other's accents. 

David: We were then introduced to Bill in his early career at Tower Bridge. 

Audrey: He took the job on here at Tower Bridge for a few months, basically. After he finished working in the Merchant Navy. Those few months lasted 32 years. He loved the job here. He really did. He used to make tea and he then furthered himself after a few weeks and then he became an Apprentice Electrician. And then from there, he then became one of the duty officers on Tower Bridge. He did most of his work on the Bridge, cleaning the engine room, he did a lot of the flood lights that were on the Bridge on extremely high levels without any safety things. 

David: Audrey described Bill's day-to-day job at Tower Bridge. 

Audrey: When I was a little girl, I used to remember him getting up very early in the morning, maybe 5-6 o'clock. He used to have to be at work for 7:00 o’clock, and they'd had their breakfast downstairs, and then he'd get on with the daily tasks that you would be set out to do. He didn't work weekends. I don't remember him working weekends when I was very young, but when he became a duty officer then he had weekends. They had to do shift patterns. 

David: Wages for Bill increased as his time at Tower Bridge continued, and he progressed through the ranks. 

Audrey: In the early days, he used to get, probably about £10-15, when he started. I know that doesn't sound a lot now, but in those days, it probably was a good wage. And then when he became a duty officer, I always remember my mom saying: ‘Cool. We've got more money than we actually need’. 

David: Bill became no stranger to Bridge Lifts, and the occasional perilous moments that they could pose. 

Audrey: He did many a Bridge Lift. And I remember him, one-, well in the 1980s. Sometimes I can't remember what year it was. And my mum said to me something happened on Tower Bridge. We saw the newsreels as well on television, and I said ‘Oh, what's happened?’, I said. ‘He's alright though, Dad - isn't he?’. ’Oh yeah, he's all right. But something's happened. I'm not sure what’. Anyway, we saw it on the television that this ship had come through and hit the Bridge, but from my dad's point of view, what had happened: he saw this boat coming through, and my dad looked at it, and he could judge whether something was gonna come through all right or whether something looked like ‘Whooops! I think we might have to duck here’, and he said that boat’s not coming through here, that's going to hit the Bridge and the Bridge Master at the time said ‘no, they've assured us that this will go’, he said. It's not going to go through, what it'. And as it came it knocked the top. And my dad said: ‘I told you so, didn't I?’, and he didn't come home. I remember till about 5-6 o'clock the following morning because he had to work all night - because they had to get engineers down the Head Engineer from the Guildhall had to come down. They had all sundry here. The newsreels were taking place as well at the same time. So yeah, that was one of the big episodes that I remember.

David: Audrey talks now about the advantage of having her dad working on this iconic landmark. 

Audrey: I used to be with like my friend. Maybe we'd be passing, I’d say ‘Oh, let's go and see if that my dad's working. Let's go and see if he's around’. We didn't have the tourists there, so it was that you had a point where you could go to them and say, ‘oh, is Bill Skinner around or whatever’, you know? And my dad used to take me and my friends round the Bridge, and take me to some of the areas where it wasn't known to the public, like the Walkways - but they weren't open to the public at that time. 

David: Audrey shared a memorable moment with her dad on Tower Bridge. 

Audrey: I've got a funny story to tell you. When I came up to my dad once and we went into this tiny lift, the one that we came up in today, it wasn't like that. It was all meshed rather than so you could sort of see the outside of where the lift shaft was. And on the wall was this tiny, little flashlight. Little square one, it was. With a tiny switch at the side, but underneath it had this arrow saying ‘Push up to put the light on’ I looked at it, when I went up with my dad and I said 'Wasn't that obvious then?’ You click this switch’. And my dad said ‘don't go there’; he said, ‘don't ask me’. He said we had the Head Engineer from the Guildhall came up here. He said what silly person put this up on the Bridge. 

David: During those years at Tower Bridge, change began with the arrival of tourism to the Walkways. 

Audrey: The most significant change, I think, was when Tower Bridge was going to open to the general public again and that took form from all sorts of directions. The engineering side, the painting of the Bridge. That was probably one of the things I do remember about it because they put a colour of paint on the Bridge, first of all, which was the wrong colour. And I, you know, it did take a while, but I've got to say, it does look it does look extraordinary now. 

David: Never one to shy away, Bill's image would often accompany that of Tower Bridge. 

Audrey: My dad was notorious for being one of the most photographed people on Tower Bridge. I don't know why, but he was so he ended up in so many magazines like the ‘Shell’ magazine. He was in the ‘’Women's Only even. He was photographed many, many times - when they've had television people from America coming over. 

David: Unwelcome visitors could also be found with the change of shift from night to day. 

Audrey: So, they used to have night watchmen on the Bridge, and it wasn't my dad, but it was him that was telling me the story of this. They were filming down in the bascules, and they were doing a horror film. It was the something like the monster from the lagoon. So, what they did, somebody that was on the night shift knew about this, but when the next person in the morning took over, forgot to tell the person in the morning what was going on downstairs in the basement and this guy went down there and there was this monster in like 3-foot of water down there, and there with this eyes all ablaze and puffing coming out of this.  And he ran up this place where he was, nearly had a heart attack he did, but I found it so funny. Everyone was warned that in future, everyone doing the night shift must notify the morning shift what has been happening overnight - because they were filming in the nighttime, you see. 

David: Audrey finished by telling us about Bill's pride, working for Tower Bridge and the joy it brought him throughout his career. 

Audrey: Because he worked here for so long, it was almost like, it's dad's Bridge, if you like. There's that sense of personal element about it. I'm very proud that he worked here, and I think he would be very proud as well, knowing that I've come here to talk to you today about this. After he left the Merchant Navy, he used to love the ships, and this was one of the ways that he could be surrounded by the river, by the boats, and working in the engineering side is like cleaning the engines of the ships, really. 

The most important thing to me is that my dad got job satisfaction and I think in today's day and age, not many people get job satisfaction. He had that and I feel good that he got that. He enjoyed the engineering side of things; he was that way inclined. It's nice to know that he lived his life doing things he wanted to do. 

David: Well, folks, that's the end of our interview on Bill Skinner. Thank you to Audrey for sharing her memories of Bill's time at Tower Bridge. We'll be back again soon for more tales from our archive. Till then, don't forget you can find more podcasts like this one at www.towerbridge.org.uk/stories/podcasts-history-of-tower-bridge.

David: Thank you for joining me, for another episode, in this series, on Tower Bridge. My name is David, and I work as an Education Officer at Tower Bridge. Over each episode, we dive deep into our oral history archive to bring you interviews by former employees and their families and explore their connections with London’s defining landmark.

Today, we will be speaking to Peter Thurkle. Peter worked at Tower Bridge, starting in 1970 as a ‘general hand’. Join us as Peter describes his memories of working across the Thames. If you wish to catch up or explore more of Tower Bridge’s history, our podcast series can be found at www.towerbridge.org.uk/stories/podcasts-history-of-tower-bridge. And so, we join Peter, as he introduces us to his early life in the shadow of Tower Bridge.

Peter: Father was a docker right next door here, up Mark Brown's Wharf. The Russian and the Polish boats used to come in here and get off-loaded by my father and his brothers and all the other guys there. My mum was a secretary for Pickfords British Road Service, BRS, and she also worked some nights at, I remember that, Shuttleworths, a chocolate factory in Bermondsey. We used to get the reject rabbits that had no ears, chocolate rabbits, as kids.

David: We moved on to hear about Peter’s school, education, and his early years in the army.

Peter: Oh, to start with I went to Southwark Park Primary and then we moved to the other side of the park and I changed schools and went to Rotherhithe. So, from about seven years old till I was eleven when I went to secondary school, Paragon at the Bricklayers Arms. And I did City and Guilds Welding. and then I went to a nautical training school outside Bristol, Portishead. T.S. Formidable. That was brilliant. And I was only fifteen then, nearly sixteen. And from there, I was there for about a year or so, and recruiting teams used to come around. I spent five and a half months at Deal, then went to Lympstone and then went to Plymouth. I wasn't there a lot. Northern Ireland, Norway, Cyprus, Belize, Caribbean, bit of America, so we got about a bit. Most of the UK, that was cold, wet, and miserable. Normally up North off Scotland, around the Isle of Arran and that. Came out.

David: Peter then told us about his arrival at Tower Bridge.

Peter: Started here October the 15th. I still remember my first day funnily enough. Came in and you came through the black gate at the top and you went down the yard into the stores. And Mr Eamons who was another foreman was waiting for us. And he gave us a couple of pairs of overalls, and he said 'right I'm going to show you around the Bridge'. So, he showed us all around in the morning, we went to lunch, came back in the afternoon, it was quite funny. Went out the stores and there was brand new silver mop bucket, mop, stiff broom, soft broom, all the accoutrement you wanted to go over the north side and start cleaning it up.

David: We move on, as Peter describes the average day’s work.

Peter: At that time, the Bridge Master was Commander Rabbit who was a submarine engineer, and Mr Bywater was the Assistant Bridge Master. Mr Bywater was a very knowledgeable, clever man. And on the wall he had a chart, an engineering chart of jobs. And he would go in and he would check that chart and if need be the foreman, or the duty officers as they liked to call themselves back then, would end up with a pair of overalls on and would be dragged all round the Bridge looking for faults and jobs. And they would come out with a list of jobs to be done. And all them things used to get ticked off: quarterly, half annually, annual maintenance, half yearly maintenance all the jobs had to be done, and he checked it thoroughly. I mean we used to spend really long days here, we would come in for six, seven o'clock in the mornings and maybe not get away until two in the morning, because of Bridge lifts during the summer. You'd be up there all night long, putting the Bridge up and down. Coming down having a cup of tea, going back up, putting the Bridge up again and you would do it in three-hour blocks. But yeah, you could be here most of the night, but fortunately I was only living in Bermondsey then so I could get home quite easy. But a lot of them use to sleep in the mess room and shower in the mornings, things like that.

David: We now found out about the need for teamwork and support when working on Tower Bridge.

Peter: A lot of the jobs here couldn't get done if you wasn't flexible. So everybody was just flexible and everything got done. But we did back then projects. Them engines with the flywheel they are original where they are. All they are, are water pumps. They just push water up the Bridge, yeah.

David: One unusual job involved going deep under the Engine Rooms.

Peter: You've got the Engine Room there and there's a flight of stairs that go down the basement and then there's another flight of stairs goes down which takes you out into the yard. In the corner, you would find an opening and that would take you down to the reservoir. And what it is, it's Victorian bricked arches. And when you open the valves up the Thames would come in, fill that reservoir up, close it before the tide went out and that water was used for boilers, turned into steam and such like. Went through a cleaning process first obviously. And I think it was once a month some of the day men would put on, they called them dead men, big waders, and they would go down in the reservoir and clean it up. All the muck that was down there, all the mud and that, that had come in.

David: One specific job was emptying the huge accumulators on the Bridge of the iron with which they were filled.

Peter: Me and a team of guys emptied them of all the pig iron. They used to weigh a hundred tons of pig iron in there. So, you've got the wonderful job of getting in there and getting it all out. So, we set up a scaffold and a chute to a skip and we got in there, oh my god. Talk about compact, with dirt in it as well to stop it. And this pig iron, some of it was six foot tall and about a foot diameter or something, maybe bigger some of it. And you had to have a sledgehammer down there and you'd lean it against a wall and you'd break it, because it was too heavy to pull up on its own.
David: He now describes the process of opening the Bridge before its electrification.
Peter: You had one down the Engine Room and a couple in the cabins. Because two cabins was look outs and two cabins was for driving. So, as soon as a ship came around from Cherry Garden coming into the Pool of London, I think he'd give something like three long blows on his horn, something like that. And that meant that the look-outs would start going through the process of clearing the Bridge, getting the gates closed because it was all manual back then and then the Bridge would be lifted. But the thing back then, it wasn't lifted from one side it would have to be lifted from both sides apparently. And it had to be synchronized otherwise it would have been like that. You’d get phone calls apparently. Complaints.

David: Peter then explained his process of discovering the secrets buried deep inside Tower Bridge.

Peter: In the south abutment, underneath in the cupboards there they had all the old logbooks. And amazing writing, really smart writing and spelling. I would sit there and read them. And there was a story of when the Bridge got bombed during the War. And the bomb hit the walkway and ricocheted off and it blew up the Tower Bridge tug including the engineer and some of the crew. The Tower Bridge tug was just a ship that would pull ships through and that. And the most openings in a 24-hour working period was sixty-two. I think that was back in the late fifties, early sixties. I read that in one of the logbooks. I think all these logbooks have gone over to the Guildhall.

David: Peter described the sensory experience of working down in the Engine Rooms.

Peter: Noisy, when them engines ran they were quite noisy. They were kept really clean actually. Because on a daily basis, if you worked the boilers, you not only stoked, you had to keep the boiler bright work all cleaned and such like, functioning. Same on the engines you didn't just stand there while there was no Bridge lifts going on, you wiped the engines over, you polished this and got this. Because the Bridge Master, all the Bridge Masters were ex-military, engineering of some sort: naval or army. And they would always walk, do the rounds. Always checking up, just like in the military.

David: During his time, Peter played an unexpected part in a tale that has become part of Tower Bridge legend.

Peter: We had a quarter past ten Bridge lift at night. And there was two of them on the north side and I was on the south side on my own and Glen called me up he went 'boat's come in early is that alright with you?' I said 'yeah yeah that's great, get away'. So as we're going through the proceedings of clearing the Bridge I notice these flashing cars go across the Bridge, didn't take much notice of it. Road gates closed, everything's calmed down, Bridge is going up. I can hear a big commotion under the road arch. So, I thought, ah I better go and have a look. So, I walked around there, and I always walk up to the gate and I always called it punching distance, so nobody can like reach out and get you. I'm standing there looking. It's three people in trench coats giving it verbal with me. 'You don't know what trouble you're in mister. That's it you've had it now' blah, blah, blah. 'Put this Bridge down immediately you don't know what you've done’. And originally, I thought, drunks from the City, because you get a lot of that anyway. And this woman come up to me and she was really aggressive right and giving it. I'm like 'maddam, behave'. And it was only when the police outrider came up, two of them: 'what you doing mate?' I said 'well the Bridge is up what do you think I'm doing?' He said 'do you know what you've done?' It was only when I looked, I saw the limo with President Clinton looking out the window, Tony Blair on the north side: split the convoy. Bells are ringing, and then the radio went it was quite funny, it was like Glen went 'somebody winding me up? I've got Scotland Yard on the phone here'. Helicopter search lights god damn yeah, 1997 that was. Yeah, split the convoy. Great!

David: We went on to discuss the wages and early years working across the Thames.

Peter: I know that the permanent staff that worked here would earn good money back in the '60s. I think my old man used to bring home fourteen, fifteen pound a week, sometimes twenty, which was not bad money then. Here, if you look in the old wage books, which I've seen, they were taking home twenty-five, thirty pounds a week sometimes: which was, they were buying their own houses and driving nice cars, Tower Bridge workers.

David: As Britain changed through the economic turmoil of the 1980s, so Peter explained how this affected Tower Bridge.

Peter: For my first two to three years, it was quiet here, really quiet. And I was only here really then because there was a recession, early 8os, big recession we had. And then in '82, when we opened up to tourism, it was not long after that that we started to get more vessels coming through. And you'd get some big vessels come through up here, yeah. And they'd stay for a day, moor up by the Belfast everybody off, see London, everybody back on and back out that night, or early hours of the morning. Yeah. So, I would say around about the mid '80s it really picked up.

David: Peter then reflected on his initial days as a Bridge Driver.

Peter: I was trained by Bill Skinner and Fred Storey, yeah. And then what you would do, basically you had to do your checks first, go under the Bridge, make sure there was no obstructions, make sure the moving parts in the engines weren't obstructed by anything: like someone who'd been working there hadn't left their gear there. Go upstairs into the cabin, just turn the motors on, make sure they're all running perfectly, turn them back off again, check everything is all right in the cabin and then you wait for the ship to turn up around the bend. And then back then, if it was coming from Cherry Garden, you'd let the ship come down and there was a filling station on the River for shipping, when it got to there you start going through the process of opening the Bridge. Basically, you had your motors here, your jacks here for bypassing anything and there you had your lever and a little, what looked like a Scalextrics, but flat, yeah, with the piers, the lights, and the switches. And all we did was turn the switches and that would turn the traffic lights to red, so as the traffic lights stop you'd shut the gates. Meanwhile, the guys outside would be keeping the people behind the pedestrian gates. You'd check the cameras that it was all clear, then you shut the pedestrian gates. Make sure you've got a clear Bridge, and then you start unlocking it, you've got the four nosebolts unlocked, and then the pawls in each corner would drop back. That means then, you've got an ‘all green’ system, once you touch that lever, it goes boom and it goes up. First time you ever do that it's like... because that's like 1500 tonnes with the counterweight. It's a lot with that little lever you're like jeez, yeah. It's amazing really and it's such a clever simple system, the way it works. Because you've got the engines over the other side of the road. And then you've got the drive shaft that goes into the counterweight, with a cog on it. On the back of the counterweight, you've got a rack, so you've got a cog and a rack basically. Soon as that engine starts turning, and it's all unlocked it just pulls it up. And it's got brakes as well, but it will swivel, it’s so finely balanced anyway, it could go on its own. It's just such a simple clever structure.

David: To finish, Peter told us about his pride and appreciation for Tower Bridge.

Peter: Jobs that you are given to do you try to do to the best of your ability because you care about it, you know. It's been there a long time it's going to be here a long time after hopefully, yeah. And it is a wonderful structure, yeah. And when you work in it, you realise that although it is a big, wonderful structure, it's so simple the way it's all been done and clever. Yeah, especially back then and the way it was all built like manually basically: no hydraulic cranes back then and such like. Yeah, yeah it just gets to you. Had a lot of laughs here, I've got a lot of good memories of this place. I don't think a lot of people can say that about their jobs, a lot of good memories.

David: Well folks, that’s the end of interview with Peter Thurkle. Thank you to Peter, for sharing his memories of his time at Tower Bridge. We will be back again soon, for more tales from our archive. Till then, don’t forget, you can find more podcasts like this one at www.towerbridge.org.uk/stories/podcasts-history-of-tower-bridge. Goodbye for now.

David: Thank you for joining me for another episode in this series on Tower Bridge. My name is David Laird and I work as an education officer at Tower Bridge. Over each episode, we dive deep into our oral history archive to bring you interviews by former employees and their families and explore their connection with London's defining landmark.

Today, we'll be speaking to Philip Forrest, the son of Edward Ted Forrest. Ted worked at Tower Bridge for over 40 years as a bricklayer and foreman. Join us as Philip describes their memories of Ted's time working across the Thames. If you wish to catch up or explore more of Tower Bridge's history, our podcast series can be found at www.towerbridge.org.uk/stories/podcasts-history-of-tower-bridge.

And so, we joined Philip as he introduces us to his father's early life and arrival at Tower Bridge.

Philip: My father was born in Depford, in south London. He was one of a fairly large family. He had four brothers and two sisters, so six children in all, and it was a very wide age spread. My father was actually born an uncle, his eldest brother had already grown up and had children before my father was born - so he was born an uncle.

My grandfather, who I never met, was a builder and his eldest son took over as a builder when my grandfather retired and my father started as a builder in that business. But I don't know quite why he decided he wasn't going to continue doing that. Maybe because he'd met my mother, maybe because the recession during the thirties had made times a bit difficult. But he decided to get a proper job and went to work on Tower Bridge.

And once he was there, that was it. I forget what his title was. He was the builder Mason person on the job. Anything to do with any of the masonry or the repairs or that stuff, that was my father's job. His work would be just looking after the general day to day maintenance of the fabric of the Bridge.

David: As a stone Mason, we asked if Ted had many repairs to do when ships collided with the Bridge.

Philip: No, not many ships did collide with the Bridge and it will probably be worse for the ship to be honest. A Fairly sort of solid piece of granite to run into and was still inside it.

David: We moved on to ask whether Ted's role had evolved during his time at Tower Bridge.

Philip: There was no, what you might call, career path. He went in to do a specific job and he did that particular job for 37 years. What he did, you know, obviously changed on a day-to-day basis, depending on the needs of the fabric of the Bridge. But there was no career path where he could work his way up to be superintendent or whatever most of those people came from the military or in the Navy or army or something like that. And that didn't bother him to be honest - He wasn't hugely ambitious and didn't want to conquer the world.

I think he was fairly happy in the slot that he'd fallen into. He'd come through things like the recession and he'd kind of seen what it can do to you. So therefore security was an important thing to him.

David: Philip went on to describe his father's work during the second world war.

Philip: Like almost everybody else he got called up. But my father was partially deaf. He did his basic training at home, I've got photographs of him sort of marching along in Carlisle, I think he was sent to.

But when it came to the next bit, they threw him out because he was deaf or partially deaf. So, he volunteered and did fire watching through the war on Tower Bridge, which I presume was done from the high level where they would have a good view down each side of the river and therefore spot if any fires were starting and could alert the necessary emergency forces.

David: We asked if Ted witnessed any dramatic incidents in the years he was employed.

Philip: Well, there were planes that flew between high level and the road, bit of a Daredevil thing. It seemed to be a bit of a caper. It was very badly looked upon because it's obviously incredibly dangerous to do that.

There was also tension on foggy days, because it was often foggy in the winter. So, you'd have ships wanting to come and ships wanting to go. And the PLA would have to manage all that very in the fog. One of the things I can remember on foggy mornings, even from where we lived in Lewisham, you could hear the horns on the ships on the river as they were blowing their things as they came along.

David: I then asked what his relationship is like with the other employees on Tower Bridge.

Philip: I think they were all a bit of a good gang actually. He talked a lot about them. There were one or two, what you might call characters.

There was a chap called Johnny Wilson who came from the east end of London who always seemed to be up to some sort of caper or other. And in fact, I can remember one story when one of the engineers from the corporation of City of London was a young chap who had a small MG sports car. And he would park in the yard, which was outside the boiler room and this particular character, Johnny Wilson thought he would earn himself a drink by washing this guy's car for him. So when he'd finished his work, he came down, pick up his car and Johnny Wilson jumped up and said, 'I've washed your car for you', to which the young engineer said, 'That's very kind of you' and drove off <laugh> .

David: Philip described when he first became interested in his father's work.

Philip: There's not a moment in my life when I wasn't aware of my father and Tower Bridge and how much he liked it. He was a fairly quiet man, but he would talk to anybody who wanted to about Tower Bridge for as long as they wanted to talk about it. And it was almost a kind of a joke around the house, about Tower Bridge and his love of the place.

I didn't actually visit the Bridge until I was 21 or 22. By that time in the Royal exchange assurance, I'd become what they call an inspector, which was somebody who goes around and sees insurance brokers and all that sort of stuff. And for doing that, I got a car and part of my area was south east London. It was about four o'clock on an afternoon and I was very close to Tower Bridge. So I thought, well, I'll pop up there and see if my father's ready to go home and I'll give him a lift home, save him going on the train. And I parked in the yard, which is down by the boiler room and met my father. And he said, while you're here, do you wanna have a quick look round? And I said, you know, sure, why not?

And from that moment on, I was hooked. Every opportunity I could get to get there afterwards. I completely shared his enthusiasm for what a fantastic piece of art machinery the whole place is.

David: A dramatic scene. We asked, what was the engine room like the first time you entered it?

Philip: Well, there were, and there still are two parts of it, except that there are now two boilers in the engine room and there were three boilers and these are very large, probably, I don't know, 15 foot high cylinders. And the purpose of those was to make the steam that drove the engines. And in that part of it there was a very strong smell of burnt Coke. If you've ever been in a Coke burning room, it has a smell completely of its own, and it's quite acidy and almost unpleasant.

Immediately adjacent to that was the main engine room where these big, beautiful brass green and gold yellow lined steam engines. The smell of the oil from those was almost sweet compared with the acidity of things.

So there was this immediate contrast on your senses of the smells and these big engines were just idling, just turning over very gently. My understanding of that was that that was to maintain the water pressure in the system and to maintain some things called accumulators.

David: Philip now talks us through how his father reacted to the electrification of Tower Bridge.

Philip: I think he was quite happy about it. It was called the London hydraulic company who supplied the hydraulic power.

One of the reasons I think he was probably quite happy about it is one of his jobs was the boilers had to be inspected every year. And these boilers aligned with things called refractory bricks, which are heat resistant. And the only way you can inspect the inside of a boiler is to go inside (not when it's on, of course) and the porthole that you get in is very small. My father was quite a big man - he wasn't a fat man, but he was six foot. This was done during the summer, they would close one boiler, let it cool down while the other two were running. He would go in and check and inspect and repair anything that was inside. And if there was a lot of repointing or bricks needing replacing, all that kind of stuff, he could be in there for a long time.

And he absolutely hated that job. So when the boilers weren't running anymore, he was probably quite relieved about that.

David: We ended our interview by asking Philip how his father's time had impacted on him.

Philip: I think my father and Tower Bridge and his whole sort of engagement, just from a very early age, gave me a very stable platform. I can't remember him not being there. It was one of those foundation stones in my life. I had a very stable upbringing. I think that was part of the fact that he had a secure job and he could look forward to a pension.

It's always been a point of interest for me and therefore, maybe some people may remember me as the bloke who's father worked on Tower Bridge.

David: Well, folks, that's the end of our interview with Philip Forrest. Thank you to Philip for sharing his memories, his father Ted's time working at Tower Bridge. We will be back again soon for more tales from our archive. Until then, don't forget, you can find more podcasts like this one at www.towerbridge.org.uk/stories/podcasts-history-of-tower-bridge.

David: Thank you for joining me for another episode in this series on Tower Bridge. My name is David Laird and I work as an Education and Marketing Officer at Tower Bridge.

Over each episode: we will dive deep into our oral history archive to bring you interviews from our former employees and their families, as we explore their connections with London's Defining Landmark.

Today we will be speaking to Liz Hunter, the granddaughter of Olive Birch. Olive was only 18 when she became a maid and resident at Tower Bridge in 1895, potentially in service for our first Bridgemaster lieutenant Bertie Angelo Cator. Join us as Liz describes the memories, treasures and significance of Olives time working across the Thames.

If you wish to catch up or explore more of Tower Bridge’s history, our podcast series can be found at www.towerbridge.org.uk/stories/podcasts-history-of-tower-bridge.

So we join Liz as she introduces us to Olive’s background and training ‘in service’

Liz: I’m Liz Hunter and Charlotte Olive Dora Birch, referred to as Olive, was my grandmother.  I think [she was] a very interesting character. She got married and lived in Brixton, where my dad came from, and I lived in South London up until a year ago, when we moved to the south coast.

[At first] she wasn’t really on my radar at all. My dad would bring me up to London - because he worked up here, he knew it like the back of his hands. We would come up in the Summer and in one particular year, which was the year that the old London Bridge was being dismantled we came up to photograph it being dismantled. We were on a river boat, going under Tower Bridge, when he suddenly said “my mother used to work in Tower Bridge”. Obviously [to me], that was weird as it doesn’t look like a place that anybody would work in, let alone a woman.

And that is how it (Liz’s interest in Olive’s life) started, it’s been drip-fed [to me] over many years to get the point we’re at now with more information about her.

David: Liz went on to describe more, about olives background and education.

Liz: I know that she was educated. Upon her marriage, she married into a family that would eventually go on to own various wheelwright businesses in Brixton and  Camberwell - at some point they were doing very well because they owned houses out in Mitcham - and she (Olive) did the accounts. I’ve got a couple of books at home, which my Dad had and I remember him saying “that’s my mother’s writing, she did all of the accounts for the business”.

So, she was obviously literate. We’ve got a couple of little books at home, which are [her] Sunday school books, which are there for her knowledge - she was presented with prizes for knowledge.  Her handwriting - we only have some postcards held by one of the cousins - obviously a postcard is only a bitesize snippet [into who she was].

David: During Olives employment, around 80 staff worked inside Tower Bridge, Liz tells us a bit more about her role.

Liz: Looking at the letters, the fact that she appeared to be a maid somewhere else. She obviously had some experience. My gut feeling is that she wasn’t the lowest of the low, the maid of all work, but maybe the next stage up.

David: Today, much of the Tower Bridge’s story resides in the memories of former employees and their descents. We asked Liz if she had any record of Olive’s employment.

Liz: Because there’d been a step family, after she had died, and the step family, I suspect, didn’t see the point of keeping contact with the original family, most of her things - her communications that had been sent from her brothers to her were in a suitcase, which my dad had. When my dad died, my mum gave it to another member of the family thinking that they ‘ought’ to have it and they put it on the bonfire.

The things that I have got, that I have photocopies of at home, is a postcard book - most of those postcards are between Olive and members of her Devon family, and also later between her and her older daughter, who also spent a lot of time down in Devon. And, of course, we have got this one surviving envelope, which was sent from Jamaica by one of her brothers who was on HMS Talbot at the time - this is dated April 15, 1897, and is sent to her here in the southern archway [at Tower Bridge] - unfortunately it’s only the envelope and the letter that was inside no longer exists, which is a huge, huge shame. In terms of further correspondence linking her to the Bridge, that has [all] disappeared into a bonfire.

David: With olives links to tower bridge, now sadly lost, we asked Liz if there were any objects, she still had from olives life.

Liz: I know she was somebody who liked writing letters and - obviously, in Victorian times they did - she kept contact with her family through letters. And I’ve got her writing box, which has, very faint on the top now, you can see her initials ‘C.O.D. Birch’. It was given to her on her 21st birthday and was well used. It was only used by her, nobody else in the family used it after her death, but it certainly had some use - it’s still got the remnants of the ink in the ink pots.

She had the most amazing gold fob watch, which I’ve got - it’s really heavily engraved [and]  a beautiful piece of jewellery. There are no pictures of her wearing jewellery. We have her engagement ring, which, after her death, was split into two rings for her two daughters. One of them made it’s way to me and [the other to my cousin]. Then my cousin, who has two sons, said to me “You have two daughters, would you like the other ring so now both of my daughters have half of her engagement ring each.

I think it’s so fantastic that a woman who had been resigned to a locked box aged 44 having died, to now kinda have her life, in some senses, back where she started in London, I think is quite fitting.

David: Our final question for Liz, we asked, what did it mean for her and her family to have their ancestor work at Tower Bridge.

Liz: Well, for me, it’s an immense pride, because I think Tower Bridge is such a part of London -  It’s one thing I always think of when I think of London. It’s such an incredible building and as you mentioned earlier, it’s such a masculine building, that for me the fact that she worked here, even if just for a tiny time, but right at the very beginning of its life, I find gives me an immense feeling of pride.

And I think my daughters feel it to some extent because one of them had had a waitressing job here and had that moment thinking “my great grandmother did this, probably in the same spot” so I think part of the family are incredibly proud because we have this want to find out about history. When I teach history, I always liken it to a jigsaw, where you’ve lost some bits and it is he fact that we’re beginning to piece together a few more bits of the jigsaw that she’s becoming more of a person rather than this very sad story from my dad - that she did when he was two and that he didn’t know her so.

It’s rather nice trying to pull that together as much as possible to discover what might have happened.

David: …Well folks, that is the end of our interview with Liz Hunter, thank you to Liz for sharing her memories of Olive Birch.

The original recording was by Dirk Bennett and Diane Timmins, edited by Diane Timmins with music from Sam Kilwin. voice over by me, David Laird

I will be back again soon for more tales from our archive. Don’t forget, you can find more podcasts like this one at, www.towerbridge.org.uk/stories/podcasts-history-of-tower-bridge. Goodbye for now. 

David: Thank you for joining me for another episode in this series on Tower Bridge. My name is David Laird and I work as an Education and Marketing Officer at Tower Bridge. 

Over each episode, we will dive deep into our oral history archive to bring you interviews from our former employees and their families, as we explore their connections with London's Defining Landmark.

Today we will be hearing from Carol Douglas, the great-granddaughter of Friend Samuel Penny. Samuel was in his 30s when he came to Tower Bridge as a diver, working deep under the river on the Bridge’s foundations. Join us as Carol describes the career, family and significance of Samuel’s time working across the Thames. 

If you wish to catch up or explore more of Tower Bridge’s history, our podcast series can be found at www.towerbridge.org.uk/stories/podcasts-history-of-tower-bridge.

So, we began by asking Carol to describe her own experience of growing up in London. 

Carol: I went to Crampton Primary in Walworth and then and then St Saviour's and St Olave’s Grammar School for young ladies on the New Kent Road. Although I wasn’t born until December ’56, there was still a lot of bomb damage all around. The big shopping centre at Elephant and Castle, that was only just starting to be built and some of the first high-rise buildings were being built opposite where we lived.

We lived in a three-floored Edwardian house, which no longer exists - that was part of the clearance in the 70s - they [the local authority] cleared a lot of decent housing out and built blocks of flats there.

There was a lot of rubble and even when I was at my primary school, the school had taken a hit during the second world war so for one year we were in huts, for one year we had to go to a school at Kennington, while they rebuilt our school. Right into the mid-sixties there was still a lot of work going on. 

David: We asked Carol, What started her interest in researching her family?

Carol: Friend Samuel Penny was my great-grandfather on my maternal side. My husband looked into our family tree. A picture of Friend Samuel Penny came up, now, we [as a family] have no photos of this man. Looking into that, it’s evident that this came from a newspaper article - I think it was the South London Press - but it was talking about Tower Bridge. It showed a picture of him. From that point, we could then [research] further.

David: With our attention grabbed, carol told how old Samuel was when working at Tower Bridge and a bit more about his home life. 

Carol: His parents where Charles Penny and Sarah Penny. Charles was born in 1819 and died in 1875 when Friend was 20. And, Sarah 1819 to 1881. His father was a ship’s carpenter and joiner from Rotherhithe.

Friend Penny was 5ft 1 and 3/4 inches. We can’t read what is complexion is but his hair is brown and his eyes are grey and the ship in which he volunteers is the Fizgard and he’s listed on that as ‘boy - 2nd class’. It does say further on that he had a tattoo on his arm of an anchor and he signed up [to the Navy] for 10 years.

He didn’t last very long, he only lasted about a year and a half - he was retired out as ‘invalided’. But it’s very personal for us because it actually shows his signature and he can write his name, obviously and he [also] gets his parents to sign as well. It’s nice to see something from so far back.

It does state the ships he was on. He was on LOADS of ships for a just a year an a half. He was on the SS Ganges, The Implacable, The Caledonia, The Duke of Wellington, Lord Warden, back on the Duke of Wellington and then he was at the barracks when he was ‘invalided’ out.

David: Taking the pre-name of ‘Friend’ – we asked Carol if what she knew about Samuel’s background as a Quaker. Rumours have also circulated that Samuel’s family came from a Scandinavian background. Carol described both these and his education to us. 

Carol: His name is Friend Penny, which is obviously a Quaker name. They have Friend’s meeting houses - I’m really not sure as I haven’t really got any evidence of any Quaker house that he attended. I’ve done my DNA and it does say that there’s a significant percentage that is Scandinavian. 

And my father ’s side - my father was Irish - and I’m 55% Irish, they didn’t move much and it’s  from just one region of Connacht, which is near Galway in Ireland. The Scandinavian side, if any percentage at all is obviously on my maternal side. 

I do know he had a propensity towards learning languages and that it was often mentioned that he could speak seven languages - I don’t know the languages - but that he could speak seven language. And I think that helped, obviously, when he travelled abroad to do his work. 

David: Next we asked how long did Samuel work at Tower Bridge and what was his previous career prior to diving?

Carol: I was always led to believe that [he was employed] for the period of time that that level of input was needed. As I understood it, he worked for a company called Siebe Gorman - whether it was contracted in from that or subcontracted in to do the foundation diving work - that’s the way it was explained.

We know that, probably, his first work would have been the Navy work. After that, once he was ‘invalided’ out of the Navy - I do know that all of his siblings and his father and Grandfather, all worked in the Docklands as carpenters and ship’s carpenters - so with a Navy background and that [his familial connection to working life on the docks], somehow he got into diving.

We’ve got a record of him where he’s a diver in Madras and it was his reference, so he’s obviously travelling the world a bit. That comes before Tower Bridge.

The other information that we’ve got is for his children, whenever his children got married  or any [document] that he had to put his career on, he was always stated as a diver, right the way throughout his life. 

A consistent theme came across that he worked on the building of some sea piers. Southend Pier, definitely, he did the foundations for that. Now, we’re not sure [on this one] it’s either Margate or Brighton Pier. I know that Margate Pier was extended in 1875 and that Brighton Pier had it’s palace pier built in 1899 and I don’t know which one, or whether it was both, but it was certainly one of them which he worked on. 

Other work that we found interesting as a family, was that he worked on the Underground service. He worked for either the development of the Bakerloo and/or the Northern line - and that was to do with tributaries of rivers that had to be held back as part of their construction [works]. And I think his knowledge and expertise was called in for that sort of work.

David: Diving still remains a highly skilled role. We were surprised to hear that Samuel often allowed help from an unexpected source.

Carol: He trusted very few people to work the pump to do with air flow into the diver’s apparatus and he only trusted my nan to do that, so from an early age she used to come along to his jobs and manually work a pump to help him to carry on with his job. 

Oh, it was dangerous. The machinery, the equipment, everything must have been so in their earliest stages of development and it would have relied a lot on the person themselves to be strong enough to withstand the role they’re being asked to do. Because they’re being asked to work, they aren’t just standing idly - they’re being asked to work underwater.

I think it would be hard now given all the equipment they have now, let alone then, going back to the 1870s and 80s.

David: Carol then explain about his later life.

Carol: He died in 1932 in Poplar in Tower Hamlets aged 77. He was in St. Clements hospital for the chronically ill, which is in Bow Road, Poplar [East London] and the cause of death was chronic myocarditis and chronic bronchitis. But he was also put into workhouses twice in his life - the workhouses were also used as hospitals as there wasn’t a National Health Service - and he was classified as ‘aged and infirm’ at 59 when he first went in. He had periods in there of about a year / a year and a half, and the heart problem is something that does come round in spells. You can be very ill for a period of time. 

But I remember my mum saying that great-granddad got the job as a diver because he was strong enough, his lungs were strong enough and rarely did people have lungs as strong as that and only very few people got to do that job.

David: Our final question, we asked if Carol could explain what it means to her to have Samuel Penny work here at Tower Bridge.

Carol: I would say, if not the [most iconic], it’s gotta be in the top five of the most iconic buildings in Britain. I mean, you think of Tower Bridge and you think of it as a national building - it’s of national pride and to have someone in my family involved in that is just amazing to me. but more than that, I used to, when I was at school, sing Gregorian chant at Southwark Cathedral. As we’d walk down to rehearse and sing in the cathedral, you’d see Tower Bridge because you’d walk down Tooley Street. 

This area is my area - it’s the area I was brought up and, even without the connection of Friend Samuel Penny, to have a connection with Tower Bridge, anything to do with Tower Bridge is very personal to me. It feels part of us, as south Londoners.

David: Well folks, that is the end of our interview with Carol Douglas, thank you to Carol for sharing her memories of Friend Samuel Penny.

The original recording was by Dirk Bennett and Diane Timmins, edited by Diane Timmins with music from Sam Kilwin. Voice over by me, David Laird

I will be back again soon for more tales from our archive. Don’t forget, you can find more podcasts like this one at, www.towerbridge.org.uk/stories/podcasts-history-of-tower-bridge. Goodbye for now.