TASTERS: NIGEL SAUL..PHOTOGRAPHS AND MEMORIES

Hello again. It's very nice to see that so many of you are taking an interest in what we are doing.
What with The Situation this project has taken a slightly different shape than we intended, but the comments and contributions we've had have been great, and I'm very grateful to you all.

As you know, we have been training our interviewees up, and they are currently putting Jenn Bell's tuition into practice  by looking at the recording kit, listening to archive recordings and by running mock-interviews with their nearest and dearest (certainly thier nearest, but not too near, I hope..) so by the time we get round to talking to you we should be running smoothly.

Till then I thought we might have some Tasters.. early doors we had some interesting chats and online letters from former brewery staff and thier families, and we will be sitting down to interview them all as soon as we can...but in the meantime i thought you might enjoy  a few excerpts from what they sent us. 

Many of you will know Nigel Saul.  Nigel is a Graphic Designer / Photographer whose  family moved up to Swarthmoor in September 1977. Nigel's mother, June Saul, worked in the office at Hartleys. After going to Lancaster and Morecambe College of FE on a 12 month Art Foundation Course he started at Hartley's on what was  originally just to be a summer job.  Nigel has a great collection of slides and photographs, and he's kindly donated several to the project.  


We'll be recording Nigel's story, so you'll be able to hear it from him, but you'll get a flavour from these email extracts in which he talks about his working day....the photographs are Nigel's own.

I normally stated work at 8.00am I was employed as a cellar man. Simply put, my work involved initially collecting empty barrels, assuming there were none in the cellar, which were to be made ready for filling in the racking cellar. The empty barrels were stored in the yard until needed in the cellar, then the yard men put them in a washer machine and they were flung down a chute, on rails, to the waiting cellarman at the receiving end. Normally, this procedure worked quite well but if the yardman was Steve Gilpin ( on the right in the group photo) and he had spat the dummy, they would come down with enough velocity to break your legs if you didn't move out of the way. Oh how we laughed at such japes! 

When rolled into the racking cellar the barrels were stood on end and pills and a preservative liquid were dropped inside through the hole where the tap or beer line were to be inserted at the pub. A bung was then knocked in the hole to stop beer coming out of the filled barrel. 

   The barrels were then stored ready for filling. In order to do this, the racker, a large copper cylinder, was connected by a pipe to which ever fermenting vessel was ready and the valve opened. The rackerman then began his job. The racker had two filling pipes connected to it which were used to fill the barrels, usually two at a time. The pipes had a petrol pump type fitting on the ends which were inserted in the casks, the lever on them forced down and the beer began to flow into the cask. 

   The racker had a sight glass in the form of a glass tube on the exterior so that the level of beer in the racker could be seen and then the rackerman would know  when the vessel needed to be changed as it was getting low. 

As the filling took place we could amuse ourselves watching cockroaches bobbing in the sight glass. 

Simple pleasures back in the days before we had emojis...

Many thanks to Nigel, and there'll be more from him in the next post.

Cheers and all the best to one and all.