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After approximately 20 years of appealing for former Coronet factory workers to come forward and allow me to interview them, I finally had an email from Paul Spencer who joined Coronet as an apprentice fitter. Understandably there would not be many employees left around from a company that closed in the 1980s so I was very pleased when Paul got in touch and agreed to be interviewed. I sent him a list of questions and he very kindly answered them all candidly. Both questions and answers are reproduced below along with some personal reminiscences.

Q1.  How did you end up working for the Coronet Tool Co?  Did you do an apprenticeship there or transfer from an engineering background?

A: I left school at the age of 15 and started work at the Coronet Tool Company as an apprentice fitter in 1962.

Q2.  Did you live nearby to the factory?

A: The original factory was in Chester Green, Derby in two separate buildings. The main factory was the machine shop. The fitting or assembly shop was in another building that backed onto the River Derwent. When you opened the door in the morning the floor was awash with rats that disappeared down numerous holes

Q3.  What was or what were your role(s)?

A: I was an apprentice fitter

Q4.  Did you enjoy your time there specifically or was it more like just a run of the mill job?

A: Roy Clarke was my boss, he was very strict but Roy for the most part was okay. He was an ex army boxer. It was very cold in that building in winter, I was new to work at that time so enjoyment never came into it.

Q5.  Were employees encouraged to be multi-skilled or did the trades/departments stick to their own roles?

A: There was never any discussion about changing roles. I never even thought about that. People started out in life back then and you spent your life doing what you were trained to do.

Q6.  Did you meet the founder Charles Parker and if so what were your impressions of him as a boss and person?

A: No, Charles Parker had already passed away. Mrs Parker was in charge. Her three sons, Chris, Don and Doug, were directors. Chris was the office director, Doug was the works Director, and Don ran a one man aluminium foundry. He was a very private man apparently he was a judo expert and once threw Chris right across the yard when they got into an argument.

Q7.  Did he visit the shop floor and engage with the workers or was he a more aloof style boss of the 1950s/60s? A: I never knew Charles. Mrs Parker could be a demon. I got along okay with Chris and Doug, Don rarely spoke to anyone.

Q8.  What was your own opinion of the machines?

A: After about a year we moved to a new factory in Alfreton Road, so further to travel to work. I often walked to work and home again. They had a lot of metal turning lathes and milling machine. They were well set up for a small company. When I started there, they probably employed 40 people maybe less, can’t be certain of the number. I can only remember about six of us in the fitting shop. But when we moved to Alfreton Road, there were about 130 employees when I left.

Q9.  Did you have any idea that the brands popularity would continue long after its demise?  Or was there a sense that these really were top quality machines with a global popularity?

A: Their order books were full so business must have been pretty good. They had a wood turning demonstrator who used to go to industrial events demonstrating. He made beautiful wooden bowls. I think their equipment was very popular. A great many years later, whilst living down South I went to the Weald and Downland Museum in West Sussex and a man was using a Coronet Major lathe.

Q10.  Did you own a machine for your own use, did you have woodworking or turning as a hobby or interest? 

A: Not at the time, I only earned £1.15s.0d (£1.75p in decimal money) a week and I wasn’t allowed to open my wage packet, I had to give it to my mother. So a lathe was far beyond my wildest dreams, but I would have loved one. About five years ago, I was in a financial position enabling me to take up woodwork as a hobby, I probably have one of the best woodworking areas in the whole of Hampshire. Large lathe, large bandsaw, scrollsaw, router table, radial arm saw, planer/thicknesser, planer. Many hand tools etc.. Great hobby, but not my only one.

Q11.  The machines were expensive in their day, did employees get a staff discount in order to help them buy their own? 

A: No, not that I am aware. But one employee helped himself to the entire range. A minor Lathe, with a saw table, planer/thicknesser, mortice and tenon attachment and all the ancillary items like woodscrew chucks etc. He had a motorbike and sidecar. Not sure you should print that though.

Q12.  If you did not own one but were interested, what would your ideal setup have been.  Major, Minor etc? 

A: There was a Minorette, they were the ones that Dave Ormston and I did a deal with Doug for and filled the factory up with them, I would have liked a Minor, nice size. The Major was rather large and heavy

Q13.  Could you see the demise of the brand coming in the 1980s?

A: I left Derby in 1967 and moved to Portsmouth, so I had no idea they had closed down. I don’t know if the brothers were married, I never saw any wives. If there were no children to continue with the business. Mrs Parker would probably have passed away by the 1980’s and Chris, Don and Doug would have been approaching retirement age.

Q14.  In your opinion what was the cause of its downfall.  Too expensive to produce?  Influx of cheap (and largely inferior) imports?  Perhaps lack of foresight by management?  Or even the advent of television replacing traditional hobbies?

A: Woodturning will never die out, it is a marvellous hobby. As for the demise of the company, that may have been due to a number of factors. But the article I read, where Dave and myself were mentioned, the company had been either sold off or taken over. If Chris, Don and Doug had retired then maybe they sold the Company. Another factor could have been joining the Common Market and complying with all their rules and regulation, perhaps the cost of iron and steel had increased. Thousands of manufacturing companies went to the wall during the 40 years in the EU. I think whilst it was owned by the Parker family it was successful. After it was sold off, I have no idea. Japanese goods replaced many British goods, produced cheaper and often back then, better quality. Now it is the Chinese doing the same thing.

Q15.  Did you approve of the rebranding from maroon and Post Office Red to that blue colour?  Personally I didn't but maybe there was some reasoning you know about.

A: That probably happened after the company was sold off. I only ever saw them in the original colours.

Reminiscences. (Some of these have been previously published elsewhere)

I can’t say I enjoyed the job particularly. I left after a couple of years and went to Aitons, a massive pipeworks company as a wages clerk. I have had a very varied career throughout my life. I would have liked to have been an engineer but my knowledge of Algebra let me down. We never learnt it and at the time I couldn’t understand it anyway. I remember an occasion at the factory when a milling machine had been set up. The operator set up the machine and a setter checked the machine. But something went wrong. The machine was fitted with a large disk and a number of blades were bolted into the disk. The machine ran at a few thousand rpm, very fast and as it started up a blade flew across the room. Doug was standing at a grinding machine and this blade went past his ear and through a plate glass window. Doug was lucky to be alive, it would probably have gone right through his head. He did about three laps of the factory floor as he was in shock. Doug was a nice guy but always scrounging cigarettes off of us and if you asked him for a cigarette, he moaned like hell.

When we moved into the new factory it had one boiler type heater at one end of the factory. In winter it was freezing. When we moved to Alfreton Road, everyone was told they had to join the engineering Union and it became a closed shop. The shop demanded something should be done about the heating and they had to install a decent heating system that cost quite a lot of money. The Unions claimed we weren’t being paid the statutory wage agreed by the Union with engineering companies so the shop steward insisted we had a pay rise. The company refused, so we went on strike. A few weeks later there was a national engineering agreement and another pay rise. Again the company refused to pay it and the shop steward Mick Trotman threatened to take everyone out. They paid up. The government gave the entire nation a pay rise and again the company refused then ultimately backed down. It was a tremendously expensive year for Coronet Tool Company and amazing they didn’t crash.

I remember one occasion when Mick Trotman was driving an open backed lorry and we were in the back clinging on as best we could. He was going down an ice covered road and hitting the brakes causing the lorry to swerve on the ice. He was obviously a good driver but it was pretty frightening for us in the back. Life in the 1950s and 60s!

Derby was very industrialised back then with firms such as Carriage and Wagon, Rolls Royce, British Combustion, Celanese and hundreds of other engineering companies.  I remember that tractors with large storage units would arrive at about 5 o’clock and the days lathe production was loaded into the trailers. The tractors went to hundreds of companies  all over Derby collecting goods. There was a massive railway goods yard at Chester Green and goods went from there all over the country overnight. How Dr.Beeching could claim the railways didn’t pay was just nonsense. They must have made hundreds of thousands every night but the profits went back to the government and not re-invested in British rail. Sorry about the politics, but that was life back then. I could leave my job Friday evening and start a new job Monday morning. There was work for everyone. We had a Jamaican lad, Clarence, who worked as a fitter. He had never seen snow before and the first winter he got so excited and he finished up with hot aches. There was a lot of racism towards Jamaican people, but I found them to be lovely. Very Westernised and such happy people, they integrated well. Years later I worked on the buses and the Jamaicans were again very well liked. This was life in the 1950s and 60s.

Pete Site Admin: Thank you very much Paul for sharing your memories and personal insight into the Coronet Tool Company and life in general in the industrial world of the mid 20th century. I really appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions and to provide a great addition to the website.