A Biddulph man has shared his memories of an explosion at an engineering factory, regarded as the town’s “biggest post-war tragedy”.
Brian Newton, (83), who continued to work at the factory for the following 33 years, said he was 22 when a tank exploded at the Cowlishaw Walker engineering firm on 2nd September 1966.
Earlier this month, the “Chronicle” reported on the incident’s 60th anniversary and spoke to John Holland, (76), who was working as an apprentice engineer at the time.
As we reported, Mr Holland, of Mow Cop, had just turned 16 when a six-tonne tanker filled with liquid oxygen exploded at the site on Brown Lees Road.
He explained that he had just been sent out to the canteen to collect food for his team when the explosion happened.
He recalled: “There were big double doors that connected the boiler shop and the dress shop, and I was walking back from the canteen after getting food for everyone.
“It was just a blue flash, and you just felt a waft. That’s all I felt.”
After reading the article about the disaster in the “Chronicle”, Mr Newton, who was working as part of the firm’s design team, contacted us to say he remembered hearing a loud “bang” before he and his colleagues dived under their desks.
He said: “We didn’t know what had gone on. It was like a bomb went off.
“After the explosion, a man who lived in Congleton, Brian Ashworth, drove me down to Congleton to the company where my wife worked.”
He said the explosion could be heard for miles.
“The deputy managing director at the time, Nigel Pouter, sent out for tarp and sheets and we were in the houses opposite helping all we could – brushing glass from the broken windows.”
Mr Newton explained that many people were under the impression Cowlishaw Walker had closed in 1980, but it had changed its name and was taken over by a firm called Fletcher Sutcliffe Wild, which was based just outside Wakefield.
He added: “Four of us on the design team started working for them in Stoke as the company closed.”
Mr Newton said they then went to work at the then Stoke Polytechnic, now Stoke-on-Trent College.
“We worked on the Channel Tunnel for six years,” he recalled.
“I was working there until they moved everything over to Wakefield in 1988, so I was with them for 18 years.”
Mr Newton said he worked with Jeffery Gatepatch, John Brown and Reginald Heath for 33 years after starting together at Cowlishaw Walker.
He said it was design ideas by Mr Gatepatch, who died 11 years ago, that earned the business a £3 million order from an American company.
Mr Newton said until this year, some of the “old crowd” still met up every year for a get-together.
He said: “People are now hitting 90 years old, and it was too difficult to organise getting everyone together.”
