Scrapyard Memories

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mercrocker
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Scrapyard Memories

Post by mercrocker »

As I have poked my mental iCloud for some references in other threads, I may as well empty it a little more and maybe provoke some more memories of my own as well as others on here.

Scrapyards have always had massive appeal to me from a very early age when it first entered my primary school consciousness that cars didn't last forever and that the shiny Spruce Green Consul Cortina three doors down would be in the Big Boneyard before I got up to Big School.

Our local yard was that of R.J. (Robbie) Sillence. Robbie was a local lad, went to school with my mum and his own mum had a chippy in the main drag of our village. A patch of land between the New Forest and a landfill site became home to Sillence's Yard, possibly it was there before that but I am not that bloody old.

Part of the land was variously sub-divided, there was a geezer specialising in Volkswagens (then purely a rear-engined aircooled device) and another guy who mucked about with Jags. Like all proper scrappies there was kind of a system involving Weighbridge, Sales Caravan, Pile and Parts Yard.

Cars would come in via the main gate, be weighed and paid and then sit on a concrete apron pending decisions. Normal routine was see if it runs, can it legitmately or otherwise obtain an MOT and be sold on the forecourt opposite or as was usually the case be parked in a row of similar cars and gradually picked clean. New or new-looking parts (or tyres) came off before that though and went in the parts store, crudely labelled. Many cars came in after an MOT disaster prior to which new bits were often added in a vain attempt to woo the tester into a pass so there were always plenty of those.

100Es, BMC stuff and Victors etc. would last longest in the back field as the parts turnover was pretty good on them. It was a pull-it-yourself operation back then as most yards were. Most folk lobbed a few bits over the fence into the lane behind and only paid for half what they took but it was still pretty lucrative for Robbie. Eventually the shell would be dragged up to the pile where an ancient lattice crane hoisted it to wherever there was room. Every few days a Thames Trader or similar backed down the hill and picked up a few flattened cars - the crane lifting up a 3 ton weight which looked like a load of ship plates laminated with rivets and dropping it on the car until it was squashed enough to sit reasonably flat on the lorry.

I'll fill in some more later and maybe find a picture or two (don't hold your breath on that!) but in the meantime feel free to blather on.....
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Re: Scrapyard Memories

Post by Hooli »

One place I lived had a scrapyard next door, I spent hours on the flat roof at the back of the house watching stuff. I didn't get over there much as I was always spotted and my parents got told.
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Re: Scrapyard Memories

Post by paulplom »

I spent every weekend in a scrapyard once I learned to drive. I used to love just walking around them popping boots and looking for trinkets. Very happy days. I was at one about six years ago getting some new rear seats for our 2005 seven seat scenic. Motorhog iirc. Everything was concrete floors and proper racking with the cars on. Zero danger or excitement. I still filled my pockets with bulbs and fuses though.
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Re: Scrapyard Memories

Post by mercrocker »

I have no pics to hand (somewhere in an old album are some of an ex-girlfriend of mine alongside, I think a Corsair, when we were getting bits for a mate's Zodiac banger. However, Robbie was amongst other things a manager for local bands including Tex Roberg, a Southampton-domiciled South African with some (to me) fairly impressive early 1960s rocking heritage. Tex's first LP cover included a couple of shots of the yard so I have chucked them on - you can see the crane I referred to in one of them.....

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I do have some later shots towards the end of the yard's existence, I'll put them on when I find them! And yes, he did look like a Poundland Burt Reynolds....
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Re: Scrapyard Memories

Post by bub2006 »

Most scrapyard near me have gone now like caunts in Sutton in Ashfield, another on birchwood Lane,south Normanton and countless little ones in derby.
Albert Looms in Derby is still going,rather big and pick your own parts too which is useful as many of their staff can't because to help and this is usually my go to place. There's also podders near Calverton,Vale Road Mansfield and Ray's of Rainworth.
Podders is rather small,Vale Road you can't go into,just have to hope that the guy on the gate is feeling helpful as its usually sorry we haven't got that car in even though you can see 2 cars behind him in the yard. Rainworth Ray is a character. You ring to ask him if he has such a car in,he always says I don't know come and look. Now his yard never really has more than 15 to 20 cars in and 5 members of staff sat in the garage doing fuck all which is an annoyance ad he usually hasn't got said car un the yard. Wouldn't take 10 seconds to poke head out of door and look in yard.
Caunts in Sutton was my dad's old haunt when I was a kid. He had a long padded wax jacket with numerous pockets sewn inside of it. He once managed to remove a dash cluster,wing mirror and gearbox from a cortina and only paid for the box and that was because it wouldn't fit in any of his pockets.
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Re: Scrapyard Memories

Post by mercrocker »

I'll return to Robbie's a little later in the thread but in the meantime here is a pic of another fairly local-ish yard - Tommy Holden's in Southampton, on the banks of the River Itchen.

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Everybody in town of a certain age has a Tommy Holden story. Like many a scrappy, he could be a funny bugger. I turned up once in my works van with four trailer landing legs cut off some 40ft skellies that were being scrapped, along with some other juicy sections. The van was on its arse so I was glad to get across to the weighbridge. Before I actually pulled on he stopped me, opened up the back door and said "I don't want yer rubbish".

There was another yard across the river - they were happy to give me eight quid or whatever it was.

He also wasn't interested in breaking up old stuff for parts - you could get something off him before he burned it but he wasn't keen. His family were minted once the yard was cleared and flats built on it sometime at the beginning of this century.....

I seem to remember the barges were there to prevent cars falling in the drink, which used to incur the wrath of the Council and the river authorities.
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Re: Scrapyard Memories

Post by mercrocker »

So, what was I doing in scrapyards as a 11 year old kid? Just feeding my interests, really. Older cars always fascinated me because I liked to compare them with the newer more currently seen models. If a friend of my Dad's ever mentioned having to go there I would cadge a ride and go in with them.

Robbie's was a fairly large yard in a reasonably affluent area and so turnover was fairly slow and when metal prices were up the front of the compound (nearest the pile) was cleared first. Therefore the back row or two were generally about 15-25 years old and at the time of my first visits would include RM Rileys, Ford Pilots, Sunbeam Talbots and the like. Cars were never stacked until they were done with - the pile would be worked through according to metal prices. It was sometimes quite sobering to see something perched on top of the pile that was running round the village a matter of weeks ago - I remember one fella from the caravan site who had a pale yellow Consul Mk2 convertible that looked lovely with all sorts of added accessory shop tat. It looked like a bloody scooter but I liked it. One day there it was - top of the tree with its sills hanging out and the fabric top shredded by the crane gear.

If you picked the right day and right gate-man you would often be allowed in and tolerated - even to the extent of being permitted to remove plastic insignia and badges. I soon found out they expected metal ones to be paid for so I used to trouser those. Some of these trophies are still in my shed and house but a lot of them got given to folks who needed them for a car....Somebody upset the owner one day taking his kid in there, don't know how but that was when all the "Bugger off" and chucking wheelnuts started.

As a working scrapper, the yard would also have a pile of washing machines, cookers and so on as well as more exotic things like trolleybuses (I never saw how they got there) and machinery from local farms etc. For a while, it actually housed one of the Trans-Antarctic Tucker Sno-Cats from the Fuchs expedition that Beaulieu decided they no longer required, although I'm pleased to say that now lives at Wroughton. Sheds round the back contained a few gems that the yard owner kept for himself - there were a couple of 1930s Cadillacs in there at one time.

Being an eagle-eyed car spotter I soon learned how and where cars rotted out - it was nothing unusual to see an eight or nine year old car in there suffering nothing but terminal termites and also showed the damage that the weather can do to cars even with so much as a quarter light missing or broken. I learned how to get emblems off without them breaking and also to be careful with those mutant stinging nettle plants that grew out of discarded wheels.
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Re: Scrapyard Memories

Post by Jerzy Woking »

One of our little gang was the son of scrapper Arthur Clarke, and lived in the big house behind our estate. Their garden was huge and always had interesting stuff in, such as traction engines and huge fairground organs. There were often the better cars that his dad didn't want to scrap from his scrapyard near Dunmow. We used to ride there on our bikes and nick bits from some of the piles of parts. I still had the A35 indicator switch and speedo I got in about 1970 up until a few years ago.

This scrapyard was opposite a banger racing track, so he sold many cars to the racers, as well as taking the destroyed cars. He eventually built a large bungalow where the banger track was, and the scrapyard is still there, but doesn't break cars, just recycles metals now.

There are dozens of scrap yards near me now, but only one that allows you to strip bits yourself (thanks to wingz123 on AS telling me where it is).
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Re: Scrapyard Memories

Post by Missy Charm »

Wonderful memories, thank you all for recounting them. I've nothing at all useful to say on the subject of scrapyards, but shall continue to read.
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Re: Scrapyard Memories

Post by mercrocker »

OK if you are a bit squeamish, skip to the next post!

One night outside the local chip shop (no it wasn't in Walthamstow, neither did Elvis work there) us lads were sharing a bag of properly hot, fat-fried potatoes. There was an Esso tanker drawn up on the main road as he obviously didn't want to come in and block the service road which ran parallel to it and was expressly put there to access the shops. Anyway, there is this enormous BANG and the artic visibly shuddered as a fairly new Herald 13/60 impaled itself up the back of it. This was pre-under run regs so you can imagine the mess a folding Triumph could make.

A girl ran to the car, screamed and fainted. Two fellas came charging out of the chippy - one was the tanker driver - and immediately shouted for an ambulance. I made one of the calls in the phonebox on the corner but somebody else had done it from the chippy first. Despite the appalling carnage the injuries were not life-threatening although both were carted off in the Bedford CF, there being very little stabilising done at the scene in those days.

Next day the Herald is in the scrappy - no sheet over it, just plonked inside the gate and the young fella's Dad has brought him up to survey the wreckage. There was blood all over the tan seats and it did look really bad. Dad shakes his head "That was never, 30mph, son, you're lucky she isn't dead...."

It was actually a 40 on the main road, 30 in the service, and although I don't believe he was speeding, there's no way he couldn't have seen the tanker unless he wasn't paying attention. Just a snapshot of how things were back in the early 70s.....
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