Page 17 - High Duty Alloys

High Duty Alloys Redditch Heritage

The Redditch site began life under the control of Pat Hammond who by December 1941
had moved on to Distington. By then the Windsor Road management team included R.P.
Key (General manager), Mr Dudgeon (Secretary), Dick Fraser (Works Manager), Gerry
Richards (Assistant Works Manager) and a Mr Coates (Personnel Manager). The Redditch
factory covered nearly 26 acres and by the end of November 1941 employed 1,553
people. The total eventually exceeded 2,500 and six day shift operation was utilised in
most areas. Sensibly the company had taken a lot of trouble to recruit skilled labour from
Wales, Scotland, Northern England and the Black Country before opening day. I
understand that 19 workers also moved to Redditch from the Slough factory.

Like many factories a great feeling of togetherness and tradition developed at High Duty
with employees clocking up long years of service and families supplying successive
generations to the workforce. Three families, the Higgitts (of which six members were
serving the forge in 1940), the Brownings and the Andrews were collectively called on the
shop floor HBA!

George Higgett started in 1939 and was followed by his sons Eric, Fred, George, Joe, Len,
Reg and Sam, and then several grandchildren. It is impossible to find names for all the
original employees, but the following started at Redditch either from the day of opening
or in early 1940:- Charley and Harry Andrews, Frank Round, Bill Hateley, Tony Moran, Bob
Thompson, Jack Massey, "Joe" Sergeant, Fred Norris, Tom Andrews, Peter Brough, Cyril
Clarke, Harry Mason, Joe Chance, Tom Batty, Alf Hughes, Horace Hughes, Albert Wilkes
and Tom Jones. Is anyone in here related to any of those folk?

In fact we have here today Joy Pearson who is the daughter of Reg Norris. She tells me
that during the war her father worked shifts of 2 weeks on days and then 2 weeks on
nights. In fact during the war there was continuous working – three eight-hour shifts
including weekends. Night work of course was tough from a sleeping point of view, and in
winter traveling under wartime conditions was at night very difficult. Reg Norris did have
a car but, because of the blackout to protect everyone from enemy air attack, he had to
drive on dipped head/side lights that really were not much good at all. It was easy to have
the occasional bump because often the driver just could not see.

The wartime experience for the local population involved shortages – food and heating
fuel, etc, and thick fog in winter (everyone had coal/wood fires and this was a feature not
just suffered by the big cities). In fact the fog could be so think that people would hold
white handkerchiefs in front of them to help others to see them.

And the Health and Safety Executive did not exist – I suspect workers today would have
had a field day picking up on the lack of safely in most factories in 1940. HDA had its share
of industrial accidents during the war – indeed Reg Norris’ brother Ronald died after
suffering an accident on the HDA shop floor.

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