Life and Tales of a Locksmith

After being demobbed from the forces at the age of twenty-two, it was expected that the author would join his father to learn the Black Country Lock Trade. It seemed a good idea, as jobs were not plentiful at that time.

After working seventeen years in Wolverhampton and Wednesfield, he decided to make a new life in the countryside of Shropshire. Taking the lock work with him, he and his wife Ann restored two derelict cottages and he worked his trade from there for almost thirty years, making, by hand, high quality security bank door locks. He had an eventful career, packed with amusing incidents, troubleshooting in Britain and parts of the Empire. Living on the rural Shropshire/Staffordshire border, he recalls movingly the changes in country life, the farming ways, the rural habitat, feathered friends and the impact of change (including “Foot and Mouth”). In retirement in Gnosall, Staffordshire, he continues to be a colourful figure, campaigning for the maintenance of a flagship rural surgery.

This autobiography will be of considerable interest to those living in the Industrial Midlands (particularly the Black Country) and rural Staffordshire; to school children and students; and to local historians and general readers of the Midlands.