Cyril is helping to keep aircraft's history alive

Cyril Plimmer loved working in a Wolverhampton aviation factory so much, he is still a part of it nearly 70 years on. Laura Blyth reports

He worked there for 46 years, but Cyril Plimmer could not bring himself to leave Wolverhampton's Boulton Paul factory.

And so, since his retirement more than two decades ago, the 81-year-old has continued to be involved with the factory he joined as a schoolboy in March 1942.

Mr Plimmer, of Bilbrook Road, started at Boulton Paul Aviation as an office boy straight out of the city's St Peter's Collegiate School at the age of only 14.

He worked his way up to senior hydraulics design engineer at the plant until he retired in 1988. He is now the chairman of the Boulton Paul Association, which was set up to preserve the long history of the aircraft manufactured at the Pendeford site.

By the time he retired at the age of 61 in 1988, Mr Plimmer was a senior design engineer at the factory. He helped to build the P111 Delta jet.

"I have so many happy memories from working at Boulton Paul," he said.

"After I retired I still did some part-time work at the factory before myself and a few other former employees decided to launch the Boulton Paul Association in 1991 to protect the heritage of the site."

The association then set up the Boulton Paul Aircraft Heritage Project, a museum dedicated to the manufacturer and aviation heritage of the Wolverhampton area.

Around 15 of the members go down to the factory twice a week to volunteer.

"From the age of about 10 I realised drawing and designing were the only things I wanted to do," said Mr Plimmer.

"I was an office boy for the draftsman and it was my first real job. I then did an engineering apprenticeship that lasted about five years from the age of 16. I was required to go round all the different departments in the factory and spend six weeks on each section learning what everyone did."

At the age of 20, Mr Plimmer went into the design office, and then became a junior draftsman the following year.

During the Second World War, the factory manufactured 25,000 turrets and more than 1,000 aircraft were used in the effort.

"The factory was one the largest companies in the area during the Second World War," said Mr Plimmer. "At one time there were at least 5,000 people working there.

"It was hard work and very intense. People worked their all their lives and you got to know them all."

The company even had its own sports ground in Fordhouses, where employees could play cricket, football and tennis.

"I used to play in the cricket team," the grandfather-of-two said. "I used to think I was the next great spin bowler although it never quite happened."

Now Mr Plimmer is interested in keeping the history of the site going and that is why he helped set up the association.

"The company has given us 20,000 square feet of space in the factory," he said. "I think at the moment we have about 120 members and some of them live as far away as America and Australia."

The association holds four open days a year at the factory. Visitors can look around an exhibition of the firm's history at the site on Wobaston Road.

The next open day is on August 16 and is a special occasion, according to Mr Plimmer, who lives with wife Doreen, 80. "It's a very special open day because we have ex-apprentices coming along for a reunion," he said. "Most of them left in the 1970s and are quite old so this could be the last reunion we hold.

"We are expecting about 50 or so apprentices along to the event. Some of them live in America and Australia so they are coming a long way." Boulton & Paul Ltd was a Norwich-based manufacturing firm that started life as an ironmonger's shop and was opened by William Moore in 1797. In 1914 the firm began to manufacture items for the war effort. In the 1920s and 30s orders were few and far between and the company sold its aircraft department. This became Boulton Paul Aircraft Ltd, and moved to a new factory in Pendeford in 1934. A training school was also set up in Cannock.