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.