Enfield Rolling Mills

 

This company, often called ERM for short, at Brimsdown on the Lee Valley in Enfield was my father’s biggest customer. Strangely in recent years, we have met, Ray Agnew, one of the people there that dealt with my father. I learned a lot about how my father worked to create sophisticated stationery for unusual applications.

I also worked there during three vacations from school in the electronics and instrument department. It was an interesting grounding for what I have done since. It is rather a pity that kids today don’t get the opportunity as easily as I did all those years ago, as all experience is valuable.

One of the jobs I did at ERM in the mid 1960s, was to investigate the detection of small ferrous inclusions in copper wire. This is important as inclusions damage wire drawing machines and also increase the electrical resistance. I was able to detect micro-gram particles with ease. It surprises me that with more modern techniques, we can’t do better than we do to detect knives and guns!

But then I got the job because my father phoned the excellent and much admired John Grimston and asked! So if you want something for yourself or your family a well structured approach can often get the right results.

This company as the name suggests rolled and formed copper, aluminium, bronze and other non-ferrous metals. To me it was an engineer’s paradise, as I used to walk around fitting instruments on to fearsome machines that squeezed and pressed hot and sometimes cold metal into any number of shapes. I can still see images in my mind of men catching hot copper wire in tongs and turning it on the wiremill. That was extremely skilful and highly dangerous.

Interestingly, that wiremill had been taken from Krupp as reparations after the First World War, to setup ERM. It still had the Krupp symbol of three interlocked railway tyres in the castings that held the rolls. The company logo for ERM was four interlocked rings, so they even took that as well!

But Enfield Rolling Mills was also part of one of my worst gaffs!

Their phone number was Howard 1255 or 1266. (I can’t actually remember which, but the story works both ways!) I was about thirteen and was setting some type for my father. I needed some 5’s so I borrowed them from the Enfield Rolling Mills letterhead that was always setup in a chaise ready for printing. I stupidly replaced them with 6’s. What I should have done was put the 6’s in upside down so the replacement was obvious.

Luckily they were spotted before the letterhead was used again. It was one of the few times my father ever seriously told me off.

I have always been pedantic and very careful since. Perhaps, that is why I have been such a good programmer.