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Being an apprentice carpenter in the 1980's
- oxoncarpenter
- Aug 3
- 8 min read
Updated: Aug 4
Life as an apprentice carpenter in the 1980’s
I always wanted to be a carpenter – well, did I?
To be honest I really cannot remember, perhaps I was brought up to be a carpenter, it was in my genes and my family eased me in that direction. If you are encouraged to follow a trade I think that you discover an aptitude for it, my father built his own house in the early 1970’s and growing up as it was being finished, I was the one sent to get the number three plane and the four inch screws from the garage. My dad trained in cabinet making at Rycotewood Collage in Thame, which was run by Oxfordshire County Council and founded in 1938. Unfortunately, after the war there was not much call for cabinet makers so he went into the electrical trade taking an apprenticeship with a company called Glendals who I can remember having a shop in East St Helen Street, Abingdon (it could be West St Helen Street, I never have known which was which). He went on to have his own mechanical and electrical business.
My paternal great grand parents lived in Dorset at Portland Bill, the main employment on the Bill was stone masons and carpenters, strangely a lot of my ancestors from that period were French Polishers, a skill I have yet to master. My great grandfather joined the army to serve in the Boar war; on his return he joined the prison service as what was then called a warder. By 1911 he had been stationed in Oxford prison, and he was living with his family in Boulter Street, Oxford where coincidentally I was working a week before writing this blog.
So, that’s me, why I wanted to be a carpenter and how I ended up near Oxford.
I must admit that I am not one of life’s scholars, if a subject didn’t interest me at school, it just didn’t interest me. I did though enjoy history, technical drawing, and of course making things both in wood and metal. Sadly, the quality of teachers teaching Craft Design Technology (the closest subject to woodwork available) was less than ideal or interested but in their defense we were a class of 35 all at the same time trying to use the milling machines and laiths to make our hot air engines – we were not allowed to make steam engines due to the boiler regulations, you can imagine how many eyes would be lost.
I ended up taking ‘O’ levels in economics, history and what was then computer studies, these subjects baffled my employer to be at my apprenticeship interview, “are you sure that you want to be a carpenter?”
I wrote a few letters to local building companies asking for apprenticeships in the months running up to leaving school to no avail. Then one day all those at school interested in the building industry were mustered to one of the lecture theatres for a chat by a man from The Construction Industry Training Board (CITB). He explained how cold it could be, how wet it could be and how dangerous it then was – the industry was suffering a death every day on average in the early 1980’s.
I put my name down for a carpentry apprenticeship with a second choice of electrician. What surprised me was that I had to take a test for colour blindness, there again, confusing different coloured wires could cause problems for a Sparks!
I finished my exams, finished school and went fishing. Within a week I had a letter from a local building business inviting me for an interview. Barretts builders of Abingdon, they sometimes worked for my father’s firm and vice versa. So, one Tuesday afternoon in May my mum gave me a lift to their office and in my best formal jacket and nearly matching trousers I took my first steps into the grown-up world of work.
Mr. Barrett took a quick look at my folder of my school work which included a veneered hanging clock and that hot air engine, he asked if I really wanted to be a carpenter and did I have transport to Abingdon, I said yes, he said can you start on Monday?
On reflection I really did want to be a carpenter, I liked being outside, I knew that I would be at least quite good at it and I had been on building sites in the past helping my dad, there was always a good camaraderie, I must admit that I have only ever seen bullying once on a building site – lots of ribbing and taking the Mick but bullying only once.
Getting back into my mum’s car I realized that my transport to Abingdon, a six mile each way trip was my push bike – well, it would keep me fit, because you do need more exercise at 16 after working outside on a building site for 8 ½ hours in November.
This was 1984 and at the time all apprenticeships were under the Youth Training Scheme (YTS), a scheme brought in by the Conservative government to replace The Youth Opportunities Program (YOP) which had received bad press for abusing employment rights etc. The YTS paid us £25.00 a week, which is equivalent to circa £100.00 now with no cost to the “employer”, unless you worked for Oxford City Council who paid their apprentice’s £10.00 a week more – well, it was not their money was it?
Our real employer was Her Majesty’s Government and as such they had to supply our Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) which in reality was a hard hat and a pair of safety boots but most importantly they supplied a tool kit. From memory the tool kit was heavily subsidized, it was charged to us at around £80.00 and could be paid overtime from our wages. Very kindly my grandfather paid for mine.
Mr. Barrett (everyone else called him Tim but it didn’t sit well with me) took on three under the YTS, two carpenters and a bricklayer. The bricklayer did not last too long as he had to spend time with the Queen after a bungled Post Office robbery.
Throughout the first year we attended Oxford Collage of Further Education for both practical and theoretical learning, the course was The City & Guilds Carpentry and Joinery. This was on block release of four to six weeks and a God send if the block fell in the middle of winter and took you away from a freezing runway or roofing job.
On my first day at work, I was picked up at 7.30 in Abingdon and taken to a job in Banbury Road, Oxford, it was a large house that was being converted into offices. The carpenter in charge was 6’4” somewhat abrupt a mega hard worker and super-fast, he scared me. We became friends, looking back he was a fantastic teacher, he was patient and kind. 41 years later we are still in touch, and we had a chat on the phone a few weeks ago. Thankyou Dave Moore.
I spent the summer working in The Banbury Road, cutting pieces of architrave too short or with the wrong angles on them. Around August Dave found miss cut lengths of architrave hidden in the cellar, no one seemed to know how they got there. Tim had a good bunch of workers, never a dull day.
Mid-September and it was time for college, by this time I was 17 and I had a motor bike; to be honest I spent more time falling off it than on it, but it saved me cycling to Oxford or walking to the local railway station to catch a train.
Our classes had around 18 of us in each and we were taught bench joinery and site carpentry; joinery is the making of wooden items – doors windows etc. and carpentry is fitting them and cutting roofs etc. We started with the basics in joinery, sharpening tools and trying to make timber square by hand. In carpentry we pitched (made) basic roofs with the soffit details etc. The theoretical teaching was technical drawings of what we were making and calcs lessons – working out the hip and seat cuts of a 38’ hipped roof for instance, this could be a head scratcher to begin with, but our teachers were all carpenters, they knew how to teach us. As I have said before, I was no scholar but I must admit that I was surprised with the lack of basic maths of some of my colleagues.
After the first block release it was back to work and the first year flew past. The YTS was only for a year and after this Mr. Barrett had the choice whether to keep us on offering a full apprenticeship or not, he kept both of us carpenters on for a 3 ½ year apprenticeship. The first City and Guilds exam was over two years which covered practical and theoretical work. I then did the C&G Advanced Craft in Site Practice which covered concrete shuttering, advanced roofing etc.
Barretts was a relatively small company, and we never traveled too far for work. Being
small the work was very varied, I worked at JET in Culham, many restaurants in Oxford, listed buildings in Abingdon – The Lion pub for instance which if it was still an inn would be a very good contender to be the oldest in the country dating from the 15th century. We built a hostel in Farringdon and carried out maintenance to most of the buildings in Abingdon’s High Street.
A month before my apprentice finished, I had to sit a practical Skills Test in Slough. This was in the form of a steel frame which we had to fit a front door to, fix skirting boards and a roof, all to exacting standards within 8 hours, if you failed this you did not become a carpenter. I passed.
On finishing my apprenticeship, I was made up to a trainee site agent – better money but more importantly for me back to collage for a City and Guilds Site Foreman’s course, Wednesday afternoons and evenings until 9pm for a year. Mr. Barrett not only paid for the course he also paid me for the afternoon when I was at college, you can’t ask for more than that.
I did enjoy that course, we covered Health and Safety, Site Management, Surveying, etc etc. On finishing I was still keen to learn more. The Construction Industry Training Board offered a 3-year, one afternoon and two evenings course in Site Management. Mr. B said yes, he would pay for me and my afternoon. The problem was you had to be 21 to start the course, I was 20 and 11 months, they knew me, and they let me take the course.
The CIOB course was in modules of three hours a week for 12 weeks with three modules running concurrently, they included subjects as “Managing sub-contractor’s”, “Managing Contractors” and “Health and Safety”. A massive advantage of the course was the fact that specialists were brought in to teach us, directors from Oxford’s building companies, and the Health and Safety teacher came down from North Wales once a week for three months, the pay must have been good.
I must admit that sitting in a warm classroom at 6.00pm after being on a cold building site all day did cause us problems trying to stay awake but from an initial class of 14, 12 of us finished the course.
So, that was it at the grand old age of 24 I had completed seven years at college.
Of course that was not the end of my carpentry and construction education, like any trade and profession you never stop learning and in my trade there are always new tools and techniques to research – some I must admit are style over substance and I believe modern tools could be taking some of the skill out of carpentry, but the first Bronze Age farmer who tied an axe to a tree branch was probably accused of the same.
Shortly after I finished the CIOB course Barretts went into receivership, a casualty of the early 1990’s recession. I saw Tim Barrett about a year ago, thank you for having confidence in me Tim even though I crashed the company lorry and fell through the ceiling into Browns restaurant in The Woodstock Road, Oxford at 10.30 one evening in May.
From being employed I was self-employed overnight; I had no idea what a learning curve that would be.
If you trained in the trades at a different time or in a different country I would love to hear of your experiences, please leave a comment.
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