Re: Blythe Chemicals Works
 

LTD was at Caddishead, I loaded tankers there in the 70's with Napthalene for ICI.
Napthalene must have been a by product of the coal tar which was brought in by other tankers.

My wife's uncle worked at Blythe's for years, Herbert Tregurtha was his name.
I delivered sulphuric acid there many times.

Re: Blythe Chemicals Works
 

Herbert was n Arsenic man, sadly died soon after retirement.;) lived thwaites rd area.

Re: Blythe Chemicals Works
 

A Herbert Tregurtha served in the East Lancs in WW1, he lived in Brook St Ossy, had 3 brothers in the forces Fred, John & Reginald.

Retlaw

Re: Blythe Chemicals Works
 

A mate of mine who did loads of contract work years ago at Blythe's as just bean diagnosed with asbestosis

Re: Blythe Chemicals Works
 

He doesn't sound like the same chap Walter, my wife's dad was Anthony, his brothers were Roland and Herbert, his sister was Dorothy.

I believe Anthony was a DR in the army, we have a photo of him in uniform somewhere. I will look it up.

Re: Blythe Chemicals Works
 

Are memories really made of this? Pouring bags of coarse zink dust into huge vats of acid to make zinc chloride. Getting bored one night and putting pure zinc dust in and the whole lot frothing up and running down the yard and little Clarence in his white overall running up to see what was going on.
An amazing place where the Union of the Politically Correct had never set foot. You start on Monday, "There are some bags of chemicals, put them in that hopper and press that button to set it in motion. I'll come and see how you are doing in half an hour," says the foreman. They never once tried to tell me how to lift up a box.
Then there were 'The Pots'. Like something from Dickens, the demonic side of the industrial revolution, a dark, dusty, hot as hell little piece of the inferno where some Asians and a huge completely silent man said to be escaping the draft for the Vietnam War boiled up the zinc chloride liquid until it was as thick as syrup. Later you would see them using giant sized ladles to pour the boiling liquid into huge trays where it set hard and white (or sometimes pink which was I think no good). Later on they would set about the trays with sledge hammers.
Dark Satanic Mills without a doubt. One lovely old boy I met there retired and within a few months he was dead. They said that the men in the arsenic plant had to take arsenic pills when they went on holiday, there bodies were so used to the poison they would be ill without it.:(