From Moorlands to Highlands: A History of Harris & Miners and Brian Harris Transport

Chapter Three

THE ACQUISITION OF BLUE WATERS IN BOVEY TRACEY - A NEW DEPOT IN POTTERY ROAD

The whole of the Bovey Basin is clay. It has been mined and extracted for centuries and is still exported all over the world. Clay is used in all sorts of industries as well as pottery and ceramics. Food manufacture and cosmetics to name but two. The potteries around Stoke-on-Trent were (and presumably still are) big users of china clay, which became a regular run for Harris & Miners. Much of the clay from English China Clays at Kingsteignton was transported by H.J.T. Transport (they closed in 2000 after 49 years trading) and Eggbeer's Transport did a lot (and do a lot) for Watts, Blake and Bearne clays. Harris & Miners always worked closely with these two hauliers and had an excellent working relationship with them. Eggbeer's are still very much in business.

The clay pits and mines in the area spawned a lot of local industry including many potteries. One of which was the Bovey Pottery where records show it was visited by Josiah Wedgewood in 1775. The industry was centered around Pottery Road where from about 1840 there were 16 kilns and over 250 workers. Bluewaters was the original clay pit supplying the pottery, and lignite was also extracted for the kilns. There were many underground mines for both clay and lignite from this pit and the site contained a building with a horizontal waterwheel for pumping water out of the mines. Cottages for pottery and mine workers were built in Pottery Road and a thriving community evolved. At one time it was the largest pottery in the Southwest, but by the 1940s it had all but ceased.

Bluewaters had long since flooded and the combination of clay and lignite deposits gave the water its blue colour, hence the name. This derelict site was bought by Jerry Harris and Sam Miners in 1957 to establish a transport depot for Harris & Miners for the life of the company. Sam still had the tobacconist shop in Ashburton where the drivers' wages were delivered each week for the men to collect. With the availability of raw materials and the wherewithal to shift them (from Zig Zag quarry), Jerry and Margaret had a new bungalow built in Widecombe-in-the-Moor. A site was found on the site of an old Army Nissen hut and building began in 1954. Brian and Margaret remain there to this day.

The facilities in that yard in the early days remained extremely basic (see the aerial photograph of 1968, some 11 years later), but things got done just the same. I have to say that over-investment on the yard was never a cause of cash flow problems! The original lorry workshop utilised the building under which was, (and is), sited the waterwheel. There were no doors and only half a lorry could be got undercover due to a lack of space, and Les Mann, who was still the fitter, had to cope with a dirt floor. At least he could now get out of the rain for half a lorry's length! After complaining about his lot the floor was eventually concreted. When the work was completed explicit instructions were given to keep lorries off the new surface for a day or two. That night a lorry was driven onto the new concrete and sank into it. The next day Les Mann left. Mick Whiteway was asked if he would "go in the workshop" and so started his many years looking after the fleet until he retired on 3rd October 1992.

Sam Miners, who was never a fit man, died in 1958 when only in his forties. Uncle Sam, as he was known to Brian, left a widow Daisy Miners and son John. John branched out on his own with a couple of Ford lorries and neither he nor his mother had anything to do with the day-to-day running of Harris & Miners, although they had a financial interest in the company and the land in Pottery Road. Jerry was now in charge and Brian joined his father having just left Ashburton Secondary School aged 15.

As has already been suggested there was never a great deal of money invested in the yard; to begin with there was not even a telephone on the site. Any communication with head office at Widecombe was done from a public telephone box a few hundred yards up the road at Thorns Cross! On one occasion Mick took the van they had at the time to the 'phone box to order some parts and walked back to the yard without it. The next time somebody wanted the van it was nowhere to be seen until a search found it sitting at Thorns Cross. In fact Mick Whiteway and Bill Baty had convinced themselves it had been stolen and it was only a visit to the 'phone box to report the theft to Jerry that revealed its whereabouts! In 1962, after 5 years of enduring the elements, the openings in the building were blocked up and a door installed in the gable end. Jerry had complained one day that there was a cold draught in the workshop to which Mick replied that it might be something to do with a lack of a door! Bill Baty was a keen enthusiast of American Jeeps and many spares he had accumulated lay buried beneath the workshop floor. The waterwheel is there somewhere but before it was buried Mick and Bill took the phosphor bronze bearings off it and sold them for scrap. The whole area is littered with mine shafts and the burial sites of various vehicles.

Bill Baty was the instigator of a telephone line being installed in the yard in about 1960. His job of running the traffic office without one meant several visits a day to the 'phone box to talk to Jerry at Widecombe, and to speak to the drivers all over the country! He got seriously fed-up with that system and took it on himself to have a line installed. "Bloody hell son", was the reaction from Jerry when he saw it, but he soon realised the benefits of a telephone in the yard and it was not long before a second line was installed. As a result the business kept on growing and the work both to and from Scotland as plentiful as ever. In fact, the traffic south from north of the border was so busy every week that getting lorries up there to cover the work was always a concern. Jerry had sometimes been in the habit of sending part-loaded lorries to Scotland just to get them there. Bill had other ideas and would fill up the Sunday shift lorries with multi-drops as the drivers had all day Sunday to get a good way north. Watching for the law became second nature to them as speed limits for lorries was still only 30 miles per hour and most towns had to be gone through. Jerry did not condone speeding and thought 45 miles per hour to be utterly reckless! "Go on steady my son" was his phrase, but of course great distances had to be covered just the same, as Scotland pre-motorway was a long way.

A job that Bill picked up was clay from Watts, Blake and Bearne to the Governcroft Pottery in Glasgow at £4 per ton. £40 for 10 tons which successfully undercut the railways. Even by 1960s prices, £40 to take 10 tons from Devon to Scotland was not dear. However, it got another lorry up there for the many customers Harris & Miners now had for loads coming south. By now a customer base had been established that remained loyal for the next forty years. India (Dunlop) tyres from Inchinnon to Southampton every week. Rayburn cookers to wholesalers in Devon and Cornwall, Allied Ironfounders of Falkirk, Gourock Rope of Port Glasgow, Tullis Russel Paper of Markinch in Fife, Smith Anderson of Lesley in Fife, Munro of Aberdeen, Ridgeways of Dundee, McKinnon of Kilmarnock, Smith's of Darvel, G.R. Stein, and Caperboard to name just a few.

Brian started on long distance for his father in 1960 aged 17 with an Albion Chieftain which was just under 3 tons unladen, the maximum weight that was permissible to drive before being 21. UTT 601 was new in 1956. Two Thames Traders followed that lorry; 363 GTT was the first one, which was also got down to below 3 tons unladen. In 1963, when he reached 21 the second, heavier Trader was bought. Also, in 1960, the first ERF ever to appear on the Harris & Miners fleet was bought new. 373 FOD came complete from Sandbach and Mick Whiteway was sent to the ERF works in the town to fetch it. He took a brown envelope with him from Jerry containing the payment for the lorry and while it was out on test he was given a meal. On leaving for Devon he was given 10/- for something to eat on the way back. This 5LW Gardner powered 4-wheeler had a Boalloy cab and a gross weight of 14 tons. Dick Barrs drove it for twenty years until they were both pensioned off. Ted Butt started with the company when this lorry was new and drove it for a while in its later life, and so did I.

Mick Whiteway became the longest serving employee (he started in June 1948) when Bill Baty left in 1965, (he had started in 1946). Brian had been driving for a few years now on regular runs to Stoke-on-Trent and Scotland. In those days of trunk roads Stoke-on-Trent was a good 8 hours driving time if all went well. A second hard days work would achieve Blackwood, 20 miles south of Glasgow, and deliveries would start on the third day. The following three days getting back to Devon made a tough, six-day week. The lorry then had to be unloaded and loaded again, which left very little time off before going back "up the road". However, Brian was taking more interest in running the business and Bill decided it was time to move on. He applied for a 'B' Licence to start up with a lorry of his own which was rigorously opposed to by practically all the hauliers in the area, (not though, by Jerry or Brian), including Rich's of Crediton who ceased trading many years ago. After a court appearance the licence was granted and Bill bought a new Commer tipper from Moyles of Paignton for lime spreading.

567 PTA, Tom Pearce, photographed in Carlisle on the 16th March 1966. A 1963 AEC artic and drop-side 4...