Great Dunmow, Part 4

I have a great many memories around Great Dunmow and its vicinity. I worked in several places, so here are a few of them.

I worked here in the kitchen and serving food – so I felt that I needed to stay there this time too.

This looks awfully similar to the sink that I used to wash the kitchen implements in some 42 years ago…(and its in the same place)

The old Post Office. One of the more enjoyable student jobs was working Christmases at the Post Office – we tried our hands at doing mail rounds, collecting from Postboxes and sorting. The Post Office has now down-sized and moved down the High Street, and the sorting (and presumably delivery) has moved to Braintree

There is a large sugar beet factory missing from here – replaced by the housing estate of Flitch Green

A road in Flitch Green – n attempt has been made to mix styles in a modern development and to keep narrow roads; however in a settlement of 2000+ people, there is only one small store, and one junior school – not really a village, nor self-sustaining. The gardens are minute.

The sugar silos used to dominate the landscape around the factory – and in the “campaign” the smells from the factory would dominate the downwind area – some good, some bad.

This is a view of the lab where I worked as shift chemist for a campaign

The lab bench where we did the tests to see how the refining process was going. Results were written onto large sheets that the supervisors and foremen would consult in order to decide how to tweak production. The idea was to get whiter than white sugar with a consistent crystal size. The “white” part was challenging as the beet picked up a lot of colouration from the local clay soils.

Beet would spill off the input conveyors regularly

One of the by-products of sugar making was cattle food made from the left over fibre mixed with molasses. This was sold by weight, so there was a delicate balance between drying enough so that the pulp did not auto-combust, and drying too much so it was not as valuable. Needless-to-say another “product” of the factory were various unofficial hooch distilleries (as lab technicians we could access useful resources!). At Christmas, the product of one affected the production of the other – here is the fire brigade damping down the under-dried pulp pile….

The factory was hot, sweaty and noisy inside

One of my favourite pictures – my workmates in the gloom of the factory. My co-shift chemist, Dave, is on the right in his lab coat

Before I worked I was at school in Dunmow and Felsted. The former junior school has gone, but the latter is still there. I used to bicycle the 6 miles to school each day, until I boarded for a couple of terms.

Felsted Junior School – not in term time

A “before” picture, brother Guy with our Granny on the occasion of sister Jo’s christening, 1959

To finish off my visit to Dunmow, I paid a visit top the Doctors surgery. It is named after my father – quite an honour given the number of doctors that there have been in Dunmow. The senior practitioner, Dr Mike Tee, and a few of his staff were kind enough to give me a few minutes for a photograph outside.

The dedication to Dad inside the surgery

Distances riding around Dunmow: 28 km, running total 813 km. 232 m ascent, running total 9546 m. No new tubs recently.

2 thoughts on “Great Dunmow, Part 4”

Alan Watt says:

29th Feb 2020 at 10:11 pm

Hi Mark – have really enjoyed your tour of Dunmow, thank you so much for posting. I have been here since 1992, have seen huge changes even since then and indeed live on Flitch Green very close to where the silos would have been! Great to see and good luck!
Best wishes
Alan

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1. Mark on a bike says:
  
  1st Mar 2020 at 7:43 am
  
  Hi Alan, thank you for your comments. Flitch Green felt slightly unreal to me – very few community facilities etc, so I am glad to hear that it is real!
  Best wishes
  Mark
  
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