Fred Felton

I went to Acre Rigg Infants and Juniors, as did our two children. After that I went to Acre Rigg Secondary Modern, which is no longer there. Brian Little was in my year group, although not in the same class as me. He became a famous footballer. I played with him in the school team once. I only had the one game. Brian was incredible. I couldn’t believe how fast he was. No one on the opposing team could get close to him. He also played for East Durham Boys, which is where he was spotted by a scout for Aston Villa who he went on to play for.¹

I was in the Peterlee Emeralds in the early days. We used to have a double decker bus that we hired to take us to competitions. In the summer, this took us all over the North East most weekends. When I first joined the band, I was playing the gazoo, but then Ray Robinson taught me how to play the drums using a section of rubber conveyor belt that came from Horden pit.

The hats, believe it or not, were made from breakfast cereal packets. They would glue a few layers of cardboard together to form the tall round section, and then laminate the cardboard before cutting the peaks into shape and attaching them to the hat.

We had a lot of families like the Burrell’s and the Henry’s, who lived in and around the Royal Arms who joined the jazz band. It was a good discipline. You were taught to march to music, which was a big influence on me, because I joined the army in 1970 and was stationed in Germany.

My younger brother Kevin, who was also in the Emeralds, joined the army after me. Both of us were recruited by Paddy Fox. Paddy holds the record for recruiting two and a half thousand people from the East Durham area into the army and air force. He was recognised for this with the British Empire Medal. He became a very dear friend of our family, after my younger brother was blown up in Northern Ireland in 1976. Kevin survived the blast, though was given a medical discharge because of his severe injuries. For many years Paddy lived just a few doors down from us in Berkshire Road before he joined the Chelsea Pensioners in 2001 and moved down to London.

When I came out of the forces the army had a scheme which enabled me to retrain as a welder. At the time in the mid-1970s there was loads of work around for welders and fabricators, such as in the shipyards and companies manufacturing oil rig platforms. I did a lot of contracting work for companies in Sunderland and on Teesside, and even in Germany where I’d been stationed in the army. Then, when the opportunity came up, I got a job with Artix in Peterlee. This would have been sometime around 1990. It meant I could walk to work and back, rather than having to jump in the car like I’d had to do previously. You’ll probably know the company as Caterpillar, which makes dump trucks.

The company originally started out as Archer Components, then in the early 1970’s it became DJB, which are the initials of David John Brown. He designed the first articulated vehicle. A very clever man. Then Caterpillar bought the design rights and renamed the company Artix Ltd, before buying out the Brown family in 1996. The Caterpillar plant has expanded a lot over the years. They must now own something like 18 units on the North West Industrial Estate.

Soon after I started working at Artix, Jim Alderson pulled me to one side and asked me if I’d like to be his charge hand. A charge hand is basically a foreman on the factory floor. Having left school at 15 without any formal qualifications, I decided to do an Access Course at East Durham College, which led on to me becoming a section manager responsible for recruiting and training apprentices. One of the units I oversaw is the SWE (simulated work environment). It’s quite brilliant! People are tasked with building wooden trucks, with whole thing being set up to fail. The task is about working out where the problems lie and finding solutions to putting it right. As well as being used with our apprentices, other business also hired it for team building exercises. We even had Niall Quinn and the rest of the Sunderland team come in for the day.

In total worked for Artix/Caterpillar for 23 years, retiring when I turned 60. Not long before I was invited to Buckingham Palace at the invitation of Prince Andrew for the launch of the Apprenticeship Graduation Ceremonies. He’s not the only Royal I met in my time with Caterpillar. We also had the Countess of Wessex visit the factory to see our apprenticeship set up. After that I went to work part time at Middlesbrough College training local welders and fabricators.

When I was a kid, there was no industry in Peterlee except for the ‘rag trade’. Companies like Dewhirst, Jeremiah Ambler, Charnos, and Alexanders, which employed mostly women. My wife Janice worked for Dewhirst developing garments for Marks & Spencer’s. She was what they called a ‘sample hand’, so her job was to make the prototypes for new garments, be that a shirt, jacket, or pair of trousers.

My son Craig and I took part in the Peterlee Fun Run over several years in the late 1980s and early 90s. In the later years my daughter also took part with us. The course was family friendly, about 2 miles, starting and ending at Eden Lane playing field up near The Whitehouse. People were encouraged to run in fancy dress, hence the term “Fun Run”. In these photos taken in 1988, my son Craig and I are dressed in Noddy outfits. Looking at the photographs now, it looks like we took this part of it more seriously than most! Of course the serious side of it was about keeping fit and raising money for charities.

¹ Brian Little joined Aston Villa as an apprentice in 1969 and went on to make 302 senior appearances for the club, scoring 82 goals and collection League Cup Winners medals in 1975 and 1977 before his career was cut short due to injury in 1980. He went on to have a long and successful career in football management, including a spell as manager of Aston Villa.