THE NEW PERSEVERANCE IRONWORKS

As an introduction to a description of our present facilities it may be of interest to note how we got here.

The Trust was founded to restore a Robey Tandem Steam roller which had resided for 20 years in a playground. On acquisition it was moved to a walled compound, part of the maintenance yard at Marjons College, Plymouth. During the summer, dismantling was done comfortably enough outdoors on Saturdays, but as winter approached, thought was given to erecting some sort of covered accommodation. Lying in the yard was a quantity of profiled (corrugated) roofing sheet, some slot-together staging (galvanised steel tubular frame) and some scaffolding. With this, a shelter was erected (with a roof but no sides) during the autumn. Unfortunately, January 1984 brought with it tremendous gales: on one such blustery night the whole shelter was demolished, most of the roofing sheets landed over the wall in a car park and the tubular steel lay in a mangled heap where it fell ... on the boiler. However, by then most components had been removed indoors so no damage was done.

College yard before	College yard after

For the next couple of years, with the boiler at Robeys in Lincoln, restoration of existing parts and the manufacture of missing ones proceeded apace.

The time then came when reassembly - at least of the chassis - ought to commence. After many enquiries the then owner of Tavistock Hire Centre, off Pixon Lane, offered us space in the workshop behind the shop counter, but only on Saturday mornings. Even so, in a clean, dry environment, the front roll (in 4 sections) the rear roll (without the 3 ½- ton weights, but made up of two solid end plates, the roll itself and the axle), the two girder frames and the complex front headstock casting, which had been shotblasted in the yard, were all painted and assembled. All sorts of brackets, the footplate and bunker were also added. After that, the new canopy had been completed but before we could put that on the Hire Centre asked us to move out because, due to the success of their business, they needed the room for expansion.

We knew the accommodation there was temporary, so in the meantime we had been given a quantity of large shed sections, 10 ft squares made of 4" x 4" timber with corrugated iron sheets nailed on, so heavy that they could only be lifted by a tractor front-loader, with roofing sheets, trusses and gable ends to match.

Fortunately, a local farmer, Mr. Bob Gilbert, offered us a corner of a field. Throughout the summer of 1985 (I think) the shed was erected - bolted together with 12" long bolts, all laboriously made. Unfortunately, the gales that winter were so severe - the same gales which uprooted trees all over the country - that partially erected shed was blown down with much damage to several parts of the structure.

Pitlands Farm	After the gales

Over the course of the following year the shattered wood frames were repaired and the shed re-erected, only to have the same thing happen all over again the following winter. Because there was only two of us - sometimes 3 - doing all the work we couldn't work fast enough in the summer season to erect it to a condition which could be strong enough to survive the winter weather, so we called it a day.

As luck would have it, WDBC purchased Abbey Garage, a large showroom with workshops under part of it, for the purpose of demolishing it to make way for a roundabout, part of the so-called Tavistock by-pass. However, as this wasn't to take place for a few years, permission was granted to occupy it. So, a large spacious garage accommodation housed the Tandem throughout most of its assembly phase, together with a growing quantity of other items acquired by the Trust. In the workshops below - one of which had been a tyre retailer, our traction engine was accommodated and the GWR 2-ton horse-drawn wagon was constructed. The rest of the place was so filthy and wet it was apparently a hide-out for dossers and teenage drinkers, so we barricaded ourselves in our part as best we could.

Abbey garage - internal	Abbey garage - external	Abbey garage

Again, time came to move. By now the Trust had staged a succession of successful Tavistock steam fairs and so we were in the good books of the Town Council. At the end of Market Road, in the town centre, was a plain, unassuming building (from the outside) which was called the Unigate building, one time used for storing milk, and it was, apparently, an abbatoir before that. Although very much smaller than Abbey Garage, and awkward to get into, plus the fact that the traction engine chimney had to be removed to get in and out, the place was secure and cheap at £1 per year rent (which was never asked for!). Again, more RT stock was stored here, including the Robey diesel (which arrived in bits) and the Portable.

However, we had been shunted from pillar to post, between rocks and hard places, it was difficult to envisage where our next move might be, let alone find a permanent home.

In 1994 two miraculous events happened. The National Lottery was invented and a piece of land was discovered which no-one laid claim to. For the latter, the site in question was a short (about 35 metres) length of railway line, part of the Plymouth-Tavistock-Launceston branch line just south of Tavistock South GWR station. The substantial fence around it indicated it belonged to the TAVRA - Territorial Army - who owned the adjacent barracks. An enquiry asking to purchase it elicited the response that it wasn't anything to do with them, but if I could prove it was, I could have it. To cut a long story short, BR Property Board confirmed the sale and so that little part of GWR history became ours ... but more of that, later.

The Lottery was in a different league altogether. I applied immediately: the application process was long, involved and complicated. It involved creating a case which the Heritage Lottery Fund would approve of: finding and briefing an architect who would work not knowing if any funding would be forthcoming; finding a builder conversant with industrial-type structures, and costing absolutely everything down to the last nut and bolt. That process was the longest, most time consuming story of all: it took a year of hard work, interviews, discussions and report-writing. Suffice it to say £85,000 was awarded in 1995, and building started. Good news at last, you might think, but disasters were but weeks away. Firstly, the architect became embroiled in a domestic fracas which turned his attentions away from his job of supervising the build and builder, and secondly, due to a heart attack the contractor employed whatever 'cowboys' he could lay his hands on to do as much of the build as possible to extract monies from the HLF via the Trust without paying any bills. It wasn't long before I called in our solicitor who closed the site by issuing a prohibition notice, engaged a 'proper' architect and took the contractor to court. We won £29,000 of which, after fees, we got £19,000. It is a scandalous indictment of English law that all this came from the architect and none from the contractor, as he had taken care to dispose of all his assets. Still, we ended up with a building which, looking back, saved the Trust from oblivion. The steelwork is really well done, the blockwork and roof are holding together better than expected. So, now settled into our own permanent home on our own ground, the Trust could - hopefully - look forward to a positive future.

The 'works' currently

I am pleased to say that, since 1996, all has indeed gone as well as expected. The collection has grown, the regular workforce has been as reliable as could be and we have striven - and I believe succeeded - in fulfilling our mission statement (Charity Deed) to everyone's satisfaction. Thus, in our 28 years of existence, the biggest single factor which has had, by a long way, the most significant impact on the fortunes of the Trust has been the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Well, so far, so good, so lets move on into the 21st Century.

For a few years now it has become apparent that the New Perseverance Ironworks (I believe, aptly named considering the first 15 years of our existence!) is getting somewhat overcrowded - a victim of our own success? - so Phase 2 was decided upon: an extension the full length of the building 6 metres wide, to house all the non-collection artefacts (tractor, trailers, stores items, etc.) thus freeing up the main auditorium for display, and for which planning and building regs. permissions have been obtained.

In for a penny, in for a pound, as they say: I asked the HLF if it was acceptable to try for a second bite of the cherry. We'd done so well with the first grant, they opined, they'd welcome a second application ... but, as the regulations had changed, they wouldn't fund a building, only (in our case) educational activities. So, our bare Phase 3 ideas were resurrected, as well as a radical overview of what we had achieved, what we were doing, what the next generation of youngsters might appreciate as useful as a legacy and what we ought to strive to achieve. The collection is largely complete; we just need to fill in a few gaps if we are able and lucky enough to do so, but what we have identified as a future necessity is to try to preserve the skills, technical knowledge and techniques of traditional, manual skills needed in restoration engineering. In essence, we need a proper engineering machine shop, a decent woodmachine shop and a welding/fabrication bay. This, then, will comprise the ground floor of a new, two-storey extension to the rear of the Works. Upstairs, a classroom/meeting room, and an archive storage facility was planned. This was put to the HLF and, after several meetings and an awful lot more detailed planning, our bid for the maximum grant of £50,000 under the "Your Heritage' scheme was accepted.

So, thanks, thanks and more thanks to the HLF; and in particular to Claire Hyne, our Project Officer: here we go again!

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