The West Winford Incident

by John Parker

  Little lasting damage was sustained and the experience had the benefit of overcoming any reserve that either might have felt. After ordering drinks they settled and chatted comfortably. Pauline and her friend were thinking of seeing a film, though they hadn’t decided which. She asked Dave about the hotel food. He didn’t know but said that one of his colleagues recommended an Italian place just along the road. Pauline enjoyed Italian cuisine. Impulsively, Dave wondered if she would like to join him when he next stayed over. She accepted enthusiastically. They lingered over their drinks as Pauline had almost an hour to kill. They chatted about their respective home towns, of Birmingham and Chichester and their family backgrounds, the most interesting revelation being that Pauline was half Italian on her mother’s side. She thanked Dave for his company and the drink before leaving. After a shower, he sought out the local restaurant.

  He drove to Slough the following morning and met James, who was to be his escort, as Dorinda was in a meeting. She would join them for lunch. James gave him a tour of the labs. Dave was struck by the contrast between this laboratory and his own. Even though they both belonged to the Strategic Supplies Authority, this was so different. Here there was a proliferation of long hair, beards and pipes with, it seemed, sandals being de rigueur in the footwear department. The laboratories were free from the assorted plant items, chunks of metal and the general clutter that he was used to and an air of quiet unhurried calm pervaded.

  Eventually they arrived in the Surface Sciences laboratory, which was where corrosion related problems were confronted. In the microscope room a sample from the Winford disc was loaded in the microscope. This had been cut from the same disc section, which Dave had examined five months earlier. He was able to see for himself the features on the fracture surface of the failed disc that he’d heard about at the meeting. Dave could see the features, to which James had referred, but he did not feel that the significance Dorinda and her colleagues were attaching to them, could be justified with any confidence. He expressed his reservations. There were no hard feelings and, following lunch, Dave left.

  Back home he read on the message pad a reminder of the skittles match at eight. Sue, without any outward show of displeasure, prepared an early meal. It was with a great effort of will that she resisted the temptation to complain, though this further example of her husband’s insensitivity was mentally noted.

  The following day Dave told Ian that, during his visit, he had learned of two technical publications, which he wanted him to add to their regular reading list. Some weeks earlier, he had asked Ian to go through a selection of scientific publications on a regular basis and make notes, in a card index, of anything of relevance to their work.

  *

  “Here we are Sue. The office.” Peter led the way into a dingy vestry room which smelt of dust, damp and decay. It was not well lit. Amongst the clutter, the room contained several old wooden chests and a couple of modern metal cabinets. Around a refectory table in the centre of the room, sat four characters who, Sue would later describe to Dave, seemed to have escaped the pages of a Dickens novel. Peter introduced them; Barbara (Miss Flight?), Liz (Sairey Gamp?), Margaret (Miss Haversham?) and Richard (Mr Pickwick?). The women looked up from their work and smiled or nodded according to their custom. Richard stood up and smiled over his thick spectacles.

  “This is Sue, a friend of mine, who is interested in seeing what we get up to on a Friday.” After a mixture of murmurs and nods, the four returned to their work.

  “Let me show you what goes on here,” said Peter, leading Sue over to the metal cabinets. He began by explaining that the parish registers of St. John’s were begun in 1547 and parish events, notably births, marriages and burials, had been recorded since then. He opened a cabinet and removed an ancient volume. Heavily bound with thick, off-white pages which, in spite of some evident water damage, were clearly identified as the Parish Register for St. John’s. Bremham – 1547. Even in the early pages of this first volume, the entries were clearly written in sections under the heading of Baptisms, Marriages, or Burials. However, the writing was difficult for Sue to interpret as the style and spelling of the entries was unfamiliar. She could see that the ‘s’ was often written as a long ‘f’ and she could guess some of the old spelling of certain Christian names ‘Johannes’ – John? She realised that it would require greater concentration to transcribe, than would be the case with the more modern volumes.

  “How wonderful,” she commented. Her feelings when handling the precious volume, all those years old, were difficult to put into words. Peter took the book from her and carefully replaced it in the cabinet. Rather unnecessarily, he pointed out how valuable such an original document was, adding that this was the reason for locking the older registers in the steel cabinets. Unfortunately, there was insufficient room for them all and the more recent ones were kept in the wooden parish chests, at present.

  “As I mentioned, together with other teams around the country, we are trying to do our bit in preserving these original registers by producing copies. In this way people who wish to consult the records, family historians and so on, can use our copies and thus reduce the wear and tear on the originals. There is a bonus for these scholars as, whilst we are copying the records, we also provide a surname index to the entries, which will make finding a particular entry much easier.”

  Sue looked over to the ‘team’ who had suddenly become animated and were crowding around Barbara. She gave Peter a questioning look.

  “This is probably our biggest problem, trying to decipher some of the writing, especially in damaged areas. Often, if we can’t agree, we check other records, such as Bishops’ Transcripts, to see if there is any information relating to the entry.”

  After a closer look over people’s shoulders, Sue got a better idea of how they worked. She declined their offer to join them for lunch, as she had agreed to have a drink at The Marden Arms with Pam.

  15

  Sue joined the quaint members of the indexing team the following Friday at Bremham vestry. Soon she got into the swing of the action, although she did find that it was an effort to maintain the required concentration. How these elderly old dears managed was a wonder to her. Everyone worked well with each other. It was a team effort.

  During her second visit, a week later, Peter mentioned that he would be going up to London on the following Tuesday, which delighted her. Although she had been trying to busy herself with other things, such as the indexing work, her own research in waiting was never far from her thoughts.

  Tuesday arrived. Sue was, as usual, ready early and had time to look through the information that she had so far amassed. Even at this early stage, she was conscious of the difficulties she would encounter in dealing with the expanding list of direct ancestors, as she moved backwards through the generations. Soon, even if her searches were only partially successful, the amount of information could become unmanageable. Clearly she would need to be selective. The problem could resolve itself naturally as some of her family surnames became difficult to trace. This had already begun, insofar as she had only managed to trace two of the four marriages of her great grandparents. She decided to defer any decision until later. Her immediate task was to search for the birth details of at least some of her great grandparents and so, she would once again be amongst the birth indexes at Somerset House.

  Peter arrived. He had one passenger with him, a man unknown to Sue, who she learned was a member of the local family history group. They were both intending to visit the Newspaper reference library. Sue travelled from Hammersmith alone, which pleased her, as she could be flexible about lunch.

  She entered into the search routine with the air of a regular, which of course, she now was. She had details from the two marriage certificates which, in addition to the ages of her great grandparents at the time of their marriage, included the names and occupations of their fathers. She began her search through the birth indexes around the likely birth dates, based upon their age at the time o
f their marriage, although she had no idea of their places of birth. She was rewarded with promising results for two of her great grandfathers, finding birth details which seemed appropriate. The first was born in Woolpit in Suffolk and the other in Kensington. Her first real dilemma arose with her great grandmother Potten, when she found two Caroline Pottens in the index born in 1846, which was the likely birth year she had deduced from her great grandmother’s marriage certificate. She thought this perverse, as it was an unusual surname and there were no other Caroline Pottens listed for several years either side of this date. Both were registered in Brighton. She decided to apply for both certificates and then later attempt to determine which of the two was her great grandmother.

  On the journey home, Sue mentioned her problem to her more experienced fellow travellers. They agreed that she had done the sensible thing in applying for both certificates. She should be able to confirm which certificate was her great grandmother’s, by checking the name of her father. She already knew, from Caroline’s marriage certificate, that the one she sought was named Thomas, who was a carpenter.

  Back in Wiltshire, she was pleased to find everyone at home. The girls and the Potter kids were, making the most of the lighter evenings, playing an improvised version of volley ball using a makeshift net strung across the front lawn. Dave, having returned from his run, was in the kitchen making a start on preparing the meal. It seemed that he wanted to eat early as he had work to do. When hadn’t he?

  A few days later the four certificates which Sue had ordered arrived. She was pleased to find that her great grandfather, Thomas Boughton was born in 1842 in Woolpit, Suffolk, and that his father’s name was indeed James. She had similar details recorded on the next certificate, which was for another great grandfather, James Loomes, who was born in Kensington in 1848. His father was John, a house painter. So far so good. Next she turned to the first of the certificates for Caroline Potten. Of course, she knew from the earlier marriage certificate, that Caroline’s father was named Thomas and he was a carpenter. She was delighted when she found that this was the case for this first Caroline, who was born in Brighton in May 1846. Caroline’s mother’s name was Elizabeth Baker. The address was given as number forty one, Upper North Street.

  From this information Sue could see the next part of her research, regarding these three families, would entail checking the census returns for 1851 as the next generation, moving backwards, would have been born, perhaps even married, before civil registration had been instituted in 1837. As she now had the addresses of two of her great grandfathers, at least at the time of their birth, she could start at those locations in her census search, hoping that they hadn’t moved home. She imagined that, as Woolpit was likely to be a small village, the Boughton family should be easy to locate. She decided to start there and then move on to Kensington to seek out the Loomes. As for her great grandmother Caroline, she would check number forty one Upper North Street.

  She put her certificates into her wallet folder and, almost as an afterthought, checked the certificate for the other Caroline Potten out of interest. She read through this with an increasing sense of shock:

  Caroline Potten b. 7th Nov 1846, father Thomas, mother Elizabeth Worth, father’s profession – carpenter.

  She couldn’t believe it, same name, same place and year of birth, both fathers were carpenters named Thomas and both mothers were named Elizabeth. This second Caroline was born in Chichester Street. She was stunned. She had not resolved her difficulty and still had no way of knowing which of the two was correct. She could only hope that Peter might be able to advise her.

  During a break from the laborious indexing work at St. John’s, Peter and Sue sat a little apart from the ‘Dickensians’ – as Sue thought of them – and Peter went through her Potten birth certificates.

  “Hmm! The road not taken it seems,” was his comment.

  “Pardon me,” asked Sue.

  “Oh! Sorry. Robert Frost. It’s a poem,” Peter explained.

  “But will his poem help me?”

  “No, it’s just a bad habit of mine, I’m afraid. I can’t suggest anything positive just now, nothing that would definitely resolve your dilemma. However,” Peter thought for a moment, “I believe that for the present you should regard them both as your great grandmother. It could be that they are descended from a common ancestor, they could be cousins. It’s quite an unusual surname after all. If they were closely related, then you could construct a family tree for both and carry on back from there, possibly finding them joining up to a common ancestor. It may be that later, when you’ve used other sources of reference, you will know which is correct.” Once again she couldn’t wait to be on her travels.

  *

  Dave was back on the Winford road again. He was intending to carry out an inspection of his on-site specimens. Bunsen was with him, providing a constant stream of lively chatter. It seemed that almost any incident or any object that they passed could spur him into some tale or anecdote which stirred in that buzzing brain of his. He really was, Dave thought, the absolute stereotype of the mad professor that many people call to mind when thinking of scientists. In amongst his observations Bunsen did include, for Dave’s benefit, a potted history of boiler water chemistry and how this had changed over recent years. The two basic strategies to prevent corrosion of the metal components within the water/steam circuit were the removal of oxygen and the maintenance of alkaline conditions, within the circuit. During the early period of operation at Winford, the boiler water had been dosed with sodium hydroxide, but in recent times, the chemical hydrazine was mainly used with sodium hydroxide only as an occasional back up.

  Bunsen explained that today he was planning to check the steam quality readings. He would also collect the first few weeks of completed instrument charts and recalibrate his reference standards. In order to save time, Dave had arranged to have the steam to his test vessel turned off a couple of hours before he was due to arrive, so that he could get access to his samples immediately.

  After signing in they changed into their overalls. Whilst Bunsen went to meet the Station Chemist, whistling tunelessly along the corridor, Dave made his way to the turbine hall to open his test vessel. He was pleased to see that the pre-cracked specimens on the top tray had acquired an even, shiny, black surface coating, similar to that found on LP turbine discs after service. He made a mental note to ask Joe if this was also the case with his laboratory steam rig specimens in Nuneaton. After removing the pre-cracked specimens from the vessel, Dave inspected each one for signs of crack extension. He was only using a visual check this time and not x-ray, as he didn’t want to lose exposure time in the test rig, which would be the case if he wanted to take them away for more accurate measurement. It was early days and the extent of extra crack growth, if any, would be very small. He had a magnifying glass with its own light source which he used to aid his inspection – and yes, yes – he was sure. He could just detect the smallest suggestion of growth on several of the specimens. Next, he examined his own extra samples, those without pre-existing cracks, and was pleased to find that they were also oxide coated along the whole of their test length. Dave could not detect any surface features that would suggest cracking or even pitting, but he accepted that this would be unlikely using normal visual methods alone. After making his notes, he replaced the specimens into the test vessel, closing the lid securely. He returned the rig to service before checking on Bunsen’s progress. Following a canteen lunch, during which they chatted with station engineers, Dave returned to the turbine hall to make a note of the temperature and pressure readings in the test chamber, whilst Bunsen clambered up the scaffolding to inspect his instruments.

  They managed to get away from the station early, which suited Dave as he wanted to get back to work in time to make a start on his contribution for the forthcoming sub-committee meeting. How quickly these seemed to come around.

  Back at his desk he phoned Pauline to check on a couple of agenda items and he took
the opportunity to let her know that, although he would not be staying overnight this time, he trusted that their dinner date would still be valid when he could make the arrangements. Pauline assured him that, although she hoped he wouldn’t feel that she was being too forward, she was intending to hold him to it. Dave hung up and sat back in his chair with the smile of the middle-aged man who apparently hadn’t lost all his charisma.

  The meeting day arrived and the members assembled. A routine meeting was anticipated but this was to turn out not to be the case. Proceedings began normally enough as Joe was invited to begin the members’ progress reports.

  His main contribution was to confirm that the cracks in his specimens had definitely extended during his tests, though the growth was small. Dorinda thought that this was an important result, though she pointed out that crack propagation would only be a problem if there were defects already present in the discs in the first instance. She believed that the rigorous inspection techniques employed, both at the manufacturer’s works and by the customer’s own inspection engineers, should guarantee that no such defects could be present in LP discs before entering service. This struck Dave as being a particularly significant point. It implied that some surface damage must occur whilst in service, before cracking could occur in high purity steam.

  Dave followed Joe, presenting his latest results, including the suggestion of crack growth, of the pre-cracked specimens in his test rig, though it was early days. James, clearly pleased with himself, followed by reporting that at Slough they believed that they had made an important breakthrough. He thought that, when they heard the details, the committee would agree that a credible explanation for the turbine failure could at last be presented to the main Technical Committee. The other members, excepting Dorinda, were clearly taken by surprise at this statement and were intrigued to learn details. James, perhaps betraying his youth, was eager to enlighten them and with something of a flourish, produced copies of a draft report which, after assigning a number, Pauline distributed.