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Beginners => Family History Beginners Board => Topic started by: thecatsmother on Sunday 28 May 17 16:04 BST (UK)
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Is a Clerk of Works independent or attached to a particular body e.g. council or building firm? I'm trying to find out more about my grandfather who was a clerk of works, living in Wolverhampton until 1968.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerk_of_works
Blue
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Thank you Blue. I'll have a look at that :)
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Councils used to have a post called Clerk of Works.
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There is The Institute of Clerks of Works and Construction Inspectorate of GB Inc. http://www.icwgb.org/page/default.asp?title=Welcome%20to%20ICWCI&pid=1
Stan
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I was a Clerk of Works in 1980's
I worked for
Liverpool City Council
Young Persons Housing Association -
one Council and one private
hope this helps - Clerk of Works also went around Public Buildings to evaluate Maintenance and Repairs
Schools
Libraries
Public Baths
Council Rates Buildings
Housing Offices - where you paid your rent .
to my knowledge I have never met another Clerk of Works who wasn't a time served Tradesman .
Joiner
Plumber
Bricklayer
Plasterer
Painter and Decorator
etc
I served 5 years Apprenticeship as a Carpenter and Joiner
my qualifications were
City and Guilds Intermediate
City and Guilds Advanced
Full Technological Certificate Part 1
Full Technological Certificate Part 2
so I would research more on your Grandfather - chances are he was a Tradesman prior to being a Clerk of Works
good luck
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I don't think you can necessarily assume he was working for a public body. An ancestor of mine was described as 'Clerk of Works' on the construction of an iron bridge in 1824. He was employed by the foundry.
Mike.
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Thank you all for spending the time to give me some leads. Unfortunately my grandfather's life is a mystery to me. So far I have found him being a builder's lorry driver in 1925 Blyth, possibly a builder's merchant in Gateshead 1934, and a Clerk of Works in Newcastle-Under-Lyme in 1939. When he died in 1968 Wolverhampton he was a retired Clerk of Works. I would like to know more about his life,and wonder whether the institute or council would be able to tell me anything. Any thoughts, you kind people?
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I worked for a large engineering company in the 1950s that manufactured excavators, grabs and dredgers, which also had its own Clerk of Works. It was his job to make sure the factory buildings were maintained and up to current H&S standards. He became really busy at the end of the 1950s when a new purpose built factory with its own playing fields was erected, as it was his job to liaise with the builder's representative to make sure they were working to plan.
The next time I had contact with a Clerk of Works was 1969 when my OH got a job in another county and we moved into a new build on a partly built housing estate. The CofW could be seen somewhere on the estate most days. Inevitably on a new build there's some snagging and I had to ask him to sort out my warm air central heating (the cheapest & best system I've had) and he quickly organised the chap who had planned the systems for the estate to inspect mine. Another time was when he arrived at my house to ask a favour - apparently another batch of newly finished houses were due to be visited by the Building Inspector for signing off but he'd just discovered one of the houses had all its taps but one set of taps was minus the red and blue hot and cold inserts - so could he "borrow" a blue and a red insert for a couple of hours? :D
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I like it Rena! :)
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Your grandfather obviously stayed in the same industry all his working life, whether he had an apprenticeship in the beginning or not, he probably attended evening classes to gain his qualifications. One of my father's older brothers was born the same year as your grandfather. From a few stories I heard from my Dad about the 1920s-1930s, finding and/or keeping a job was in the lap of the gods. As soon as their engineering apprenticeship five year term was up three of his brothers weren't taken on by the companies that trained them and they had to join the long "dole" queues until there was an upturn in the country's fortunes. The 1914-1918 war had left Britain practically bankrupt and there was stagnation, which led to the big depression all around the modernised world, which officially started in 1929. The north was particularly hard hit, for instance, my father-in-law's brother was in the Jarrow March down to London of 5–31 October 1936.
The war time prime minister Winston Churchill made a speech in March 1943 where he stated that there had been no planning for the aftermath of WWI and this wouldn't be happening again as a plan to keep the country working at the end of WWII had been devised. (This was instigated by the famous Beverige Report which recommended that the government should find ways of fighting the five 'Giant Evils' of 'Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness')
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Thanks Rena, that helps me get some perspective. I've e-mailed the Institute of Clerk of Works in the faint hope I'll get some info on him. What I'd dearly like is that they have photo I.D. as I don't know what he looked like.
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Thanks Rena, that helps me get some perspective. I've e-mailed the Institute of Clerk of Works in the faint hope I'll get some info on him. What I'd dearly like is that they have photo I.D. as I don't know what he looked like.
Personally, I think you'd have more of a chance of finding a photo of him in an official capacity of the town council, such as being handed a watch or clock for services rendered by the council, or amongst a council group in a street scene. Have you searched for his name in GenesReunited newspaper articles - maybe there's a photo of him in a local newspaper, which is where I once found a photo of my father being presented with his 50 yr service watch by the company he worked for.
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Unfortunately I'm not currently a subscriber to GenesReunited. I have looked at the newspapers on FindMyPast to no avail.
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Unfortunately I'm not currently a subscriber to GenesReunited. I have looked at the newspapers on FindMyPast to no avail.
Oh, hard luck - I think they're mostly the same newspapers.