COMPANY PROFILE
customers. Together they’ve turned the Seaforde Metals’ website into a unique social history site.
Many pictures are from the 1970s, when the firm expanded into demolition and invested heavily in cranes, lorries and, in 1972, a metal baling press. Its purchase saw Lawrence enlist no less than the Northern Ireland Prime Minister’s assistance to get a government grant.
“The Prime Minister, Brian Faulkner, was a neighbour. Back then, a phonecall could sort a lot of things out,” adds John. “It was a Dutch-built machine and cost £13,000 – you could buy a house for £2,500 at the time.
“We sold it in the mid-1980s, and it was still going strong.”
partition and the creation of Northern Ireland.
Keeping it proved useful when, decades later, Northern Ireland civil servants attempted to crack down on firms they believed were operating without appropriate licences. The document was gleefully produced to prove that, indeed, Seaforde Metals was properly licenced.
“Waste management licences were introduced,” says John. “Firms needed planning permission and they had to prove they had been working more than 10 years.
“It was another government hoop to jump through, but some firms struggled.
“During the Troubles, a lot of things didn’t run normally. People would have got permission but there were places the police didn’t want to go to, never mind a planner from the planning office.
“Some just didn’t have the documents. Luckily, we had this.”
The paperwork sits alongside receipts for Peter’s first vehicle – an addition to his horses and carts – and, dating from 1928, a receipt from Victoria Barracks in Belfast, where he earned £1.5/- for two old baths and £28 for seven tons of cast iron.
In those days, much of the firm’s early work saw Peter transporting metal to Belfast docks and bringing farm goods back, with obvious wear and tear to vehicles. One receipt shows that fitting a new petrol pump to one lorry in the mid- 1930s would set him back a mere £3.2/9d.
By the Second World War, Seaforde Metals was carrying paperwork to prove its ‘key worker’ status. A bright pink docket from the Ministry of Supply confirmed it as a bona fide scrap iron and steel merchant – vital at a time when metal for the war effort was at a premium.
John’s father Lawrence joined the business aged 14 in the early 1950s, entering a yard crammed with more than 250 cars and, according to one newspaper report contained in the archive, “everything from a needle to an anchor.”
Among the treasures collected down the years by a now grey-haired Peter was a hand-operated threshing mill, a cell door complete with warden’s peep hole, and an old horse-operated barn machine. The yard even housed a twin-engine aeroplane.
“It would have been easy to ditch,” says John. “But my father had a good eye for history. He knew that someone would want certain things eventually.”
Peter Killen in 1920
That appreciation extended to dozens of photographs which capture the yard and men at work, old vehicles piled high, rusting farm machinery, vehicles and
Lawrence’s collection of vintage vehicles and farm machinery including ploughs, pumps and rollers was auctioned after he was diagnosed in 1979 with skin cancer.
Given just four months to live, he confounded doctors by surviving a further 17 years, continuing to grow the business.
Now, after a century and with third generation John at the helm, the firm’s core remains the same: collecting scrap metal, although these days in skips, with a fleet that includes a HIAB lorry, roll on/ off vehicles and an articulated lorry rather than a horse and cart.
Scrap now tends to end up at Warren Point docks for export to Spain.
With the centenary celebrations on temporary hold due to COVID-19, the archive of papers, photographs and videos are particularly poignant. Apart from attracting visitors to the website looking for a slice of nostalgia, John points out that they serve as a reminder that not everything in business runs smoothly and that there’s often a way through to the other side.
And that sometimes even things that appear of little value can be worth keeping.
“Most people just shred papers. But I keep up to 50 random documents each year,” he adds. Maybe in 50 years’ time someone will look through them and be fascinated too.”
Seaforde Metals is based at Farranfad Road, Seaforde, Downpatrick, County Down.
www.seafordemetals.com 37
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