Frederick Allen Batty, MBE
It is with deep regret that the CIE announces the sad passing of Mr Frederick Allen Batty, past president and respected councillor and trustee of the Institution. The following obituary is reproduced with the kind permission of Dr Jake Almond:
Frederick Allen Batty, MBE, April 1915 - June 2004
Allen died suddenly on 17th June 2004. He was in his 90th year.
Allen (his mother's name) Batty was born and grew up in Sheffield, where he attended the Central School, but left before matriculation because of health problems. While serving a premium apprenticeship at the Brightside Foundry and Engineering Company which built rolling-mill equipment, he attended evening classes at the University's Department of Applied Science. Then, in 1937, at the age of 22, he came to Teesside to work for Head, Wrightson and Company Limited. He was to continue his employment for 42 years.
In conversations, Allen proved reticent about his working exploits and achievements but, in an outline account he recorded a few years ago, he observed that, at the time he came to Teesside, two steelmakers in Britain were installing the industry's first strip mills in which "long lengths of strip could be rolled into coils of up to 20 tons at high speed, and then cut into sheets" (1). Head, Wrightson had acquired a licence to build, to the American designs of Aetna Standard Engineering Company, items pertinent to this branch of industry. As a result, the company was positioned to supply equipment such as roller and stretcher levelers, sheet coilers and shears, and lines for tinning and galvanising.
Allen joined the newly formed Steelworks Plant Department of Head, Wrightson as a draughtsman. During the war of 1939-45 he was involved in the design of machinery for the production of armour plate and aircraft. In 1946 the department became a separate subsidiary - The Head Wrightson Machine Company - with dedicated manufacturing facilities in Middlesbrough. Through the following two decades, for the changing British steel industry, the company executed equipment orders which included: Appliances for handling and finishing coils of strip at the new Abbey Works near Port Talbot and for the strip mills at Llanwern and Ravenscraig; tinning lines and auxiliary plant for the green-field works at Trostre and Velindre; processing lines for the continuous galvanising of strip at Ebbw Vale, the Steel Company of Wales and John Summers; mills for producing and finishing steel and non-ferrous tubes, together with equipment for processing stainless-steel and silicon-steel (electrical) strip.
During the 1960s and 1970s a considerable number of export orders were handled, ranging from drawbenches to electrolytic tinning lines. Allen commented that "Orders from Eastern Bloc countries took a long time to negotiate, sometimes over two years, involving many visits by large teams of experts and associated with a tremendous quantity of documentation". He progressed, through design engineer and then sales engineer, to become sales director of the Head Wrightson Machine Company. He retired in 1979; the company, by then part of Davy Corporation, closed soon afterwards. He was the recipient in 1966 of the MBE, awarded for services to export.
Beyond his career, in his earlier years Allen was an ardent cyclist. He also became active in local affairs. A strong supporter of the Teesside Chamber of Commerce, he was successively president of the Junior and Senior Chambers, the latter in 1972, and in 1977 was awarded the Queen's Silver Jubilee Medal in recognition of 25 years' service to the organization. He liked to claim credit for the erection on the A1 road of signs which pointed to "Teesside". He was chairman of the district Post Office (later the Post and Telecom) Advisory Committee.
His involvement with the Cleveland Institution of Engineers extended over many years. When, for the session 1972-73 he became president, he was already a long serving member of council. In his presidential address he reviewed some of the changes with time that had occurred in NE England ironmaking. In 1995 he was presented with an illuminated certificate together with an inscribed decanter and tumblers recognizing 50 years of activities for the institution. Up to his death he continued to serve the Institution as a trustee.
Allen was a founding member of the Cleveland Industrial Archaeology Society, participating in the committee for nine years. In the 1970s he joined the council of the historical Metallurgy Society, being chairman for the three years 1978-81 during which the group reorganised to become a limited liability company. He promoted a weekend meeting of the society in Cleveland in 1976 and a day meeting two years later.
As a result of his wide contacts, he was enlisted to transport onto Teesside for metallurgical examination one of two fabricated wrought-iron beams from a Roman bath house unearthed during road works at Catterick Bridge. In the early 1970s he played a significant part in realising a suggestion made by Frank Atkinson of Beamish Open Air Museum to construct a working replica of the 1825 Stockton and Darlington Railway Company's Engine No. 1 Locomotion, which had pulled the inaugural steam-hauled train from Shildon to Stockton. He was a member of societies concerned with canals, railways, mills and mines, enjoying opportunities to inspect weaver's houses near Nottingham or to cruise along the Manchester Ship Canal and to capture features of our industrial heritage with his camera. His illustrated talks on aspects of past industry came to be appreciated by many audiences.
As recently as March 2004 he traveled to Sheffield to visit, by invitation, the offices of Kvaerner (successor to the Davy Group) and to be present at the Ken Barraclough Memorial Lecture. Only three weeks before his death he attended a meeting of the Cleveland Buildings Preservation Trust of which he had been a director since its foundation in 1982.
In 2003 Allen suffered the death of two of his close family following long illnesses: First his elder daughter Jennifer and, two months later, his wife of 63 years, Paddy. His daughter Sheila survives him.
He will be remembered as a modest enthusiast, always prepared to draw upon his extensive experience and breadth of interests in order to answer queries and suggest apt ways to make progress.
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05 September 2004 |
J K Almond |
