FM Conway - Going the Extra Mile

Chapter 1 Early Days

J im Manning, who would eventually become a Director of the company, joined as a tea-boy, pipe layer, and manhole builder in 1966. His first job was on a Spot Tender for the London Borough of Lewisham at Sydenham Hill. It was one of the biggest jobs the company had at the time, about nine months’ work for a five-man gang, widening and reconstructing an existing road including drainage and new footways. The sub-base they used was hardcore that came

Four members of the Conway gangs in 1964. From left to right: (unknown), Bob Adcock, Michael McLaughlin, Peter Donnelly.

from demolition sites around the area, blinded with ashes. There was dust everywhere; it went into the houses and into the cars, but nobody complained. They didn’t in those days. Not even about the ‘accommodation works’, which involved the gangs going into people’s gardens to knock down and rebuild their garden walls. All the heavy work, such as taking out kerbs, was done by hand using crowbars and picks. Any hard concrete was broken with a steel wedge, not unlike a large chisel, one man holding the wedge with a pair of tongs, and the other man hitting it with a fourteen-pound hammer. It was hard physical work. In those days, two men were expected to load a five yard lorry in half an hour; and a man who could load from either side, ‘left hand or right hand’, was paid extra money. At this time, the Conway workforce consisted of a little over twenty people: two five-men construction gangs, and two five-

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