FM Conway - Going the Extra Mile

Going the Extra Mile

What Darren remembers is how small the yard at Ancaster Road seemed, and what a big step up in the world Conways was making to go from there to Oakfield Road.

Darren’s first job was quite different. Roy told him to go with Bill Slade (who was probably three times as big as him) and clear out the workshop at Ancaster Road. The house was now empty, except for a foreman, John Knights, who was keeping an eye on the place. What Darren remembers is how small the yard at Ancaster Road seemed, and what a big step up in the world Conways was making to go from there to Oakfield Road. ‘There was a little alleyway of houses that opened at the side into a garden where a double garage was converted into a workshop, and a small yard with a couple of heaps of sand and cement.’ That ‘small yard’ was where I had learned to drive! But it did seem small compared with Oakfield Road. (Although today, the Oakfield Road yard seems tiny compared with what we have today; it was probably less than an acre.) B ut Oakfield Road came with its own problems. In the early days, a Mercedes lorry was stolen out of the yard. A few months later, I was called by a guy that I used to buy plant from in Wales. He was on holiday in New Zealand, and he was in a

The sale of Ancaster Road wasn’t completed until 1988, as the Land Registry document shows.

petrol station looking at a lorry with the Conway name on, wondering what the lorry was doing so far from home. I told him it had been stolen, and he called the police in. The police impounded the lorry; but it got stolen from the pound, so we never got it back. And the insurance wouldn’t pay out either. The driver had apparently lost the keys or something, and the insurance wouldn’t pay. After that, Roy got a weighted bar to go over the gates of the yard at Oakfield Road, and every night he would move all the vehicles around, positioning them just so – because

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