We were visited today at Belton by Neville Hopwell, known as John Hopwell by his colleagues, who has recently celebrated his 100th birthday.
In Chandler’s 90th year it was fantastic to see John celebrating such a significant milestone, and we enjoyed passing on a few items of Chandlers 90th year memorabilia.
John started work for Chandlers in 1942 immediately after leaving school at the age of 16 and worked alongside Bud the only other engineer in Grantham at the time.
He met up with Chairman Howard Pell, Managing Director Gavin Pell along with Jason Taylor - Belton Vehicles Service Manager - who had looked after him for many years as a car service customer following his retirement, and enjoyed reminiscing about the early years at Chandlers working alongside Chandlers founders Des Chandler, Joe Pell & Tom Caunt.
Howard Pell, who had worked alongside John in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s as a youth, asked if John had brought his tools with him as we had plenty of work for a good engineer, and John replying as quick witted as always, that the only tools he needed these days were in his head,
He recounted his appointment to Chandlers, where he had been taken by his father immediately after finishing school to meet up with Mrs Pell (mother of Joe Pell) at the family farm in Plungar. He chuckled as he recalled that he had rather hoped to have had a week off following graduation from school ! but instead he had been taken on by Joe Pell and began his career as an engineer immediately.
Coming from a family farm, John already had quite a lot of agricultural engineering experience, having been inquisitive and carefully watched how machines on the farm operated. One of his first jobs just a few weeks after starting, involved setting up the knotters on a customers binding machine that was playing up. Bud had been occupied working on a tractor for an important customer- one of the town Aldermen - and John volunteered to head off to the farm and was successful in both fixing the tying issue, and further refining the size of the sheafs to the satisfaction of the customer. At this stage of his career, he had been chauffeured to the farm by Tom Caunt with a meagre set of tools in a roll, but that was soon to change, when he utilised the half crown tip - a substantial sum in those days - he had received from the Farmer, in obtaining his driving license the very next morning. There were no driving tests in those days, and John was soon in proud possession of a license that allowed him to drive almost all vehicles except steam engines ! It was not long after that Joe Pell organised a newly sign written van for John to utilise. Telling him to take good care of it, and to regularly check the oil levels and tyre pressures.
John continued to work for Chandlers for another 29 years, on a wide range of Tractors and Machinery, attending training courses in Manchester and Birmingham by train and recalling how he had progressed from initially travelling home by bus, to largely working remotely from the depot in his van with customers heading in to fetch the necessary spare parts so he could keep fixing the equipment on farm. He reminisced at Joe Pell had been a good boss, and they’ve been friends as well, but he hadn’t seen much of him with being so busy out and about on farms.
Following discussions on the fixing of the binders. Gavin showed John a scale model of a Massey Ferguson IDEAL 9T combine, which he was surprised to hear can be supplied with a 40’ header, with the largest he had worked on being 12’ wide headers, asking how they didn’t hit the ground across undulating fields! He was impressed when learning about how the modern headers are able to contour follow to accommodate ground undulations.
A particular story that amused him, was one evening when he was late back due to being held up on the A1, he had to visit Joe Pell at home so that the stores could be reopened to collect some spare parts, where he had found a customer complaining about his bird scarer not functioning, only for the banger to go off on cue outside in this customers van almost blowing the doors off! They both found this most amusing! Only later wondering if they should’ve disarmed the banger while the customer drove home!
Happy 100th Birthday Neville ‘John’ Hopwell from all the team at Chandlers.