Photograph a salute to Shrewsbury firm's past
There was nobody perched on the roof this time, but other than that it was a heartfelt salute to the past by a modern generation of Shropshire workers re-enacting a "photo opportunity" from yesteryear.
In this centenary year of the iconic Sentinel Works in Shrewsbury, more than 100 staff from Doncasters Aerospace took a little time out to gather in front of the building to play their part in the 100th birthday celebrations by recreating a rare, and possibly unique, photo.
The event was inspired by a 1929 photo which came to light thanks to a Shrewsbury woman who was responding to an appeal by the County of Salop Steam Engine Society for people to come up with Sentinel-related memorabilia.
"It belonged to my mother and was in a big box of family photographs at home, surrounded by a moth-eaten frame," said Mrs Susan Hotchkiss, of Harlescott Village.
"My mother was Ivy Smith, and her father Thomas Irving is probably on the photograph – I haven't looked properly – as he made the woodwork on the Sentinel 'waggons'. He lived in Ashley Street in Cherry Orchard."
And when she told the society about her picture, she said their reaction was "as if they had found the crown jewels". The idea to recreate that photo outside the Sentinel Works in Whitchurch Road, which for years produced the famous Sentinel waggons, came from Edward Goddard, society chairman.
