Radio station team transmitted fun at carnival time
There was an aeroplane with flapping wings, a racing car called the CRM – a take-off of the contemporary BRM Formula One racing team – a steam engine, and a fire engine.
All the work of a small team at Criggion radio station which came up with magnificent contraptions to entertain the carnival crowds in Oswestry in the 1950s. They were entered at carnivals at Shrewsbury and Welshpool too.
There was Tim Trotter, Colin Powell, Peter Blake, and Keith Lord from Oswestry. Also Les Wilkes of Gobowen and Henry Beeston from Llanymynech.
And Brian Jones, from Oswestry, who has a collection of photos, many of which he took himself, which hark back to those happy days.
Like most of those in the team, he was in radio transmitter maintenance, and part of his own role was creating some of the special effects, using photographic flash powder in a tube for electrically-fired pyrotechnics.
"You put it across a battery and – bang! I made hundreds of them," said Mr Jones, who is now 85, and has kindly let us dip into his album of photos.
"These days you wouldn't get away with it, with health and safety."
Time has taken its toll, and he is now one of the last ones left who can give a first-hand account of those days, although he has asked that this article is not about him, but about that Criggion team and the photographs.
"It was a smashing place. I think it was the envy of other radio stations. Everybody was so friendly," he said.
"The first thing we built was at the time of BRM, British Racing Motors, which was early 1950s. We built a car and we called it the CRM – Criggion Racing Motors."
It was entered for Oswestry carnival in 1952 and creating a carnival entry became a regular thing for the Criggion staff, putting them together after work.
The various contraptions were towed at the carnival parades by a tractor driven by George Pugh, who was on the transport side of things at Criggion.
It was a little tradition which carried on for a few years but seems to have faded as some team members moved on.
Another aspect of Criggion's social side was a pantomime.
"They were originally for the children's party at Christmas. That's what started off, then it became a bit more. We did it at Welshpool, and I think the Plaza in Oswestry, which went years ago. We also did Morda hospital."
One of the pantos was called Admiral Rodney Sails Again. The Admiral Rodney is a pub at Criggion.
Criggion radio station, between Oswestry and Welshpool, was built in 1942. Operated by the old GPO and ultimately BT, it transmitted all over the world and at its height in the 1960s, 160 people were employed on the site.
Its giant masts were long a feature of the landscape and in 1992 a daredevil jumped from the top of one of them using a parafoil and disappeared into the countryside before the arrival of police.
It closed for good on March 31, 2003, and the six radio masts and towers, standing at 600ft and 700ft, were felled the following summer.
Although, as we said, Mr Jones is anxious that this is not about him, we think it's relevant to mention that he worked at Criggion for 39 years, starting on October 3, 1949.
"It was the best job you could ever have. It was such a friendly place. Everybody mucked in if there was anything going on like these carnival projects."
The last time he went back was when the masts were being blown up.
"I thought that was rather sad, having worked there and seeing it all destroyed."
