Newport's key role in rebuilding Parliament
Talk about living on the job...
Every day that 90-year-old Derrik Marston walks out of his front door, he is immediately back at the place where he started his working life as a young teenager on leaving school back in 1941.
But, as our then and now pictures show, to say things have changed is an understatement.
His first job was at Ashworth's timber company in Newport. Today the houses of Ashworth Way, where Derrik lives, cover part of the site.
"It was a large timber yard, massive - about 34 acres. All boys taken on by Ashworth's first of all worked in what was known as the converting mill, where all the small machines were turning the timber into pieces or parts," said Derrik.
Derrik went on to drive the vehicle which hauled the timber around the yard and when he left Ashworth's he went into the motor trade at Station Garage, ending up as service manager.
From 1972 until his retirement he was a GKN industrial police officer.
This modern view is from the front his home, and the undated old picture comes from a booklet he has about the company, John Ashworth & Co (Timber) Ltd, which had premises in Trafford Park, Manchester, and at Newport.
The roofline of the town's old cottage hospital, visible in the distance in both pictures, provides a point of reference. Also seen in the old picture are the kilns where the wood was dried.
"After the war when they rebuilt the Houses of Parliament, all the home-grown timber used came from Newport and went through those kilns. When the work was finished Ashworth's and the company who did the rebuilding put on a special train for employees down to London to see the work in the Houses of Parliament. I went."
The House of Commons had been destroyed in the Blitz, and Ashworth's was entrusted with the felling and preparation of the oaks from Shropshire and Herefordshire which were used for the panels and beams used in the rebuilding.
As for when Ashworth's closed, Derrik says: "We came here in 1975, and this house was about 12 months old then, so we are talking 1973-ish."
