Roy Collins: a Clutton Village “Character”.
Royston Herbert John Collins
The Collins family have lived in Clutton for five generations. Roy’s grandfather, Herbert Collins, came to the village from Tisbury, Wiltshire when Clutton Station was first opened in 1873 as the very first stationmaster, before the stationmaster’s house was built. He lived in the end corner cottage in Church Square, rented from the Earl of Warwick. (Many years later, Roy’s eldest daughter was to start her married life in the same cottage.) Roy’s father, Jim Collins, became the driver of “Emily” known as the “coffee-pot” and later “Daisy” the small shunting engines, the latter named after Lady Warwick and which used to carry coal from Fry's Bottom and Greyfield collieries to Clutton Station. As there was no other way of getting the correct time by which villagers could set their clocks and watches, Jim would give a long blast on the locomotive’s whistle at 1-00pm as a time signal for the village.
Jim had four children, Jim, Henry, Rose and Royston the youngest, born 1924. Jim was a stone mason for Cecil Maggs, Rose was well known in Clutton as she worked in Mabe Attwood’s little sweet and cigarette shop opposite the Railway Hotel but sadly she died very young. Henry (Harry) went into the army and was a driver in WW2, later to work for my father before going into the GPO.
The family lived at 19 Maynard Terrace along from where my father Jim Brain, started his haulage business at No.42. From an early age Roy, the youngest of the family, would delight in riding with father in his 30cwt Chevrolet lorry. As soon as his legs got long enough, he was permitted to get the Chevrolet, and later the Bedford, out of its shed and turn it round and warm the engine for which his reward was a ride. Roy went to work in Pensford pit after leaving Clutton School and helped my father with the lorry at weekends and in his spare time. At the outbreak of WW2 he became a Bevin Boy, a reserved occupation to work in the mines, as he was already employed at Pensford Colliery, he remained there throughout the hostilities, but drove the lorry, by now a Leyland Cub, with father at weekends. This involved a daily collection of milk in churns from Mendip farms and delivering it to various dairies in Bristol. He drove on his own from soon after I was born in 1941 and started work for father full time after the war ended. As a young lad he was in the Scouts and also played the Cornet in Clutton Band. I remember too that he was accomplished on the Harmonica. He played Football for Clutton in the 1930s. If father was not too busy and he could be spared or at evenings, he had acquired a PSV licence to drive coaches and would sometimes fill in for Alan Carter of High Littleton, Fred Pow of Berkeley Coaches at Paulton or Jimmy Riggs in Clutton. In middle age, he was a keen gardener despite the nature of his soil and was a member of the Horticultural Society, helping at the Annual Flower Show and, unknown to many, a Trustee of the Clutton United Charities.
In the 1940s Roy courted Joan Clark of Mooresfield; he tells a tale of how she had to be in home by 10-00 p.m. by strict father’s orders. One evening in their endeavour to get back in the agreed time, they attempted in the dark to open the iron gate which was then at the bottom entrance to the allotments by the old AFS fire station where ‘Pathways’ now stands. Someone, as a joke perhaps, knowing it was Roy and Joan’s “Goodnight” spot, had removed the gate from its hinges and it fell over with a crash. However after gathering themselves up and replacing the gate on its hinges, they arrived back just before the curfew!
I remember Roy and Joan’s wedding; my father was so pleased to be asked to give the bride away; her father had sadly passed away just before. After the wedding, the happy couple set off for a honeymoon in Barry Island, which in the 1940s was just getting going after the war as a resort with a funfair. Roy’s uncle Walter had moved there some many years before. They returned to live for a few years in Mooresfield with her mother where soon the eldest daughter Pamela was born. Roy and Joan moved soon after, in about 1950 to the then new Roger’s Close council houses, his brother Harry on one side adjoining and his brother in law, Jack Gill, on the other. Roy and Joan have lived there ever since, having celebrated their Golden Wedding.
In 1954, the twins, Bryan and Hazel arrived. I remember father phoned the news ahead to one of the Mendip farms and after Roy had collected the milk, the farmer, Bryan Green and his brother Arthur, kindly put the lorry’s tailboard up for him and opened the gate. However on arrival at the next farm, having travelled some miles, Roy discovered that their kind help was misplaced for on the tailboard of the lorry was an ancient wicker cradle bearing a large notice “Hello Twins!”
My father would sometimes lend Roy his car as few people in the 1940s had cars and Roy was struggling with a young family. It was Roy’s great delight to go off to Weymouth in the 1936 Triumph Dolomite or even the later Rover 75 and give the family a day out. I remember too that he wanted to visit relatives in Timsbury one day and he borrowed my 1932 Austin Seven; Joan and the three small children could just squeeze in!
As well as the milk, Roy hauled out of BOCM, Hosegoods and Port of Bristol in Avonmouth to our contract customer in Bridgwater; he would often be on the road by 5-30 a.m. to get in front of the queue at the docks and loaded and away over the Mendips to the mill at Bridgwater. The ladies in the mill especially enjoyed Roy’s cheerful nature, from buxom secretary ‘Dolly’ Jefferies to the office cleaner, Mrs Bulpin who would often make him a cup of tea. He was mischievous at the mill; I can recall Roy explaining to another driver the trick of putting the delivery notes on the ledge just inside the weighbridge window so that Dolly had to rise off her chair to collect them and in doing so, reveal a large amount of well-formed cleavage!
I also recall a grumpy old chap Alfie with a cap and a bristly moustache. Roy would encourage him to watch the lorry back into the hauling bay, wait until he was alongside and give the engine a final rev-up before switching off; this blew black smoke and dust all over poor Alfie who fell for the trick every time.
Roy had a regular similar trick in Wells. Having carefully plodded in a low gear down the long Bristol Hill, he let the diesel smoke build up until we were in the High Street where, regularly there would be a window cleaner doing a shop front. Roy would carefully hold the engine back until alongside the shop and floor the throttle, filling the High Street with smoke. I can see the chap now – waving his arms and swearing while Roy just chuckled in the cab as we proceeded onwards down Broad Street.
Very occasionally we would have to collect a load from London Docks; Roy admitted he did not enjoy the day trip to London and back as it was a 3-00 a.m. start and, in those days, right through the city, along the Embankment, through Parliament Square, and then to the East End. I was drafted in to drive the journey to London, the A4 in those days – no motorway - to the docks; then using a second log-sheet in compliance with the law as it was then, Roy drove the laden lorry home again.
Always cheerful, Roy made many friends when he was on the lorries; he seemed to have the knack of dealing with the most awkward of customers. His loading of sacks was legendary, perfectly neat and tidily roped and sheeted. His adage was that you didn’t start unloading until the ropes were rolled and tidied and the tarpaulin was folded.
After a short period back in the pits at Norton Hill, he returned to my father’s lorries for many years, eventually leaving to drive a six-wheeled BMC-Leyland for the firm of cattle feed manufacturers in Bridgwater for whom we had hauled. At the eventual closure of the mill, he worked at Purnells of Paulton in the book department but the indoor factory life did not suit his nature and soon he was back on the road, this time with Terry Smart of Chew Stoke, who garaged and serviced his fleet not far from Roy and Joan’s home in Clutton and in the same garage where Roy used to work at odd times for Jimmy Riggs’ coaches. Terry Smart was engaged in quarry work, hauling ballast for road making and construction work from Tytherington, Halecombe or other Mendip quarries and with six-wheeled tipper Leyland or AEC vehicles of much greater capacity. Living nearby, Roy would keep a check on the security of the garage for Terry Smart, over and above the call of duty.
Roy retired in XXXX and immersed himself in the Clutton Good Companions, later rising through Outings Secretary to Chairman for a couple of years until it closed in 2003.
On coach-outings he would try and inspire the passengers to have a sing-song – his favourite was “She’ll be coming round the Mountain when she comes” much to the dismay of some of the ladies especially the more staid and sober ones of the Women’s Institute! .
During the later years he ran a little Austin 1100, followed by an Allegro, previously owned by his brother Harry, and later still a VW Polo, all of which could over the years, be recognised around and about with a long tail-back of traffic behind – for all his accident-free years on the road, Roy was the first to admit he was no car driver.
Roy’s ashes at his request are scattered in Clutton, at its highest point, under an ancient oak tree where he can “see“ the Mendips and the village of his birth and indeed all his life.
A character indeed; not many around like Roy Collins anymore - sadly…..
Eric Brain