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SteveHB

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Hardy Patent Pick Co. (Lim.) Ecclesall Road.

Hardy Charles Atwood, pick manufacturer (Hardy Patent Pick Co.); house 67 Clarkehouse Road.

1879 directory.

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Our next door neighbour used to work at Hardy Patent Pick in the mid 1950's when they still made picks shovels etc. By the mid 1960's it had become part of Laycock Engineering and picks were no longer made there.

Laycock Engineering had 2 factories on Little London Road. One was always referred to as Little London Road Works and the other works as Hardy Pick.

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I've been having my weekly pint recently in the 'Hardy Pick' near the Abbeydale Picture House. Is that on the site of the factory? Can't quite place the photo above.

 

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11 hours ago, Calvin72 said:

I've been having my weekly pint recently in the 'Hardy Pick' near the Abbeydale Picture House. Is that on the site of the factory? Can't quite place the photo above.

 

I think it's on the site of an Iron Foundry on the edge of Little London Dam (silted up as far back as 1890).  I don't believe the foundry belonged to Hardy Pick though, in the 1950's it was the "Hallamshire Foundry" probably relocated from Green Lane.  On the aerial photo its the messy area behind the building butting up to the railway tracks bottom right.

Hardy Pick 1935.png

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16 hours ago, Calvin72 said:

I've been having my weekly pint recently in the 'Hardy Pick' near the Abbeydale Picture House. Is that on the site of the factory? Can't quite place the photo above.

 

The 'Hardy Pick' is shown with a red spot on the modern aerial view.

The railways sidings are now the retail park and the 'kink' in Little London Road can be seen, as can the houses on Abbeydale Road.

Does that help visualise the old and new? 

Laycocks_Litle London Road_SidebySide Birds Eye.jpg

Laycocks_Litle London Road_Modern Birds Eye.JPG

Laycocks_Litle London Road_Old Birds Eye.png

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Thanks Edmund and RLongden!

Very helpful.

The pub itself has information inside about 'The Hardy Pick Patent Co.', which piqued my interest.

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On Little London Road as soon as you went under the railway bridge Tyzack Sons & Turner were in front of you with a Gunnel passing through the works to a footbridge over the river to Broadfield Road. To get from one side of their works to the other you had to cross on the first floor! Then there was Laycocks Hardy Pick works, then Little London Road works. The newest building at Little London Road works was the new foundry, the building that today is Arnold Lavers. Laycocks produced overdrives at these 2 works, however with the advent of 5 gear cars demand declined. The last car manufacturer taking overdrives was Volvo. Then they too stopped offering overdrives so the factory closed except for the foundry that supplied castings for clutch manufacture at Archer Road works.

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One of the advantages of having a husband who has an interest in railway paperwork is that sometimes something turns up which gets me searching through this forum.

This is one such item. A humble goods invoice from 1947, but it is for items sent from Hardypick to Thurcroft for the NCB:

wicker to thurcroft.jpg

I don't know what a 6/L H/Head looks like, but 9 of them weighed more than 4 hundredweight.

The railway GC/HB/MID interests me. I take it to mean Great Central/ Hull & Barnsley/ Midland, which is a bit out of date for 1947. This was the original joint ownership of the line which served Thurcroft Colliery.

The railways around the local coalfields really were complicated back then!

 

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