Albert Rhodes – village blacksmith to Rhodes Engineering

This blog is the final part of three looking at village blacksmiths – father and son – Ernest and Albert Rhodes, the latter who was also a once well-known author. In it we look at the later history of Albert Rhodes and his engineering company. It’s also a follow-up to our blog of 10 September – ‘Another piece of village blacksmith’s work identified (but not yet revealed!)’.

A mystery revealed

First to our mystery piece of Albert Rhodes’ work covered in our 10 September blog – shown here. In fact, it’s a piece of work at Newbold Parish Church, which we now know was presented by Albert Rhodes as a gift during works to renovate and extend the parish church there in 1957. Albert Rhodes also presented a lantern for a post near the west porch, but this has now disappeared. The lantern on top of the gatepost works was, we are told, to be treated as streetlighting by the then Chesterfield Corporation (i.e. using the streetlighting electrical supply and presumably illuminated at the same as other such apparatus).

It was said, in a Newbold parish magazine of April 1957, that the Rector, Rev’d Moore, was an ‘old friend’ of Rhodes. So, where did the connection between Albert Rhodes and the Rector come from? It’s really straight-forward as Moore was a curate at Brimington for some time.

So, let’s fill in a bit about Albert Rhodes blacksmith to what became Rhodes Engineering Ltd.

Blacksmith to company director

In 1953 it’s thought Albert moved from the old forge on Ringwood Road (and his house next door) to premises up the hill from Troughbrook bottom, towards Staveley, where he lived with his family. The property had and still does, have some land attached – it’s the property circled yellow on the Google Earth image in this blog. These new premises were presumably used by the business to expand into larger metal fabrications. By this time it’s probable that the business employed a number of fellow fabricators.

Piecing things together, from various contemporary newspaper articles and with information from Alan Sharp, is seems this is the basic story.

• As we’ve seen in 1953 Albert moved to Troughbrook
• By 1969 Albert was director of a company employing 20 (by 1971 he was living in Curbar)
• In 1974 the company moved to larger premises at Sheepbridge
• By 1976 they were employing 50 men. They built mainly structural and platework fabrication – as the concrete mixer shown in the advertisement in this blog demonstrates. (Albert had retired to Bournemouth in 1975, the same year his last novel was published).

By 1976 the NCB and British Steel were among their main customers – but they were also subcontractors. Albert’s son Peter was managing director. (Sadly, Albert died in Bournemouth a year later).

The company kept a bit of a low-profile media wise, but we do know that Rhodes Engineering (Chesterfield) Ltd was formed in 1999. Peter Rhodes resigned at the same time, to be replaced by other family members.

Unfortunately, only a few years later a liquidator was appointed and the company was finally dissolved three years later.

There’s a little bit of a puzzle here in that the Brimington church railings from 1949 would almost have certainly been made in Brimington.

But by the 1957 date of the Newbold work Rhodes were supposed to be operating from Troughbrook, though it’s clearly identified that he was from Brimington in the 1957 Newbold Parish Church Magazine article about the gift.

It’s quite possible that we’ve also identified another piece of Albert Rhodes’ company’s work, additional to the Brimington Parish Church railings previously identified.

In the early 1960s Rhodes was said to have made the offertory box safe in the wall at the Brimington Parish Church. This may well still be in the church.

So ends our short history of Albert and Ernest Rhodes and Albert’s success in metal fabrication and as an author. Unfortunately, it’s a story which has now been largely forgotten, but we hope that in our short series of blogs that we’ve shed a little bit of light on the company and on Albert in particular.

Our previous blogs about the Rhodes family can be found here and here.