Category Archives: Commerce

Arthur Weston’s Scrap Yard

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From the Mitcham News & Mercury, 12th May 1972

Why Arthur doesn’t like
local authorities

To Merton Council, Arthur Weston’s scrap yard is just a spot on the map which is hardly likely to fit in with the new look Western-road. It’s a mechanical knacker’s yard filled to the gates with carcasses of smashed motors and heaps of their oily innards. It would, they told him, have to go.

“Arthur Weston and Sons, Scrap Metal Merchant”, along with the gipsies site, the few boarded-up warehouses and sheds that make up the grimiest corner of Fair Green, are to be cleared away. When the bulldozers and builders have gone, rows of new houses and flats will take their place. What they don’t know, at the Planning and Development Department, is that they are razing a small trading empire.

Public service

There’s Arthur’s, where for nearly 30 years he’s been carrying on where his father Herbert left off, with picking up wrecked cars and selling the decent remains to anyone who wants to come and rummage around for spare parts.

“Sometimes 24 a week — and that’s a service. Who else gets all the old dumped wrecks off the road and makes use of them? The police have told me I’m doing the public a service,” he says.

And next to him, all around him — too near for the most part, he says — are the gipsies where trading covers anything from broken down gas stoves to the breeding of small herds of assorted dogs.

“See that yard next to mine? A load of them came and squatted with their vans there and never paid one penny rent and the council couldn’t do nothing about it. And there’s me paying a rent I couldn’t divulge to you.”

The gipsies, he observed, are being offered a caravan site built especially for them.

“Me — now whose going to offer me another yard for scrap dealing? I reckon I’ll have to chuck the whole lot in. After all these years! These yards were my father’s life and they’ve been mine. I was working here when I was 10 years of age. And I really mean work. Not work like they mean today. Now its going in a matter of a few weeks. Just like that,” he said.

“I’ve got to May 31 to clear up and get out.”

At 39, small but strong, he looks older with years of pulling engines out of written-off vehicles.

“Its a dirty job but it’s true that where there’s muck there’s money. And what’s wrong with that?” This bother doesn’t just mean finding somewhere else to put the 700-odd old cars he has at his two yards in Western Road.

He also has a yard at Caterham.

“The council there have told me to clear out of that. And Wandsworth council have just told us they are going to pull down our house in Tooting. So I started to think about building a bungalow at Reigate. Of course they’ve turned down the plans for it, haven’t they?”

Arthur Weston isn’t feeling too kindly disposed towards local authorities at present. Apart from the fact that they have authority in the first place, they seem to have some very strange ways of imposing it.

By-laws

“This yard is divided into two halves. On this side I can strip down motors and do them up. But if I want to sell them I have to pull them over to that side. Don’t ask me why. That’s what I’ve been told I’ve got to do. By laws!”

He pointed to a small lean-to, used for shelter in the rain. “I rent this yard but that thing there costs £150 a year in rates.” Fighting councils, he believes. only costs you more in the end.

He loves his yards and his scrap as much as any actor loves the stage. If it wasn’t for the parting of Arthur and the business three Weston sons would carry on when he is too old.

“My youngest — he’s four — comes here already to help and cleans metal and such like,” he says.

Even so, the big ends and chassis of cars are not what they were and some wrecks are worth nothing to him.

“They don’t make cars like they used to. When my dad was in business they built them solid and there was plenty to make use of. Now? Like paper underneath most of them,” he says.

“Take hearses. When I was younger I used to deal in hearses. Plenty of good solid metal in them. I remember I went to see one in a place at Putney and I was inside lying on the floor looking at all the steel and nobs and suchlike. A bloke came and opened the door and I started moaning. Cor, he didn’t half run.” he said.

“Nowadays,” he went on sadly, “there aren’t many hearses around. And what there are are all gilt and show.”

When he started in the yard, not so much out of choice but because there was no other work about, he regarded the job as manual, not skilful. A case of necessity he thought, never dreaming he would be as dedicated and knowing about metals and their various market values as his father.

To anywhere

He and his brother will go anywhere to pick up anything that promises some future use. And Arthur has an eye for a trend as well as the metal in the chassis. In his yard at the moment is a horsebox, circa 1920.

“Belonged to Lord Derby. I went all the way to his place to get it,” he said.

But mostly it’s wrecks with bonnets or sides smashed in from the impact of crashes.

“I suppose it could turn you up a bit, knowing that people have been killed or injured in them. But you don’t think about it. Just get on with it.

“Even when a car’s been in a really bad smash and its a mess — there’s always some part of it that has a use.” he added.

He will take away a lot of memories when he closes the gates for the last time.

“The worst time was the night when someone set fire to the place. You can imagine how a fire spreads in a place like this. Burnt out, skint I was. Know who did it? If I did they wouldn’t be around today I can tell you.”

When it’s all over he will have to think what he will do next.

“I’ve got a bit. I certainly won’t have to worry about money but a man like me has got to have a job. A pub? Don’t talk stupid! I’d drink the place dry in a week.”

The biggest sadness is that there is no yard now to pass on to his son.

“But then I’ve thought perhaps I’d like something a bit better for my boys. Not, so dirty and not such hard work. Like a proper car showroom. You never go to one of those places without you see the boss in a smart suit do you? Not like me!”

Farm Labourer’s High Finance

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FARM LABOURERS HIGH FINANCE.

Mitcham Man’s Affairs.

At the Croydon Bankruptcy Court on Thursday, before the Registrar (Alderman J. E. Fox, J.P.), Henry William Seale, of Orchard-villa, Lewis-road, Mitcham, now described as a builder, came up for his public examination. There were some entertaining details. His unsecured liabilities amounted to £943 2s. 9d., with gross liabilities £3,215 13s. 9d. His assets were estimated at £5 9s. leaving a deficiency of £937 13s. 9d.

In answer to the Official Receiver, debtor explained that, he was in the first place a farm labourer, then he became a vegetable hawker, a general dealer, and a carman and contractor in turn. It was in the last capacity that he took premises in Lewis road, Mitcham, remaining there until 1908.

In 1905 he bought two acres of freehold land in Lewis-road. He had £200, and, borrowed £100 from his wife to purchase this. Financed by bankers, he built two houses – the house where he lived, and another which he sold for £200. They cost £180 – £200 to build.

Later, he built three more houses and a shop. He still had four houses left. On these he had taken a mortgage of £800 and then a second charge of £500.

His wife had earned money as a pig and poultry seller. Debtor had a contract for collecting dust with the Croydon Rural District Council, but he lost this in 1908, and, having lost this, he gave up his business, on which he was then losing, and sold his horses and carts. They fetched £60 at auction, but he only £40 from the sale. He had kept no books.

In reply to the Registrar’s suggestion that he must have made a good thing out of the pigs, as he owed so much for their food, debtor said that in an outbreak of swine fever several died, and 82 had to be killed. Some of these were not his, as he was feeding them for another person, but he paid the man compensation.

Answering another question from the Official Receiver, debtor said that his wife bought a piece of freehold land at Cheam for £35 and he built two houses on it, for which she paid. Another piece of land in Lewis-road she bought for £350 with the intention of erecting piggeries on it, but on his advice she had it dug up for 10,000 yards, as the subsoil was rich in sand. She sold it for 3s., 3s. 3d., and 3s. 6d. a yard. His wife had also bought freehold land in Arundel road, Cheam, for £150, and debtor built 13 houses on it for £150 each.

In May, 1914, debtor had at the most £40, and he purchased some freehold land in Gander Green-lane, Cheam where his wife has some property — for £230. He commenced to build seven houses on it, a firm who were going to buy them supplying £200 worth of timber. He only completed two houses, and the arrangements between the firm and himself fell through owing to the war. He had also received £750 from another man, who had agreed to pay him an advance of £150 on each house.

He had been insolvent since he gave up his business as cartage contractor, and had never succeeded in recovering himself. Every undertaking of his since 1906 had been a failure. For two months in 1914 he had run the Mitcham Timber and Building Supply Company, in Western-road. He had not mentioned this at first because he had overlooked it until he had found a book respecting the business. When he closed it down the timber was sold by auction for a about £26, of which debtor got nothing. He still owed for timber. He might have asked a Mr. Miller, who supplied him with timber, to find purchasers for him for the houses in Gander Green-lane for £1,300, and for those in Arundel-road for £2,900. He denied that when the bankruptcy proceedings started he told Mr. Miller he could do as he liked, as he hod arranged all his affairs and had no property. He had never behaved in that way to any creditor.

In answer to a solicitor who appeared on behalf of a creditor, debtor said that he had been married twenty-one years, and had lived at Carshalton. His wife had over £100 when she was married, but he did not know how much.

The examination was adjourned until February 25th.

Mitcham and Tooting Mercury, 22nd January, 1915