Having read in your column marked Heritage, I feel I must correct a few anomalies regarding the history as one of the few remaining people who worked for all three companies - Cunliffe Owen Aircraft, Briggs (never Brookes) motor bodies and Ford Motor company.

Briggs Southampton had a male voice choir for a while as did Briggs Dagenham.

You are right we made the Ford trader and ET6 shell which we sent to Langley to put on wheels.

That plant was eventually taken over by an Italian company, after which we seem to not require their services.

In the late fifties, Ford claimed the whole estate.

The first arrival was a firm called Kelsey Hayes who I believe made various springs for the motor trade.

The following history we know, the arrival of the Transit, followed by the Anglia van, the eventual closing of the Press shop, now outdated, which made stampings for our sister plant in Genk in Belgium.

My working life, in production offices, led to disposing of old redundant dies for scrap. You saw what history had gone before, the production of steel helmets for the army. The cab roof for Commer cars which had a cut out for operating a machine gun.

For a number of years in the early days there was a wooden mock up of a passenger airliner in A building.

The prototype actually flew successfully, but the market was taken by a Vickers of the same type.

Ah! Happy days

Alan Blandford

Southampton