52 YEARS OF STEAM OWNERSHIP!
2020 Covid survivor Terry Maynard talks to the editor about his life and the seven engines that he has owned over the past 52 years with his wife Val, who he married in 1966. Val was also a victim of Covid in March 2020 and was in a serious condition at one stage, but has thankfully pulled through and both have now recovered from the epidemic as best you can, stay safe says Old Glory.
Amazingly Terry’s father had nothing to do with engines or machinery. He was a chef by trade and worked for Lord Cornwallis on the Linton Park Estate at Offham, near Maidstone in Kent. His young son was mad on football and cricket, which he played at every opportunity he could, including for his local Offham football team.
After leaving school he was off to John Prichards’ 25,000 broiling chicken farm at Wrotham Heath some 4½ miles away from home, which was an uphill ride on his pedal cycle. It was a gruesome job for a young lad really including a lot of nightwork one way or other. He got on well here, but he wanted more money and there was not much future in the farm job, as there wasn’t for the chickens themselves!
This area of west Kent is full of quarries and he found a job in 1964 starting at 5am every day at ARC Borough Green mixing black top in a Stothert & Pitt of Bath mixing plant. It was hard work but it paid well and there was plenty of work here. He then went off to work in the Offham quarry where he drove the Foden dumper and other plant, plus the redoubtable Ruston-Bucyrus 38RB excavator, digging hard old ragstone. There was no blasting in those days and it was hard work for
