An After School Story

A small but significant collection in the SWiB archives currently vested in The Box is that contributed by Jim Griffin. Jim was in his last year at Plymouth College when, not having made any plans to go into further education, his careers master Tim ‘Mac’ Forsyth called him in for a chat. ‘He asked me what I was planning to do when I left school. I hadn’t really given it any great thought, but I wasn’t thinking in terms of university as I wasn’t sure my parents would thank me for it. Mac asked me what paths I’d considered, what I thought I might like to do, and because my father was in the building trade I said that I could be interested in that. He asked me if I knew what a quantity surveyor was.

“Not really,” I replied.

‘Then he said that there was an opening with a local firm, Haughton’s, and if I fancied it, there was an opportunity to go and work there over the Easter holidays. He suggested that it would give me a chance to see if I liked the idea of working for them, and it would give them an idea to see if they thought I was suitable or not.

‘As it transpired I did quite like it, and they seemed happy enough with me. I think Alan Haughton, who ran the firm had been at the school and certainly he sent both of his sons, who were a little younger than me, there.

‘After the Easter break I went back to school and had a few weeks off after the end of term and then, in August 1972, I started working there full time. It was a happy place to work and I enjoyed being part of a small local team and was forever grateful that I wasn’t working for a large organisation where you didn’t really get to know many people. It was more a sort of firm you retired from – there wasn’t a lot of hiring or firing. I guess I could have earned more money with a bigger company, but that was never really my prime motivation – I enjoyed the work and liked the people I was working with. One of the guys in my year at school, Graham Goddard, was already working there, he’d left school earlier than me, and another chap, Jim Swales, who was three years older, had gone there, but was leaving, and as it transpired I was his replacement.

‘The company had a lot of interesting contracts over the years, I think they started out with Alan’s father, back in the early 1930s. St Paul’s Efford, completed 1963, demolished 2007. Obviously there was a lot of building work to be done in Plymouth after the war and the firm were involved with a good number of schools, churches, retail premises and houses. We also worked on the Civic Centre, St Andrew’s … and the Cherry Tree pub!

‘When I joined we were based in the Royal Building at the top of Royal Parade, then we moved to Ermington Terrace, and after that, Brian Cooper, a big Argyle fan, took over the company. He got together with a few others, including the architect Graham Steen, and refashioned the old primary school behind Stoke Village, into four different office suites.

‘Happy days until we were bought out, first by a national concern, Davis Langdon, and then by an American multi-national ACOM, I’m not sure they even knew what a quantity surveyor was!’