Topic: Scrap Paper @ Chance?

[David E]

For anyone who is interested, on Wednesday I managed to secure some paperwork that had been littering the old Spon Lane building of Chance Brothers.

Surprisingly, this was rejected by everyone except muggins here, who had just an hour to sift through mounds of papers that were just scattered on the floor, to retrieve a few of the more interesting items, including some large scale engineering drawings.

Some of these papers dated back to the 1920s and had been left there since 1982-ish

[Heidimin]

Wow - that's amazing! Why just an hour? Is the building being demolished?

[Della]

Good grief, David!!  You were lucky to find any useable information in a pile left to the elements like that, let alone within an timescale of an hour............

[David E]

Fortunately there were three of us. We only had an hour as the only people on site were contractors, who were on the verge of finishing their job and would lock up when finished. I was let down as my contact there had disappeared and his was mobile turned off...

The main problem was sorting the small amount of good stuff from reams and reams of records, which had minimal value and would take a lifetime to assimilate! But we got there and its now in safe storage in another glass factory.

One interesting ledger was dating to the 1920s and detailed a visit by Chance engineers to Russia - I'm sure this would have something to do with a lighthouse construction.

Meant to say, the photos just show two corners (about half the paper) - there was also a long (20 foot?) wall which had piles of paper the full length.