Mr Walker begins by showing us a book with many iron fireplaces, and radiators, gates, post boxes and cookers, all of which his company, Allied Iron Founders, at Iron Bridge, Coalbrookdale, made. We summarised only a small part of this, because you would need to see the book for it to make sense. We have also been quite selective in transcribing and summarising other parts of this long and interesting interview.

Now, this book here, is the book; and I'm one of the few people in London to have it. If you look at these pages here, they are the only ones you're interested in. There's nothing in America like this at all... Now these cooking utensils were cast iron. My grandmother, who brought me up as a boy because my dad was in war in the Middle East, she had one of those.

What were they like?

Well they are not glamorous by any means. They are black and you had to get up early in the morning about 4.30 to light the fire so by the time my grandfather was getting up ready to go to work it was nicely blazing so my grandfather could have his breakfast in comfort.

In those days, you see, men were the king pins; not like it is today, where women are climbing up to the same level. But in those days men were regarded as gods. If you asked them a question and they answered, you you're doing all right. Which was crazy....

Coming back to where we started... When I was with my grandparents, what happened... take for example washing day: We used to be up about 4.30 and get the fires going. Then my grandmother... because my grand father was one of the bosses in the mining companies in Yorkshire. So he had... a little money and he had himself a house built. This was two rooms downstairs and two upstairs. That was a big house in those days; not very big today though. So he brought his wife a mangle. There were mangles, but not many people had them. It had two rollers, and you'd actually turn the handle, and your clothes were running through. It would squeeze all the water out of it. The clothes would be in a tub. In those days they were made of wood, with battens round them to stop the water coming out. My grandmother had what they called a Peggy tub. It was a long spike with knobs on it coming out. You used to put it in the barrel where the water was, and we would lay it down, like that, so everything got rubbed round... There was no washing machines to dry them, or get rid of the soap etc. After it had all gone through these mangles... You had to be very careful not to get your fingers stuck in it either.

Then you had to work out what day you were doing it, because there were streets were the mines were, and there was always a dead end because there was a railway going along there, and you couldn't go over the railway in those days. So you had to work out who was having a wash day, or if anyone could have a wash day, because someone might be coming from the mines delivering coal. They weren't in sacks those days, they were in carts, and they had little places down the bottom of each garden, like a small house, where they opened a door and tipped all the coal in. So they couldn't have any coal messing about, because if they came when you had all your clothes out you had to take them all down, and start again. This happened quite regularly and people got really annoyed about it. So they got used to a lot of people washing on the same day.

Then when I used to come home from school at lunchtime, we had some snack at lunchtime in those days, you would find the main table in your main room, which was a big square table, which you used to eat off, all the seats were on the top of the table and you used to eat with your head underneath the seats. That happened every time it was a wash day. It was murder. We used to hate it. We were young and could get our heads under, but my grandmother couldn't.

Monday was the washing day and Thursday was baking day. There was no bread delivered in those days, and you had to make your own bread. We would have big fires... open the door and pop your bread in. When we used to come home at lunchtime every thing was on the top of the table again... Apart from making umpteen loafs, she used to make a big round piece... nice and soft. And it was beautiful, with hot butter and blackcurrant jam... you really miss it.

We talked some more about cast iron, and then began to ask questions on some other topics:

What are your first memories of a telephone?

I left school at 17. That was old in those days, because you should normally leave at 15 16. My father, when he came back from Middle Fast, he was determined that I got to use the typewriter. I could have killed him because, you see, the school I was at, the only way you could learn to use a type writer was if you stayed behind on a Friday night. So you finished school at 4 o'clock, then you used to give half an hour to have a cup of tea, then you had to go in the art class to start typing. But what bothered me, you see, was the typewriter was in front of you, then you had a board over the top, so you can't see what your hands are doing. So you had to learn where your fingers are, and where you had to push down. People got used to it, and would start pushing the seat away so you could slightly see under the board, but the teacher would clump you round the head if you did this. It was hard work but it did teach me how to do it. From then, on we were forced to go to something like a polytechnic to see what they were doing with shorthand typing, we used to have to sit through about three different people shooting questions at us and we used to get sick and tired of it.

Then I got my first job; I found my first job myself. It was a firm who was controlling rubber plantations in places like Kuala Lumpur. I got into this firm and they said: "Where do you want to start?". So I said I would like to start in with the rubber plantations, but they said iIcouldn't do that: "You start in the Insurance Department". So I had to go down into the Insurance Department to start. The first day they said: "You hear that?". So I said "Yes". "Well go and answer it". And I said: "What is it?". And it was a telephone. It was the telephone, where the piece you put to your ear was on a wire, so you had to unhook it and stick it to your ear and then talk into this thing down here. You had to get used to using both hands, not like today, where you can stick it under your chin and hope for the best. Everyone used to use that telephone thing. And they used to cough, or spit; and it wasn't clean... This telephone was full of germs... That was the first telephone. I've always been used to them, because I was one of the first people in the firm to have a pushbutton one. You can really speed things up with that.

Television? When did you first get a television in your house?

The only way to get one was to rent one. I had been married about 2 years. The screens would always go.

What was the first television you had like?

It was a Ferguson. The design was clumsy. It was because it had wood sides, and it was a cabinet job, which was ridiculous because you didn't need a cabinet job. It looked like some of the old radios: a lot of bulbs. Designed for nothing...

What are your first memories of the vacuum cleaner?

Those days it was brooms. In those days people did not have carpet on the floor. It was too expensive...It was often linoleum, which you did on your hands and knees or with a mop...

What are your first memories of radio?

That was constant, but I suppose the main time I first met radio was not through listening to it, but only through what my father was listening to. Because in those days you had the football pools coming over. What he had wasn't a radio but a crystal set. Radios hadn't been invented then...A crystal set had a piece of metal that looked like aluminium, but which was akind of 'granite' [galena]. And you had a stick with a wire on it all fixed in a small box, no wider than that [gestures a few centimeters]. And you'd got to have an aerial which you could put up on a stick in your room. And then you had to fiddle around with this stick, with the bit of wire on the end of it, to find a spot on this piece of crystal...where you got an answer. And you'd get a scratching sound coming up in your ears.. Then "Click" and you'd got it in. You could listen to it then. No licenses to pay; just free. Used to listen to 'Sports Report'... Boys at school made them, but it didn't last long. The radio soon came in.

What was the radio like when it first came in?

They used to get a lot of interference, with so many dials. You used to lose a lot of programs for ten minutes. It was murder... Valves used to go...

What are your first memories of a microwave cooker?

We produced one of the early microwaves... When we first got them made, we realised there was quite a few things missing. They kept going wrong for some reason. So after a while we decided to forget it, and stopped making them. Then a year later they came back with renewed ones.

Did you have one in your home?

No. Didn't trust them. Well I'd lived with them, hadn't I. We've been happy with gas and electricity.

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