Preston history: friends and former GPO apprentices recreate 6 decade old picture but what has changed?

Back in 1965, five seventeen-year-old friends from Preston– Tom Monks, Jack Billington, Martin Berry, Dave Morne and Pete Ward – posed for a picture at the Adelphi pub on Fylde Road.

The group were all telecommunication engineering students at Preston Polytechnic (now the University of Central Lancashire), working as apprentices at the GPO HQ on Moor Lane between 1965-1972.

After their studies, all five stayed in telecommunications until their retirement, and whilst some worked in Preston all their lives, even those who worked away – for instance Martin in Kenya and Jack in Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa – returned to Preston in 1974~ and 1994 respectively.

The original picture was shared to the Post by Jack, who says that despite their many travels abroad “they still kept in touch”, although as the years later passed, they did become more distant.

Jack, who attended Frenchwood County Secondary School alongside Martin, has shared the old picture with the Post as only last month, the group reunited to recreate it in what forms a wonderful snapshot of history.

How did the remake take place?

Jack, who spends his time running a B&B in Heysham, says he attended his first reunion of old GPO apprentices on the first Thursday in June, and when he saw three of his old friends, he was reminded of the group picture and decided to persuade the missing member to join for the next month’s reunion so they could remake it.

Jack explained: “I came back to Preston and went to a reunion, it was very interesting because all the people in that first photograph were still around, not all the others are for various reasons, so it was really nice. I thought about the photograph and how we could all try to get together in the same place. I tried to get the picture taken in the Adelphi pub… I thought it could be a story in time.”

On the first Thursday of July, Jack went to scout out the Adelphi before the others joined him but said the inside the layout had changed so drastically – he recalls when it used to have a gun shop inside it! – that it was no longer clear where they had originally been sat.

Instead the group met in The Grey Friar Whetherspoons to capture the mirror image photograph...

Besides the pub, what else has changed in 60 years?

With all five having met whilst working for the GPO, Jack’s first answer to this question touched on how the company they knew has changed, and how this reflects a wider societal shift.

Jack said: “Before any privatisation, they were just two service companies and that was the best thing about it, if you joined the GPO you joined for life... and you had to sign up for the Official Secrets Act so it was a very loyal place and that's why we still keep as friends… but today, with a lot of these big companies, I think that loyalty between employer and employee has gone… school leavers certainly don’t stay in the same job for fifty years like we did.”

As telecommunicators, Jack also discussed how the technology they helped build has changed the world far more drastically than they thought it would back then.

Jack explained: “I would always go back and be that telephone engineer, because we did nice things for people, we got them talking, but now I'm not sure about the internet, it's perhaps too much the other way. For me walking the streets in 65’, seeing somebody with a phone in their hands, they would have been an alien, but now everybody's got a phone.”

And the personal changes?

Between the group, Jack told the Post “there was no difference at all!”

When asked if the pints were as good as they were back in 1965, he retorted “Oo I wonder how many pints we’ve drunk between us … work that out with 60 years of drinking!”