Tuesday May 22 2012
History Archive
Village History
It’s a Delson dog’s life
Posted on October 15 2010 at 9:31:58 0 comments
A few months ago, as an aside to an article about the 60th birthday celebrations for the Dellow car in Alvechurch, we asked if anyone knew the whereabouts of the “Delson Dog”.
It had been made by an apprentice at the Delson works off Latimer Road, we wrote, and was created for a village “dog show” in 1967 in which animals made from any material could be entered as long as they resembled a dog.
Management at Delson, which manufactured fastenings and other engineering supplies, were so taken with the creation that he became the company’s mascot and appeared as a line drawing on its literature.
And now we know what he looked like in real, three-dimensional life . . . well, almost.
The Delson Dog’s creator, Maurice Perry, contacted us to say he didn’t have the original dog show model, but he did have two smaller replicas.
Maurice, who grew up and spent his first 28 years in Alvechurch, now lives on the Willows estate in Aston Fields, Bromsgrove, with his wife, Hazel, also a native of Alvechurch.
He invited The Village to see his Delson Dogs – one in its brass state and one that had been given a chrome-plated finish – and told us their story.
“I started at Delsons in 1957 and left when it finished in about 1987,” said Maurice, who is now 67. “But I wasn’t an apprentice, I was a tool-maker and was asked by the new works manager to make the dog.
“The Swan pub was running a competition for manufacturers to produce a dog out of what they made. For example, the baker entered one made out of bread.
“Well, our dog won and then the directors decided it would be good to make smaller ones they could give to customers as paper weights.
“They were all made by hand and each one took about two days. About 50 were made in all. They were brass, but the ones given to the customers were chrome-plated.
“I can only think one of the directors must have the original somewhere.”
The following year, The Swan ran a similar competition, but this time it was a “bird” show.
“I made a bird for that show. It was really good and I was very pleased with it,” Maurice recalls. “It was much better than the dog, but the spring factory in Tanyard Lane won that year.
“Because it didn’t win, there was only the one original and I would love to know where that is,” Maurice added.
If anyone knows where the Delson Bird is, let us know at The Village and we can arrange a reunion.
Among Maurice Perry’s memorabilia from his days at Delson Co is this aerial photograph of the factory, showing the backs of the houses at the top of Latimer Road on one side and the railway line on the other. The industrial buildings are long gone, replaced by the neat homes of Dellow Grove.
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