Bill Pinchers stands with a group of his workmates – tough looking men, waiting for a red hot bar of steel to make its way towards them inside one of the last hand-rolled steel mills in Britain. Outside, the Black Country weather is doing its worst with heavy rain being driven almost horizontally by a cold autumn wind.

Inside the mill the heat is overpowering and as the specially built furnace doors open briefly, another glowing bar rushes its way down the track towards the first set of rollers 50 metres away. The incandescent metal is shaped and stretched each time it passes through more sets of water-cooled rollers as it moves inexorably towards Bill and the others waiting to thread it though the tools that will put the final pattern and shape into the searingly hot metal.

Pinchers performs a ‘dance of death’, deftly avoiding the lethal strip of hot steel , now over 10 metres in length and as rubbery as a liquorice lace squirming across the metal floor, grabbing it with long handled metal tongs, just inches away from his boots, before feeding it like some unruly glowing snake into the confines of the machinery once more. One mistake here and limbs or lives can be lost in an instant.

Eventually the steel will be formed into strips shaped to make Victorian style hand rails, horseshoes, lawn mower blades, window sections and even miniature railway tracks. These are exported all over the world and Operations Manager John Legg jokes that they can’t make the metal window sections fast enough to keep up with the demand. Wars in distant lands bring an unexpected bonus in sales of building products it seems.

John Legg’s mill is based in Ettingshall, Wolverhampton where many of the old ‘metal bashing’ factories which were once prolific in the area have long since gone, replaced by shops, houses, and new roads with roundabouts sporting sculptured tributes to the area’s industrial past.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The steamy, hot ‘Dante’s inferno’ at Legg Brothers Ltd., is a world away from Bill Pinchers hobby and his passion, which is breeding and flying hunting falcons. He spends his leisure hours in an environment that could hardly be more different than the one of the factory. Bill can be found with a falcon on his arm, breathing the clean upland air of Shropshire, Staffordshire or Worcestershire, enjoying a sport that is centuries old and filled with arcane words and more than a little mythology.

Once the preserve of Arab princes and warlords, hunting with falcons came to Europe with travellers returning from the Middle East, and it was already a frequent sight in Saxon times, but despite its apparent elitist lineage, there has always been a place for the commoner, with references to The Knave’s Bird or the Yeoman’s Bird for instance.

Pinchers is perhaps one of the last members of a dying breed. Men who work in the heat and noise of the Black Country, but whose heart and soul is to be found in the open air, in touch with the natural environment that the Industrial Revolution destroyed over two centuries ago. It is as if there is some “folk memory” that calls such men back to the rural roots that their great -grandfathers would have been familiar with. Bill was given a linnet in a cage by his own grandfather when he was only seven years old, and this provided an insight into the world of the wild creatures that still fascinate him. Although we frown upon their behaviour now, catching and caging wild birds was part of their life and often the only pleasure and relief from the grind of a factory.

We followed Bill to one of his hunting grounds on the Staffordshire/Shropshire borders, and as we drove behind him, it was strange to see a trio of hooded falcons, like nodding dogs in the back of his small hatchback, as we wound our way through busy streets lined with red brick terraced houses. Soon we come to the open farmland where the first signs of winter wheat are pushing through the black soil of Staffordshire. With the falconer carrying a home made “cadge”, on which the birds perch as he walks, we make our way across the fields and find a sheltered spot, where he can exercise and train his favourite birds. In the factory, the noise is a deafening mixture of hammering and screeching metal, but here the only hammering is from a woodpecker somewhere in the woods behind us, and the shrill shriek of the falcons as they sniff the air.

Taking his position twenty five metres away, the falconer whirls the lure around his head and calls – in a flash of feathers and talons, the falcon launches herself at dazzling speed, and in a matter of seconds is on the lure and back to the ground. At this point, the bird is rewarded with morsels of raw meat fed from Pincher’s gloved hand.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The morning wears on, with several training flights like this, when from nowhere an unfortunate Mallard drake chooses to overfly the Gyr’s domain. This time the launch is unexpected and spectacularly powerful as the falcon homes in and does what nature made her for. The duck is downed in one devastating strike, and the Gyr stands on the broken carcass and begins to rip the feathers from the breast.

Bill’s dream is to develop a business where he can breed and improve these birds, and market them to the Middle East where demand is strong. A particularly beautiful bird, with a good pedigree can sell for thousands of pounds, and Bill, who has flown falcons since he was 16, has already established a reputation and contacts in the area. As a mark of respect and love for their birds, an Arab falconer will hunt one bird for only one year, before releasing it to the wild as a “thank you” – something which means the demand for new birds is continuous.

Always on the look out for ways to get more involved with this “other world” and maybe inspired by the 1930s feature film of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn, Bill also sees potential in training birds for the film and TV market.

As the Autumnal afternoon light fades, and a cold mist rises from the ground, it’s time for Bill Pinchers to head back to Coseley, where his house is surrounded by thousands of similar properties. TV screens are flickering in front rooms as he lovingly returns his falcons to their shed in the back garden and tidies away the equipment, before changing into heavy boots and heading off for the evening shift at the mill once more.

 

 

Story and photos by John Robertson and Bob Caddick.
‘JR’ - 07850 931219 john@jr-photos.com
Bob - 07920 133159 bob.caddick1@btinternet.com