Slade Green lady's dad pops up in Vickers factory Armistice photo (From News Shopper)

Slade Green lady's dad pops up in Vickers factory Armistice photo

10:57am Friday 26th October 2012 in News By Tim MacFarlan, Bexley and north Kent reporter

A FORMER librarian from Slade Green remembered something special about an old photograph printed recently in News Shopper.

Mavis Bradley, aged 79, says the striking image of 14,500 Vickers armaments factory workers on Armistice Day 1918 features her dad Leslie Bones when he was a just a 17-year-old toolmaker.

The Oak Road resident claims she once even managed to spot her father in the picture when a member of the public came in to Crayford Library to examine a copy.

She said: "A young lady who was sorting out her family history came into the library because somebody had told her about this photograph.

"We sat down together and directly she put her finger on this area, I said: 'I can't believe it: it's my father'.

"I knew he was in there because he had told me."

Unfortunately the News Shopper version wasn't big enough for Mrs Bradley to pick out her dad again but she remembers him well as a man with a sharp practical mind.

She said: "He always worked with his hands.

"I can remember when we were children that if anything went wrong with anything mechanical he would just take it in to the shed and fix it."

She added: "He was a very clever man; before his time.

"If he had been around now he would have gone to university or something like that."

"Crayford was a very busy, very bustling little town."

Mr Bones lived to be 94 and later worked for a watch and clock makers in London and the Kent Electric Company putting up wooden posts carrying power lines.

The factory on Maiden Lane made the famous Vickers machine gun and aircraft like the FB5 'Gun-bus' and the Vickers Vimy during the First World War.

It finally closed in 1985 and was completely demolished in 1998 to make way for the Tower Retail Park, opened in July 1999.