NEWS

The Story of Claude Fenton

To celebrate the launch of the new website, we thought it only too apt to begin our Claude Fenton Group News section with a story about the company founder as told by his son and now Chairman, Paul Fenton…

The original business was started by my father Claude Fenton in the mid 1930’s although it was not formed into a limited company until 1949. Claude had acquired the use of some land near Twyford Berks, with the object of becoming a chicken farmer. He took up residence on the site with my mother and lived in a caravan to be near his flock. There was no water on the land so he did the obvious thing and dug a well with the help of my Grandfather who worked in London during the week. Grandfather came to the farm at the weekends and hauled up earth and lowered bricks down in a bucket whilst my father dug away down below, lining the well with bricks as he progressed downwards.

Claude bought a small lorry to transport his egg production to his customers some of which were in London and it was a natural progression to start delivering firewood and coal at the same time. He had found whilst digging the well there was gravel under the land and started loading this by hand into a small tipper truck and transporting this to customers who had purchased it. The business had started. Fairly soon he had purchased two larger tipper lorries and was working for contractors and aggregate producers. (By larger I mean five and six tonnes GVW!!) Although the lorries were small by today’s standards you can see from the photo below that they were large enough to strain the local bridges.

Newspaper clipping from 1937 showing the truck which was driven by Claude Fenton after the bridge it was on collapsed in Sonning.

At the start of the Second World War in 1939, Claude and his lorries were requisitioned to work on constructing airfields in Northamptonshire. Despite this being an exempt occupation as part of the war effort Claude was drafted into military service with the Royal Signal Corp and after training was posted to Singapore where he was unfortunately captured along with some 200,000 other allied troops. My mother did not know whether he was even alive for some two years.

He spent the rest of the war working as a prisoner of war on the infamous “Death Railway” from Burma to Thailand built by POW’s and local slave labour. He was lucky to survive as many did not and at the end of the war after the Japanese surrender returned home weighing only seven stone. Upon returning he took back control of the lorries from a good friend who had looked after the running of the business during the war and set about expanding the operation.

A pencil drawing of Claude Fenton (1916 – 1982) by Kat Rowe