The Worshipful Company’s Master for 2025 was Stephen Sanders. After the Mayoral Court, in his address to the Annual Feast, he began by outlining something of his background. A few of the older Smiths and their guests might remember The Radio and may recall where Freeman Stephen recalled the lines he quoted as he began. Quoting Daphne Oxenford, saying:
…… “Are you sitting comfortably, then I’ll begin”. Or, the Dylan Thomas classic poem for radio, Under Milk Wood “To begin at the beginning”.
He continued. “My very first real job, a school holiday job, was at a small printer’s in Tamworth. It was where printing ink must have got into my blood! The old printing works was soon to be swept away in a redevelopment, a shiny new shopping center. That’s gone too now.
Then, after studying at art collage my first real job was in the nearly new Greenwich Theatre, before, not being a fan of London, returning to civilisation and the design department at Armitage Shanks. Whilst there, other interests blossomed, arts, part-time teaching, mostly in college, but in the army and prison too. There were other extra-mural activities, tissue-paper hot air balloons, chamber music and even actual murals!
Here I must pause, talking of calligraphy reminds me, I should thank Stevie Sheldon who has scribed our place names so well.
Back to olden times; I took up flying, gliding to be precise. That took up many happy Sundays. I was never very much good at it, but the club could usually use the plane again. A particularly bad landing, pointy end down, led to my being dubbed ‘the Armitage Shanks test pilot’! And that plane never flew again, although I did.
I moved on to a part of the Glynwed empire, still relentlessly bothering printers, and a decade later joined an engineering firm. After five years came a restructuring and the ‘dark years’, a stretch in retail. On that occasion, I did bail out. Then I found myself chairman of the newly established charitable trust that is committed to addressing the problems of loneliness, mostly amongst the elderly, but certainly not exclusively. Younger members of our community can find themselves lonely, too. I can’t help but think I got retirement wrong sometimes.
Our worshipful Company goes back a very long way. Some of it lost in the mists of time. It very nearly petered out altogether in the first half of the last century. We have also had the distinction of last year having been led by Derek Osburn who, we are sure, has the distinction of being the oldest master of a guild in the country. Thank you, Derek.
We have survived the ravages of history, perhaps from the times of the Plantagenets. We certainly survived the reigns of the tyrannical Tudors. In 1601, the Ordinances of our Company were confirmed by the justices at the assizes in Stafford, and the Company was referred to as ‘an Ancient Society’. During the Civil War, Smiths may well have supplied both sides. Our history is important and worth exploring. Ladies and gentlemen, raise your glasses.