Ford Motor Company’s Dagenham Plant Community Day Volunteering
11th June 2015
A TEAM of design engineers swapped their desks at the Ford Motor Company’s Dagenham plant to spend their Community Day volunteering for a day’s work at Britain’s oldest aviation museum.
Steve Clark, senior component engineer who organised the event, said: “Being interested in preserving our engineering heritage, I decided to help the de Havilland Aircraft Museum and asked my team to join me for the day & help the Museum. They all said yes.”
At the museum the Ford team under the direction of museum Volunteer Bryan Stutter, carried out major landscaping work to prepare the way for the proposed Garden of Remembrance.
“They did a tremendous job and we were very pleased they came along to help us,” said museum marketing director Mike Nevin.
Another visit to the museum could be on the cards for the Ford team as, said Mr. Clark, Ford Motor Company encourages staff to organise volunteering in the community, & also has historic links with the aviation industry.
During the Second World War Ford’s Dagenham foundry raised £7,500 (£250,000 at today’s prices) to buy a Spitfire, and at its Manchester factory produced more than 34,000 Rolls-Royce Merlin engines which powered not only the Spitfire and Hurricane fighters but also the twin-engine de Havilland Mosquito fighter-bomber, of which the museum has three and six Merlins.