The History of Ruddington Depot
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Under the Hammer
Selling off the surplus
In 1946, the Ministry of Supply (later part of the Ministry of Defence), decided to auction off surplus war equipment from the Army, Navy and Air Force from sites around the country – Ruddington Depot being the largest. After consultation, the contract was given jointly to three local auction houses - Richardson & Linnel of Derby together with Turner, Fletcher & Essex and Walker, Walton and Hanson of Nottingham, the latter sharing the selling but in sole charge of the cataloguing, advertising and organisation of the sales.
The first sale was held at the beginning of July 1946, and consisted of some 800 trucks, 300 cars, 1,900 motorcycles and hundreds of lots of spare parts . Conditions for the sales at first were pretty basic, as Senior Auctioneer Robert Hanson, who joined the team a year later in 1947, remembers:
“We sat in a room in a tin shed with a cast iron boiler and wooden benches all the way round. It was draughty, it was horrid and they treated the punters pretty badly. They were awful places. The lavatories were no good, and the food was b-awful, but we had to put up with it.”
The cashiers’ desk in the sale room as an auction begins at Lot 1Nevertheless,
sales were brisk with up to 150 lots an hour going under the hammer. Sales
could last up to 10 days at a time (although the average was nearer to 5)
and as each sale ended and buyers collected their purchases, more and more
lots of vehicles and miscellaneous items were shipped in by the Ministry via
road and rail.
A 25% deposit was required on the sale day for purchases made. The names of those who didn’t pay or “forgot” would be placed on a blackboard for all to see, which seemingly proved an incentive for most to pay promptly. The balance could be paid no later than 7 days after the sale and any lots not collected or paid for in full would automatically go into the next sale. This didn’t happen often, although sometimes buyers did have difficulties moving the lots off the depot – petrol was apparently siphoned off from the fuel tanks of vehicles as they waited for sale, some didn’t have the necessary keys and others even had to be craned onto low loaders.
Bernard Slack moved to Ruddington in the early 50’s and worked in the offices and stores on the site for 80/- (about £4.00) a week:
“They ran three auction sites up here, big sites. You could see the lines and lines of vehicle guns and tanks coming in and as one park was being filled up and being got ready for auction, the next park was being ‘lotted’ up, and the third park was where the auction was taking place.”
The auctions provided casual work for other people living locally at the time. The small canteen that had been there when Robert Hanson had started in the late 1940’s had been extended by the time Roslyn Wilson’s mother started working there in the 1970’s. During sale days this would cater for the many buyers (up to a 1,000 plus) who would attend and she recalls that they would make over 2,000 sandwiches per day as well as providing hot meals, cakes and drinks.
Other locals helped with organising the lots (mostly vehicles) on the site when they arrived from the Ministry together with portering duties on sale days. Jack Abbott’s father was one of some dozen men employed thus:
“…you had people stood at the door and made certain they got seats and all that, and you had people inside making certain that the right person was found for the sale if they didn’t stand up, you know, pointing out.”
In the sale room itself there would be seating for approximately 400 people and a team of auctioneers would work in relay, with just a break for lunch, in order to get through all the items for sale on time.
The Story > Chapter 7 > Section 7.01