Leave school, job at Sankey's, set up for life...

It was the same story for generations of Shropshire working folk who staked their futures with GKN Sankey at Hadley, which was the county's major industrial employer with employees being bussed in from as far away as Ludlow in its heyday.

And this aerial photo from Bridgnorth postcard collector Ray Farlow gives an idea of the massive scale of the Hadley Castle works, which took its name from a castellated tower within sight of the plant.

Former Sankey workers will be able to identify what's what, although not necessarily, as this was a huge realm with many separate domains, like the press shop, the wheel shop, the New Assembly Building, and so on.

It may well also be before their time as, while this photo is undated, that building in the foreground (now disappeared) is the new wheel shop which was built at the end of the war and was in production in 1946. Its pristine appearance suggests that the photo was taken not long after completion, so we'll take a punt that the image is from around 1950.

To get your bearings, we're looking roughly south east, with Castle Street upper right, and Hadley church in the top right hand corner. Far left, a canal skirts the site, and the local rail network is clear to see.

It was much more than a place of employment. It was a community of its own, with various sports and social clubs, a male voice choir which called it a day as recently as 2015, and much else besides. It even had its own newspaper, The Sphinx.

The football stadium, which was built later on that green space between the works and Hadley, was part of what local folk claim was once the biggest and best sporting complex in Shropshire. It included a cricket field and pavilion, two bowling greens, squash courts, an air rifle range, and even a huge Scalextric track.

The works canteen at the centre of the complex – which doubled as the famous Sankey’s ballroom – was home to a host of sporting activities which included boxing, badminton, judo, chess and crib.

Sankey’s stadium was opened on Saturday, August 29, 1959. Facilities were basic at first, with no covered accommodation or dressing rooms. These were added in 1960. The stadium was a venue for mass meetings during the great Sankey’s strike of 1970 involving over 5,000 workers - which gives an idea of how big an employer the firm once was - which brought the British motor industry to its knees.

Today, like so much in the picture, it is just a memory, as the stadium site is covered with housing.

Sankey's association with Hadley began in 1910 when Messrs Joseph Sankey & Sons of Bilston bought the then Castle Car Works, with the first workers being transferred to the site from Bilston until local recruiting took off.

A huge and diverse range of products followed, from wheels to vending machines, and from agricultural equipment to phone kiosks. In wartime it turned out bombs, mines, depth charges and almost 1,000 Spitfires.

However, as the 21st century unfolded, GKN at Hadley was a shrunken giant, and ran down to a few hundred workers. GKN Wheels was bought by German investment firm Aurelius in 2020 and renamed moveero in 2021. 

Today moveero at Hadley - in the modern way, it is styled with a lower case first letter - proudly embraces its Sankey heritage stretching well over a century. It bills itself as "a world leading manufacturer of off-road wheels and hub systems."

As for Hadley itself, there used to be a sculpture in the shopping heart celebrating its links with Sankey's. It was called the Chassis Plant, but was scrapped when the shopping centre was redeveloped.

There is another nod to Sankey's in the form of a yellow GKN wheel hub mounted on a grass verge alongside Haybridge Road, which has survived despite one or two local councillors fretting that it might distract passing motorists.