Lockheed - the first of the summer wine

In its heyday Lockheed - later AP - employed nearly 10,000 people and had clubs for every possible leisure activity. Not only cricket and football but sailing, rugby, table tennis, golf, photography, amateur dramatics and dozens of other after-work pursuits.

Sid Orme, aged 97, was too young for this original picture although he still reckons he must be the oldest living member of Lockheed’s Cricket Club which later changed its name to AP and continued right up until the last game in September, 1988.

Sid, who still lives in Leamington, first joined the club in 1938 when he went to work in the accounts department of the factory on Tachbrook Road.

Some of the men pictured above played with him in the first team although one of Sid’s proudest moments came in the 1950s when he opened the batting for the second team in partnership with his teenage son, Keith.

Sid said: “I was a wicket-keeper and batsman for the first team and then the second. The standard was so high that three of the players in the 1960s were picked to play for Warwickshire County Cricket Club at Edgbaston.”

Those three future professionals were Clive Antrobus, Martin Bayley and spin-bowler Eddie Hemmings, who later went on to play for England.

Clive, now aged 65, began by watching his father Lionel play for Lockheed. By 1957 he’d picked up enough of the skills to be chosen for extra coaching as an England schoolboy.

He said: “You didn’t have to work for Lockheed to play in one of their teams. I must have joined Dad in about 1962 when we had coaching from a county professional who was always there on practice nights to help and offer advice.”

Clive was only 20 when he was selected to play for Warwickshire. But being a professional sportsman in 1966 was essentially still a “gentlemen and the players” affair. After two years of playing top-class cricket at low wages the talented bowler decided he needed to get a proper job.

Now a stalwart member of Leamington Cricket Club, Clive said: “The proper job I got was back with Lockheed. I remember telling my Dad that even as an amateur I was going to play just as much cricket with Saturday and Sunday games and mid-week evening knock-outs.”

David Vaughan, who at the age of 70 is about to retire as groundsman at Leamington Cricket Club, also learned to play at Lockheed back in 1972.

As a useful bowler David was welcome in most teams which is why he moved on to Flavels when the Lockheed/AP team finally wound up.

He recalls: “During the 1960s and 1970s I think the Lockheed/AP team was the best in Leamington by a long way - it was a wonderful club.”

n Readers might be interested to learn that Warwickshire County Cricket Club, was officially founded on 8 April, 1882, at a meeting in Leamington’s Regent Hotel.