CES history as told by the founder, Cyril Edward Stevenson.
"Always consider the customer as the core of the business & management should lead from the front"
"I was born in 1928. I left school in March 1942. My last five years at school were a loss as I had four teachers and I was not keen on learning. I was just waiting for the day coming when I could leave school. During my school days I did not work outside of school and instead just played with the farm dogs. The neighbours said "I would be good for nothing". As the youngest child from a family of eight, I was spoiled. My father died very suddenly in 1939, he was only 52 years old and he had not left a will. At this stage only my sister Myrtle, my brother Bobbie and I were under 21 years of age, which was the age of consent at the time. All the rest of the family agreed our mother should take control of family matters for her lifetime. It was agreed my brother Bobbie who had the same Christian name as my father and was the only son living at home should inherit all. My mother as well as being a good worker was also a very good and careful manager. So at 19 years of age Bobbie was more or less in control and he had inherited my mother’s good points. I enjoyed working on the farm and it was agreed that a farm would be bought for me.
In those days local farmers had great difficulty getting supplies of lime. My brother Willie who was a policeman moved around 1947 to Benburb and became friendly with a family called Mills who had a limestone mill. He told them how difficult it was to get lime in the Mourne area (South Down). They suggested that his younger brother (myself) should buy a lorry and could work under their lime licence until I could get my own. In March 1948 we went to Dennison's in Belfast and bought a left hand drive ex army Dodge lorry which could (overloaded) carry 7 tons. I had a very bad start as I broke down at Loughgilly on my way home with a load of lime and it took two days to get the lorry going again. As well as ground lime in paper bags I also sold burnt lime. It was real slave labour as the lorry was backed into the edge of a kiln and the lime was shovelled on to the rear of the lorry. I then had to squeeze out and shovel it from the rear to the front of the lorry. It was very hot as the lime was warm and dusty. When the lime season was over or if work was slack I helped out on the farm. During this time we were on the lookout for farms for sale but nothing suitable for me came on the market.
During 1949 Mr A McConnell (Father of Doreen and Ethel McConnell) asked me if I would be interested in buying a one acre site which is now 76 and 78 Newcastle Road, Kilkeel. Again I think my mother helped with the purchase. The petrol pumps and shop was built shortly after this. My family and I lived there in an ex army house (still standing) until we built No 78 in about 1960.
In my second year of trading my mother and brother Bobbie bought me a new 9 ton Commer lorry and I started to buy potatoes and some were shipped out of Kilkeel but most were delivered to the docks in Belfast. At the same time we started to sell fertilizer, which give us a return load on the journey back from Belfast. The lime season was from February to May and the potatoes from mid November to March and the fertilizer from January to April.
In my third year of business with the help of Hugh Keown we got an order from S J Martin of Ballynahinch for a few 100 tons of sand for a job he was doing at Ardglass for which we rented Quinn's pit. Shortly after this John F Speers asked me if I would take an order for sand delivered to Newcastle. I said yes and he said to jump into his car and he took me to J R Taggart of Belfast. They were building houses in Newcastle and Mr Taggart and his site manager Bertie Lewis, John F Speers and I had a discussion and I got an order for sand delivered to Newcastle. This was a very useful order as he had 15 or 16 men (which at that time were mass producing blocks (2 a time over a one minute cycle). There was a mortar mill on site using up to 10 ton of sand per day. During the dry weather we could stock pile all the sand we had time to deliver. Thomas Hanna and I each did 5 loads a day ex Gordon's pit at Mullartown, all hand screened, and hand loaded and unloaded, 9 ton on the Commer and 7 ton on the Dodge. There were three men in the pit screening using spring mattresses for screening the sand.
After running the Commer lorry for three years we traded her in for a Leyland Comet 90 diesel which was easier to run and I think the family also covered the cost. During those early years we did make some blocks but it got to the stage where there were so many (up to twenty) making blocks in the Mourne area, mostly in back gardens as sidelines. In some cases it was cheaper to buy them than to produce them myself. Campbell's of Leestone had a good operation and did continue to produce blocks and moved to Newcastle Road. This yard was later bought by Graham's.
In 1950 we supplied 1000 tons of sand to Farrans at Bishopscourt Airport, mostly on flat lorries. On arriving at the site all the sides and the rear door were dropped and a dragline pulled the sand off. During 1950 we expanded our lime operation as the government was paying for the cost of the lime all but 12s.6d (65p) per ton. During the summer months we mostly delivered and spread lime in Co Armagh, around Keady and Newtownhamilton, also in Newcastle and Dundrum.
I think it was in the late 1950s when we bought an egg laying block machine that produced six 4" blocks per drop and around about the same time we also bought the present blockyard site at Dunavil. This site was previously part of Cranfield Airfield and had a huge concrete base. We bought a two bag capacity (100kg) second-hand mixer and I installed three phase electricity. At this time the small block producers began to quit. We saw an opportunity to expand and bought a semi automatic block machine that produced eight 4" blocks per drop. Thomas Hanna made a block grab attached to an International tractor to lift, stack and reload sixteen 4" blocks per time. Production was approximately 1000 blocks per hour. There were two men on the mixer, two barrow men, one block machine man and one grab man. We kept moving up production and bought a multiblock machine that produced twelve 4" per drop up to 3 drops per minute, a new Liner mixer, overhead bins and storage bins for bulk cement. One man on the mixer, one man on the feed truck, one man on the blockmachine, one man on the grab now handling 48 blocks per lift. The daily production was to twenty thousand 4" blocks per day.
At a plant machinery show in London, Finlays had a block machine on display that produced 44 blocks per drop. Mr Pat Mallon was the salesman on the stand. I told Pat this machine would not work in practice but he had a bale of 44 blocks that had been produced on his new Finlay 44 to prove it would. I said to Pat if it would work in our yard in Dunavil, Kilkeel we would buy it (can't remember the price). He said he would deliver one and leave it with us for a few days. We tried the machine and discovered it could double our production. We requested him to deliver us a Finlay 44 block machine as soon as possible and we would not part with the machine he had loaned us until the new one was delivered.
Also in the late 1950s we were appointed Retail Dealer for International tractors and farm machinery, which operated until the early 1980's. At this time we purchased the old school at 55 Greencastle Street, Kilkeel and started to sell petrol. We also started a Ford Car Dealership during the 1960s and both cars and tractors businesses were handled successfully until the joint managers Mr W Haugh and Mr B Haugh retired. Edward Stevenson (son) has now ownership of the properties at Newcastle Road and Greencastle Street and still sells petrol and derv. There are now Costcutter supermarkets on both sites.
During the late 1950's and 1960's we had made good progress on all fronts. We established a sand washing plant at Patterson's and bought land for sand extraction as follows; 14 acres from Mr W Hanna, 6.5 acres from E Coffey, 7.5 acres from L McKee, 2 acres from R Hanna and 2 acres from J Clarke. The last time I checked which could be 10-15 years ago we had extracted approximately 115 acres of sand and could add another 30-40 acres up to the present day.
We took over James McComb Ltd block business and machinery at Newcastle and also A. Patterson (B) Ltd of Ballygowan which had stopped trading. We had a small static block and brick plant at A Patterson (B) Ltd and also produced with a mobile block machine. The mobile block machine was transported from yard to yard. At Kilkeel on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we produced up to 120,000 4" blocks. On a Thursday and Friday we made 45,000 4" blocks at J McComb Ltd, Newcastle yard. On Saturdays we made 18,000 4" blocks at A Patterson (B) Ltd, Ballygowan. Just before buying the Finlay 44 we had bought a 2 cubic yard Winget mixer. John Finlay could not take it in that we could produce 40,000 4" blocks plus per day. He arrived at Kilkeel yard at 7am one morning and stayed all day and by 7pm that evening the production for the day was in excess of 47,000 4" blocks. He went home like a dog with two tails.
In those days we were able to buy crushed stones very cheap. For a time we got fine pin head to 3/4" for under £1 per ton ex quarry. We foresaw the time when quarries would begin to make their own blocks to maximise the price for the stone.
We were on the lookout for rock bearing ground and in early 1960's bought 17 acres at Lisowen Saintfield. We got planning permission for this quarry. Saintfield was well sited for sand lorries to bring a return load of stones to our Newcastle yard. We also supplied Ballygowan with stones from the quarry. The washing plant at Patterson's in Cranfield, where we had two stone crushers supplied Kilkeel yard with stones.
During recent years we bought another 55 acres of rock at Saintfield. In 1980 we bought Edendarriff Quarry near Seaforde and Aughrim Quarries near Kilkeel was bought recently.
In the mid 1990s the old DOE Quarry at Castlenavan was purchased and most of the plant has been replaced, we also bought an 18 acre farm next door.
During the mid 1950s we had started Ready Mixed Concrete in a small way, but since I retired in June 2004 my sons have made big progress with Ready Mixed Concrete, buying a lot of new truck mixers and have installed a very large RMC plant in Ballygowan yard. Over the last 4-5 years shipping aggregates to England has become an important part of our business".
Cyril Edward Stevenson - 12 September 2006.
