I joined Felixstowe Dock & Railway Co in the early 1970s when Posford Pavery & Ptnrs (PPP) were the civil engineering consultants to the Dock.
As the Dock’s Civil Engineer I had considerable interaction with both the senior staff and those working on site.
I met John on a couple of occasions when for instance I designed temporary works after a vessel had overrun the container quay and damaged No 1 berth which was the pontoon berth which had been designed by PPP.
John’s designers had used the same celluar form as for the forts so when the vessel impacted the pontoon it remained afloat so that I was able to design temporary bearings and allow the berth still to be used for loading the ASN ferries to Rotterdam.
He was unassuming and charming, although known as being ‘tite’. My family were very young when we arrived in Suffolk and an engineer’s salary was not fast so my wife repainted a tricycle as the children had grown out of it and offered it for sale.
The teams working together on the various projects and the Northern Development roared with laughter when I told the tale of returning home to find that Jane, my wife, had sold the tricycle to John for a tidy sum. her description ‘A charming white haired man from Falkenham – I think he said his name was John Posford’ .
I mentioned that Maunsel used to have the rubric ‘Hennebique Concrete’ across the top of the drawings from that consultancy. This alluded to a French builder Francois Hennebique, who first used reinforced concrete for fire protection of iron structures, and then patented it for producing structures similar to those commonplace today. I believe that it was during the First World War service in France that the contact between Maunsel and Hennebique was made.