BRAINTREE-BORN Tommy Harrington spent his life in the building trade as a joiner and after the First World War went into partnership with Stan Key.

They operated from 81 South Street and were joined later by Henry Fish.

Declaring that Stan lacked drive, Tommy and Henry set up at Fitch’s Farm, Cressing Road, in 1926, as Harrington & Fish, builders and undertakers.

The photograph is just as I remembered it but the nameboard was knocked down by a brick lorry and was fixed to the gable wall of the house.

Often the workshop door would be open and Mr Gibbs – an employee who lived in the house – could be seen making coffins at a rate of two in three days, all cut from solid timber and worked with hand tools.

Henry was a gifted joiner and carver while Tommy managed the firm and attended to the undertaking.

Nevertheless, he would go into the workshop at night and make joinery items as a hobby.

He bought an oak tree and had it ripped into boards and from it made his own coffin which he kept under his bed across Cressing Road at number 60.

While the firm built a number of dwellings in the area, they carried out a lot of maintenance and repairs, and their workman pushing a handcart with an assortment of materials aboard was a common sight.

Tommy always wore a black suit and tie but never a hat and was regularly seen at hospitals "eyeing up prospective customers" people said.

He carried out my grandfather’s funeral in 1952 at a plot by the wall in Stisted churchyard. He said to my grandmother "There’s plenty of room in there for you," but she was not amused and Mr Hurry, of Bradford Street, took her funeral in 1958.

On that day, Tommy called all his men out to see a Cressing Road funeral that took place without him.

Henry died in 1961, and after Tommy’s wife died, he took his lunch at the Phoenix and, when it closed, the Nag’s Head.

He became so feeble that he would put all his money on the table and tell the waitress to take the right amount.

He died in March 1984, aged 91.