If there is one thing the north of England has lacked all my life, it is a gritter museum. At last, this omission (which is shared by the rest of the planet because the subject of this post is a world first) is to be put right, in Ripon.
The handsome market town is just two days away from opening a centre for carefully restored, vintage road maintenance vehicles – the gritters, spreaders and snowploughs about which we read, and write, so much when the UK is paralysed by winter weather. There will be a comprehensive collection dating back to the early days when mechanical war on ice and snow first replaced road gangs armed with shovels.
Why Ripon? The town may be known primarily for its cathedral, racecourse and sought-after property, but it is also the home of the UK's largest manufacturer and supplier of gritters and snowploughs. This is music to the Guardian Northerner's ears, given our firm belief in the region's ability to continue finding useful and profitable things to make. That's what the family-owned firm Econ has done since 1969.
Now showing an annual turnover of £25 million, the company employs 190 people and makes 12 new road maintenance vehicles a week as well as repairing and maintaining many already in service. It also hires its vehicles out and has a flourishing apprentice scheme.
The latter played a part in the decision to set up the museum, as director Andrew Lupton explains:
We use vehicle restoration projects as an important part of our training for the 20 or so apprentices we train at any time, and it will be great to be able to showcase some of the vehicles in a permanent facility. We have now been manufacturing commercial vehicles here for two generations. Our staff are our finest asset and we're extremely proud to count over 30 employees who have been with us for more than 20 years.
Friday's opening will see the unveiling of a 'Jubilee' gritter, an ex-Army Bedford truck made in 1972 and converted for gritter use, which has been painted red, white and blue. The local Conservative MP Julian Smith is busy mugging up on gritter facts for his opening speech at the museum, which stands alongside new showroom space for Econ's latest products.
One useful piece of ammunition might be this Northerner post about the Bishop of Lincoln blessing gritters last winter, one of our last contributions from the Guardian's former, and missed, religious affairs correspondent Riazat Butt.
Ripon already has an unusual, and good, museum of prisons and the police, plus a courthouse museum and a third at the former workhouse. Details of all three are here. The gritter shrine also has a flourishing predecessor not far down the A1 Great North Road at Diggerland in Castleford. Maybe one day Econ will expand its facilities further on similar lines, allowing visitors to have a go.
