Asense of finality is evident to anyone who lingers for long at Hick Hargreaves.

Over recent weeks I have been helping to identify those business records that should be preserved in the local archive some 16 years after I submitted my history of the Soho Foundry to the University of Liverpool.

Readers of the Bolton Evening News may well recall my modest accounts of Benjamin Hick's activities and the reputation for engineering excellence enjoyed by Hick Hargreaves over several generations, in times both good and bad.

The refuse skips are constantly being filled and removed from the "old firm", as the shops, bays and offices are progressively gutted of redundant materials.

The work's clock (first installed about 1885 and made in Bolton) was taken down the other week. Even the factory cat has an uncertain future after many years on the "payroll", since there is apparently no place for her in the new set-up at Westhoughton.

The purpose of this letter is not to dwell upon past glories and achievements in engineering at Crook Street, I wish, instead, to sound a discordant note to that of BOC Edwards -- the new owners of Hick Hargreaves -- who announced that they were creating a "broader platform for growth" when they bought the brand and expertise possessed by the enterprise.

That brand, the very name Hick Hargreaves, seems destined to be discarded once a decent interval of time has elapsed. But more than a name is passing from the scene.

Behind the gloss placed upon the acquisition of the "old firm's" experience in the design and manufacture of vacuum and pressure producing equipment -- machinery applied in industries as diverse as sugar boiling and waste heat recovery -- is the grim reality that manufacturing will cease following the relocation to the Wingates Industrial Estate.