When Handel Williams studied mechanical engineering at Swansea, the lectures were in Nissen huts at Singleton. Sixty-one years after he graduated, his grandson has just started the same course at Bay Campus.
Freddie Williams, 19, is following both his grandfathers to Swansea University. Handel, 83, came back this month for an alumni reunion and a tour of both campuses, and saw where Freddie now studies.
Handel said: “Things have changed so much, it is like chalk and cheese to when I was a student. Back then we were in Nissen huts on Singleton campus.”
He added: “It always was a very well-regarded university but the set-up at Bay Campus, everything from the labs and equipment to the students’ accommodation, is exceptional.”
From Ystalyfera to Shell, on a Coal Board scholarship
Handel grew up in Ystalyfera and won a National Coal Board scholarship to study after leaving school. “I chose Swansea University as it was my home university and it had a very good reputation for engineering and metallurgy.”
Shell recruited him before he had finished. He started as a graduate trainee at the Stanlow refinery in Ellesmere Port and stayed with the company for 34 years, in Britain and across Europe, including a spell as head of engineering at Ceska Refinerska, the Czech Republic’s biggest oil business.
He said: “Swansea had given me a solid grounding in the theory of mechanical engineering and when I got my job as a graduate trainee engineer at Stanlow refinery, it was up to me to put that into practice.”
He now lives at Bangor-on-Dee near Wrexham.
The other grandad was a Swansea engineer too
At Stanlow, Handel met Brian Payne, from Byfleet in Surrey, who had studied chemical engineering at Swansea at the same time. Years later Handel’s son married Brian’s daughter.
Their two children are Freddie and his younger sister Ailish.
Handel said: “It does mean that Freddie already had a real connection to Swansea before he even enrolled at the university and I am over the moon that he is studying there now.”
Motorbikes, cars and a Formula Student wing
Freddie did an NVQ in motor mechanics in his gap year and has joined the aerodynamics team on the university’s Formula Student racing car project.
He said: “I am particularly enjoying the subject of aerodynamics. I have joined the aerodynamics team associated with Formula Student and am enjoying studying forces on wings.”
He is “now looking forward to studying thermofluids after Christmas”.
He added: “I have found Swansea to be a very welcoming university, and this has enabled me to settle down quickly and to enjoy university life.”
Handel said his career had been “all made possible by my time at Swansea”. “I am so pleased that Freddie will now get a chance to have the same opportunities that I enjoyed.”
The university’s engineering courses, now all taught at Bay Campus, are listed on its website.
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