Former workers at Westbury Cement Works have fond memories of their time at the factory – but one couple have even ‘fonder’ memories.

Dorset and Wiltshire Rugby Football Union president Ron Jones, 55, met his future wife Carel, 46, at the Westbury plant when she joined as a wages clerk in 1979 and they married at Trowbridge Register Office five years later. The couple, from Yarnbrook, were made redundant in January.

Mr Jones, who joined in 1974 when it was run by Blue Circle, said: “When I first joined I was what they called a shift tester working in the laboratory testing all the cement. Later I worked for the maintenance team, then as a kiln burner and a process operator before returning to the laboratory in 2004.

“People speculate about the health risks but I worked there for 35 years and I don’t think anyone suffered from any detrimental health problems as a result of the kilns.

“I get annoyed when I read in the paper about people who have just moved to the area moaning about the chimney, which has been there since the early 1960s.

“When I started at Blue Circle there were more than 500 employees on the clock, and that didn’t include management, and the day I left there were 63 members of staff at the site. I’ve never worked with such a great bunch of people.”

Mrs Jones, who later worked as an accounts secretary at Lafarge, said: “If they keep the chimney at the site there will always be a memory of the plant, but if it is knocked down that memory will be lost.

“I think we will both be very surprised if the plant opens again for production.”

Trowbridge town crier Trevor Heeks worked at the factory between 1978 and 1992. He said: “When I joined, I was on shift supplying the kilns with coal and then I moved into the laboratory and after that I was on the pulverising plant which burnt all the household refuse in west Wiltshire.

“During the Falklands War we had to stop burning refuse because we were the main supplier of cement helping the war effort. I remember we used to put cans of beer, packets of fags and copies of the Sun on top of the bags for the workers over there.

“It used to be like a family at Lafarge – the social club was great and everyone looked after each other.

“Over the years I’ve been disappointed because Lafarge used to be one of the biggest employers in the area.

“The cement works will never open because the industry relies upon the construction of infrastructure. So unless the Severn Barrage is built or we start building motorways or airports, it will never open again.

“I still meet many people that used to work there and they are all saddened by its closure. The chimney can be seen from Glastonbury – it’s a landmark in Westbury and we’ll only realise its importance when it has gone.”

Roy Gane, 79, from Westcroft Street, Trowbridge, helped to build the plant and later worked there as the operator of the face shovel in the quarry between 1962 and 1967, where he once witnessed an American jet fighter crashing.

He said: “I was walking across the quarry and this jet fighter tipped over and went straight down. It crashed into a clump of trees by the side of the quarry.

“I remember the British authorities weren’t happy about it because they discovered the American planes were carrying live ammunition.”

Mr Gane also remembers the time a colleague climbed up the plant’s iconic chimney for a dare – and promptly got the sack.

An amateur photographer who worked at Westbury Cement Works for 28 years has been looking back on two photo albums worth of snaps of the factory and its workers, taken over three decades.

Roger Dolling, 62, of Hilperton, now a customer service advisor at Virgin Mobile in Trowbridge, worked in the stores at Westbury Cement Works between 1972 and 2000.

Among the hundreds of photographs from his time at Blue Circle, he is most proud of his snaps of the remains of jurassic creatures unearthed at the works’ quarry, the first of which was discovered in the moist kimmeridge clay in July 1980.

A five-foot long skull of a 35-foot long pilosaur, which had died in the sea that covered what is now White Horse Hill, was found by geology students from Copenhagen University in Denmark. It was later exhibited at the Bristol Museum and Mr Dolling was one of a handful of Lafarge employees to be invited to the launch.

“I was so interested that I enrolled at Trowbridge College and I now have a GCSE in archaeology,” Mr Dolling said. “Because I was in the stores, the archaeologists had to keep coming in to see us for various supplies like buckets.

“I also remember we found a nautilus shell in the quarry. It was so heavy we couldn’t pick it up.

“I phoned Bristol University and a professor cycled all the way from Bristol. He ended up taking it back on the train.”

The fossilised remains of a second pilosaur were found at the plant’s clay quarry during a joint excavation by Bristol Museum and Bristol University in summer 1994, and also remains of a crocodile and another pilosaur.

He believes the plant’s closure will have a massive impact on the local economy. He added: “It gave me a nasty twinge when I heard it was shutting and I know it was the same for a lot of other people. That’s why I treasure the photos I have of the plant because it was 28 years of my life.”