A FAMILY business that flourished for three generations ended yesterday, when auctioneers sold the plant and equipment of the Darlington company.

CN Hadley, in Middleton St George, employed more than 100 people in its heyday in the 1970s, engineering flanges and machine parts for the offshore oil industry.

But in recent years it has struggled to compete against cheap Far East labour, and now its site in the village has been sold for housing.

"It is the end of an era unfortunately, and it has been a very, very hard decision to make," said John Hadley, whose grandfather, Cyril Noel Hadley, founded the business in Harris Street, Darlington, in 1929, initially repairing cars.

During the Second World War the company made mortar bombs, and after the war it moved into steel engineering.

In 1960, the company bought the derelict Middleton Ironworks and sold its flanges around the world.

"There was a big freeze in the industry in the mid-1960s, and then came the oil boom when we needed to expand, to double and treble production," said Mr Hadley.

"Then there was the 1980s decline, when ship-building and manufacturing in the North-East went.

"In the late-1980s and early-1990s things were quite good, but since then it has declined again and at the moment there is no sign of it picking up."

The story of Middleton Ironworks and Middleton St George is currently being told in the Echo Memories column that appears in The Northern Echo every Wednesday.