Here are the eleven entries in this Lockdown Project about Memories at Work. Many thanks to all the authors
A01 My First Job – Kay Bugg
I left Leamington College for Girls as Kay Sheasby in July 1959 and two weeks later was working at Automotive Products or Lockheed as everyone called it. This large factory was on Tachbrook Road and was the biggest employer in the area. My job was in the post room where all the post from the whole company went out from and all the post for the whole company came into. It was a very busy department. My line manager was Miss Favell. The post room was next to the typing pool which was run by Mrs Sandbach. Everyone loved her. This cannot be said for the person overseeing both the typing pool and the post room. She was a very formidable woman called Miss Bishop and was absolutely terrifying – worse than any headmistress at school. My job involved opening post by using a slicing machine which did a few at a time but if I hadn’t tapped the envelopes enough the top could be sliced off the letters so they had to be joined together before being distributed to boxes for the various departments. The letters were collected by someone from each department except for the directors and one job was to take this post to their very nice offices. My hours were 8.30 to 5.30 with an hour for lunch. My wages were £2 12 shillings per week (£2.60 in today’s money) out of which I had to pay £1 per week in bus fares as I lived in Harbury. I had to give money to my mother for my keep so I ended up with less spare cash than when I was at school and getting pocket money. Before starting the job proper all newcomers had a few day’s orientation where we learned about the various parts of AP – Lockheed Brakes, Borg and Beck Clutches, to name but two, but my favourite part of the orientation was being shown all around the factory. This was because all the young women were greeted with a loud chorus of wolf whistles from the male factory workers, males being in the majority. We didn’t know about “Me Too” in those days and we thoroughly enjoyed the attention. Much more than the tedious work of the post room.
A02 MY FIRST JOB By Alan Jones (The Favourite)
I still remember the day I commenced employment. My best mate Dave and I cycled to Warwick to start work as apprentices. I was working at Warwick Printing and Dave at Benfords. I remember the trepidation I felt as I opened the door and met the other employees. I needn’t have worried though, the natives were friendly. I worried a bit when they referred to me as the Latest Victim.
My boss, was a Czechaslovakian Jew named Moric Schwartz. He had many interesting stories about how he managed to escape the Nazis and made his way to Britain to join the Free Czech Army. I had a good relationship with him both workwise and social, during my later years our relationship deteriated, that’s why I left. I signed my indentures for a six-year apprenticeship as a compositor.
We had lots of customers in the Motor Industry and amongst our clients were Rootes Group, Triumph, BSA ect. We also specialised in Technical Publications and handled work for Pergammon Press, which was owned by another Czech, the infamous Robert Maxwell, or Captain Bob as he later became known as. I met him when he visited Warwick Printing in the late sixties. At the time he was the Labour MP for Buckingham. I also met Jeremy Thorpe MP, he was the leader of the Liberal Party at the time. Another controversial character.
As an apprentice we had to learn quickly. We learnt about printing terms and tools with names we had never come across. It seemed like a different language at first. We had to to use a setting stick, which was a metal tool used to assemble type. It took a long time to master but after a few months I had cracked it, speed came with practice. The type-case took a long time to master because the characters didn’t seem to be in any kind of order to the untrained eye.
We also had to learn what quoins, impositions, formes, pica and ems were. There were hundreds of typefaces to learn and loads of paper sizes. This was before metrification, paper sizes had grand names like Foolscap, Demy, Royal and Imperial, not boring A1, A2, A3 and A4. I also had to learn to proof-read ten languages including Russian and Greek. It also taught me to read backwards, a life-skill I still use today.
It seemed that nearly all of the older comps took snuff. It was a printing trade ritual. I hadn’t come across it before but it was compulsory for all the new apprentices to at least try. The menthol snuff made quite a few cry.
The smell of printing ink still has a magical effect on me. It brings back memories, met many people and made good friends. I was a teenager and socialised with my workmates. An incredible time to live. the sixties lifestyle and music. I left in January 1972, it was time to move on.
A03 MY JOURNEY TO WORK by Tessa Whitehouse
This is not a specific memory of Leamington but so many of us travelled to Warwick, Coventry and beyond for work. For twelve years I worked at the Police Headquarters at Leek Wootton and transport was provided from Leamington Police Station in High Street, later Hamilton Terrace and Warwick’s time stop in Barrack Street later moved to the new station in Priory Road. The first ‘bus used was well passed its ‘sell by’ and in the days before MOTs but a new one was promised. In the meantime, it rattled its way through the town and along Emscote Road (we smelled the pie factory) and, as we were not to use scheduled bus routes if at all possible, bumped its way all up Millers Road. Nothing has changed there! The new bright blue bus eventually arrived and was the only one of its type anywhere, I am sure! And we always arrived on time whatever the weather and traffic congestion as we know it was yet to be created! I only remember snow causing a major problem once and it took a couple of hours to get us all back to Leamington.
Spinney Hill was then a T junction and the Woodloes estate was still on the drawing board. There was a lane leading off Coventry Road to Hill Wootton, later to be a crucial route to the Royal Show. How all that changed in the 10 years that I used the transport! The Warwick by pass was constructed and then gradually extended further north to Coventry and lots of junctions became islands. In 1969, I was based in Coventry and my transport was still provided. In those days we saw the final phases of the by – pass and its connection to the last section of the Coventry ring road. Hard to imagine 50 years have since passed.
Everyone going to work at the same time each day saw the same people in the same place going about their business. One particular memory after I moved to Edmondscote Road was seeing 2 young men, twins obviously, usually near Milverton Station. Eventually, everyone knew that these two sprightly and cheerful young men, Philip and Douglas Maull, worked at the Shire Hall and walked there and back daily in all weathers from their home in Buckley Road. Sadly, Douglas died earlier this year. They were an icon of their time and will always be remembered and deserve a place in Leamington’s history.
I stopped using the transport when I married in 1973. With more staff having their own cars and finances stretched, eventually the free transport was not needed and discontinued. I often wonder what happened to the bus. The use of public transport in those days was the normal means of going to work and allowed people time to window gaze and observe passers – by and wonder what sort of day they were heading for.
Tessa Whitehouse March 2020 in lockdown!
A04 Alan Griffin, Memories of Work
My first permanent job after leaving school in 1952 was as an indentured apprentice Mechanical Engineer with a firm of local Consulting Engineers who operated from a large detached house in Russell Terrace. I was one of six young men employed as trainee draughtsmen in their drawing office. Our role was to draw up 1/8th scale plans of buildings and marking on them the mechanical services that would be incorporated when the new buildings were constructed or when existing buildings were modified. The work generally came through architects and varied from prestigious private houses to large municipal buildings.
Draughtsmanship then had seemingly not changed much in the previous fifty years. All of the plans that we produced were made on tracing paper and drawn in black Indian ink with special drafting pens which were filled by a glass dropper. The Indian ink posed many problems for the inexperienced like me. There were times when the ink flooded onto the paper making a ‘splodge’ and then the fun really began. The ink had to be perfectly dry, a process speeded up a bit by the judicious use of a small hairdryer. When it was quite dry, a razor blade was then used to carefully scrape away the excess ink. This was rather a critical stage since it was easy to scrape too enthusiastically with the razor and make a hole in the paper. When each plan drawing was finished, it was my job as the office junior to take the rolled up plans to Blackies on Regent Street where they were run through a large, noisy machine called a Linotype Plan Copier which could produce copies of plans up to several feet in length known as dyeline prints. I remember shop owner Mr Blackie walked with a stick and was seldom in a good humour. He was frequently standing in the shop doorway but could never produce a copy there and then but would always tell me to ‘call back later.’ One of the more satisfying jobs as the office junior was the daily walk round the corner to the Sabins Bakery in Farley Street to pick up doughnuts for our morning coffee break.
It was apparent that all of the chaps in the drawing office owned their own set of drawing instruments in purpose-built black leather cases. They told me that the best instruments were made by Reifler a German company but I was never affluent enough to afford a set of these Rolls Royce instruments.
As the business expanded, the firm moved from Russell Terrace and took over the top floor of Somerset House on the corner of Warwick Street and Clarendon Avenue. From my desk in Somerset House I watched as the new fire station and headquarters building rose up on the opposite side of the street. Never once did it occur to me that many years later I would be one of the occupants of the new fire station and a full-time firefighter.
A05 Mick Jeffs, Memories of Work, Borg and Beck
About 1962, as a student, I had a summer holiday job with Borg and Beck, the clutch division of Automotive Products (AP). This was quite different to the other jobs I had tried such as the refreshment room at the station and very awkward shifts sorting and delivering the Christmas post. A memory of the latter job was the day when I delivered all the post for houses in Leam Street to the people in Beaconsfield Street.
I have no idea how I found my way to the office where I was based in the labyrinth which was AP. I was to be a Progress Chaser and was standing in for someone who was being treated at Central Hospital, Hatton; I feared the job might drive me mad.
My main responsibility was to make sure that all the components were in place for the production line to make a batch of clutch plates for vehicles. I had to climb stacks of skips to see if the components, such as springs and pressings, were actually the ones stated on the attached label; everything was colour coded but all I remember is that nearly everything seemed to be marked with a mauve patch. During one of these climbs I found an employee asleep on top of the stack; I was told that it was OK because he was a shop steward.
I found it difficult to fit in especially with the girls and women on the production line because I had been to a boys’ school. It was also my first introduction to the sounds and smells of a factory. It was not my happiest experience. My father worked at Borg and Beck as a Planning Engineer until he retired, and at many similar factories before that.
My impression, perhaps with hindsight, was that my unit was under-trained and over-staffed. This probably contributed to the demise of the company in the not-too-distant future.
The man I had been standing in for returned to work just before I left and proudly said “I bet I am the only one here who has a certificate to say he is sane”.
A06 Barry Franklin, Working Life
I answered an advert in the Leamington Morning News in November 1966 for a job in the Civil Service. I had an interview at 17 Parade where the Inland Revenue was based. Just before Christmas I had a letter telling me I had passed the interview and would receive notification of when I would start. Just after Christmas, I received a letter giving me a position as a Clerical Assistant in The District Valuer and Valuation Office at Avon House, Emscote Road, Warwick. I was invited to visit the office before my commencement date, which was 13th February 1967, which was useful.
I cycled to work on 13th February for my first day. Most of it was spent filling in forms including the Official Secrets Act. The rest of the day was spent discovering what the office did.
Amongst other things I discovered I would be doing general clerical work including handling files dating back to 1910, individual files for every address in the area the office was responsible for which was basically the whole of the area covered by the present district council areas of Warwick and Stratford and Solihull as the office was responsible for making sure rating assessments for every property in the area were up to date. We were advised by each authority when properties were built or old ones extended. The office manager known as a Staff Officer called all males by their surname. On my first day, he told me that if I stayed with them for my full working life, the pension would be good and, if I was lucky, I would get 2 promotions.
The office also had qualified valuers who carried out work for all government departments and local authorities which were separate from rating assessments, including compulsory purchase etc and including still dealing with War reparation work.
The most interesting job I was given was to sort into alphabetical order some items called field books which listed details of what I was told were part of a modern Domesday Book carried out circa 1910. We had a set of ordnance survey sheets, county series on which the boundaries of each ownership were marked, the land and buildings in each ownership were known as a hereditament.
I then discovered I could sit a Civil Service exam to gain a promotion, so I decided to enter. The exam took place in the Methodist Hall in Warwick Road, Coventry which I fortunately passed. This then led to promotion to a grade called Valuation Clerk in 1969 just after the office closed and relocated to Jephson House, Newbold Terrace, Leamington. It also gave me a change of work in the new grade and led to training to inspect and measure alterations to properties which may increase or decrease properties rateable values on which people paid rates to their relative local authorities.
This was the start to phase 2 of my working career and my life was going to start to get interesting.
A07 My first job – the interview! by Jacqui Kirk
Having decided to leave the Grammar School at 16 because my mum and dad really needed my wage (not that I ever admitted that to be the reason to them) I had to find a job. Helped by Mum I sent off applications by letter to the clerical jobs in the Nottingham paper. Jobs in Heanor where we lived were a bit scarce so Nottingham 11 miles away was the obvious choice. I could have tried in Derby but the buses to Nottingham were much more frequent and also Mum knew her way around Nottingham as she had lived and worked there herself. I was invited to 3 or 4 interviews some of which I can’t remember but two stand out. The first was at Players, the cigarette works. Getting there was easy because it wasn’t far off the bus route and the distinctive outlines of the factory complex were one of the Nottingham landmarks. Finding the personnel office was another matter as it was a maze of similar looking yellow buildings. However way before I reached there I had decided I really couldn’t work with the stink of tobacco – it was everywhere! I went into the interview and of course it went really well. Luckily in those days when nobody much had a telephone in their houses they had to let you know by letter so when they offered me the job I had had time to go to other interviews.
The other one I remember was for a Junior Library Assistant at the University of Nottingham. Getting there was a bit of a trek as I had to get into Nottingham then out again but they must have sent directions as to buses – maybe even a campus map – as I had no problems getting there. However imagine my shock to find myself called in front of an interview panel of 4 people! All the other interviews had just been with the Personnel Officer. This was a bit of a facer but I rallied and answered their questions. I found out later that the panel consisted of the Head and Deputy of the University Library, the Head of the Science Library George Green (the Medical Library was based within the Science Library at the time) and the Medical Librarian John Coggins. But combined with the interview in the old Main Library building it was a bit awe-inspiring.
One of the main things in the job’s favour was that it paid £9 a week with half-day release to do A levels but the snag was having to work 1 Saturday morning in 6. I really didn’t have much idea what the job of a librarian entailed having only watched those in my local public library and, as I found, a University Library was a bit different.
So having come away feeling quite despondent imagine my surprise to get a letter within a few days offering me the job of Junior Library Assistant in the Medical Library. I was able to truthfully reply to the Players job offer that I had accepted another and the starting date was set for the beginning of July two weeks before my 16th birthday.
I just had to tell the Headmaster I was leaving….and that was not easy.
To be continued
A08 Cliff Evans, Working on the Railway
In my early days of employment I tried a few things until I settled on a job for life.
In 1963, I joined British Rail (GWR) and became the 4th generation to do so on my Dads side and 2nd on my Mums.
The job for life ended in 1966, thanks to a chap name Dr Beeching. At the time, I’d only been married 2 weeks.
So, it was an eventful time with a few stories to tell, but just one for now. My driver on this occasion was “Tracker” Jackson and he liked a bit of speed. We were working the 17:35 off Snow Hill, semi fast limited stop. The engine 6364, was a medium size tender engine ideal for this type of work and all was going perfectly, that is, until we approached Lapworth. We were going too fast and Tracker slapped the brakes hard on causing the water in the boiler to surge backwards and on coming to a halt slopped forward and then back again causing the boiler pressure to go off the scale and blow off the safety valve cover reaching a height of around 20ft and crashing into the platform. (For those who don’t know it’s the lumpy bit between the chimney and the cab). Luckily, no one was standing there.
Picture this. There I was 9 stone (dripping wet) trying to heave this copper cover onto the tender. All the signals off whistle blowing and the driver saying “hurry up”. Leave it.
It never did get refitted.
A09 Mick Jeffs, Memories of my first proper Job
My first real job was with the County Council’s Weights and Measures department. I was interviewed by the boss and at one point I was a bit surprised to be given a closed, empty, chocolate box. The boss said “what do think of that?”. I opened the box and found that all around the edges of the box the cardboard had been folded over so that less than half the space could be filled with chocolates. I said that it was a bit of a twist. The boss said “you’re cynical; you will fit in well here”. Perhaps this has pigeon-holed my character ever since. We prosecuted a company for similar “misleading” packaging some years later but we lost the case because magistrates decided that it was all legitimate because the weight of the contents was marked on the outside of the package.
However, I was appointed as a trainee based at HQ at No 33 Kenilworth Road, Leamington. They were very careful for me to start on 8th October so that I was not entitled to a salary increment on 1st April next year because I had not worked for six months. My first day at work was spent testing and adjusting coalmen’s weights of 56lb each – hard work, hot and sweaty. “Adjusting” means adding lead to a worn weight to make it accurate. I had to have a medical certificate before starting work and I was asked whether I could lift a 56lb weight – I did not know, so Dr Croft wrote “Yes”. The inspector who trained me remains a close personal friend.
It took just under two years to become qualified and I then spent several happy years carrying out inspections of premises that weighed and measures products for sale including shops, pubs, factories, dairies, quarries and coal mines.
A few events stick in the mind. In the snow one year we were travelling back from Rugby when we came across our lorry loaded with 10 tons of weights stuck on the hill near The Woodhouse at Princethorpe. We got it free eventually by which time roles were reversed and the lorry had to tow my car from a drift.
Another event was with one of our vehicles was carrying about 5 tons of weights. Going over a bump one weight of 5 cwt (560 pounds, about 250 kg) jumped out of its slot and broke through the floor of the lorry onto the road. A following van swerved into the ditch but no-one was injured. Our driver never drove that vehicle again.
One of our most troublesome businesses was the mobile coalman. On one occasion a colleague ordered a lorry fully laden with sacks of coal to go back to Kenilworth Road for a check on the weight of the sacks. He had the coalmen climb to the top of the load and lower sacks down for checking. After a while the senior coalman became very angry and confronted my colleague; there was a heated exchange and the coalman grabbed the inspector’s tie. When it was all over the tie was so tight around his neck that it had to be cut off with scissors (that Inspector later became my Best Man).
A10 Julia Clayton, A Snapshot of my Working Life
My early working life consisted of more jobs than my latter working life.
When I finally got my dream job it didn’t start out like that at all.
I came out of Stratford-upon-Avon College with City & Guilds 441 (General Catering) with credit, City & Guilds 151 (silver service waiting at table), City & Guilds 152, RSH Hygiene and RSA 1 (French).
I managed to obtain a job working for Marks & Spencer Ltd as Assistant Cook in their staff restaurant in Royal Leamington Spa.
My ‘boss’ was the Catering Supervisor, who informed me she had obtained her qualifications by doing day release. It became obvious that she was jealous because I had been to college full time for 2 years and the manageress who was over the kitchen took a liking to me as my Father was working at the store part-time and his name was the same as her Fathers which was Walter.
I was young and naive so the Catering Supervisor had me doing the cleaning every afternoon, which was quite intense in the days when kitchens weren’t as clean as they are today with the relevant hygiene checks.
This took place while she sat at one of the tables chatting to one of the warehouse men.
Things finally came to a head when I just didn’t return one day after my lunch break. The usual manageress was off because she was having surgery for breast cancer, but when she returned to work she had me in her office to ask why I had done what I did. It then all came out what was happening to me.
The Manageress then asked my Catering Supervisor to go to her office. From that day to this I don’t know what conversation took place, but from that day to the time the Catering Supervisor left to have her first child, things improved for me. We were never the best of friends but she tolerated me and I her. In the current working climate what she did would have been classed as workplace bullying.
Further to this it didn’t help that I didn’t get the Supervisor job when she left to have her baby. So I handed in my notice and as I had only worked for M & S for less than 2 years my notice period was 1 month.
The Manageress was not happy that I was leaving but my eldest sister worked for AP and got me a job in the post room.
Six months later the lady who had taken the Supervisor role at M & S left, so I contacted the Manageress to ask if I re-applied for the job would I stand a chance of getting it. The Manageress said she couldn’t possibly comment one way or the other. So I took a risk and applied again for the position of Catering Supervisor, bearing in mind I hadn’t worked in catering for 6 months, and I got the job!!
A11 My First Day at Work by Patrick Kingston
My first day at work was Monday 1st June 1953, the day before HM The Queen’s Coronation – 2nd June 1953 – a memorable day. However, I had had a temporary job, in engineering at Sidney Flavel’s at the start of 1953, which I hated and wasn’t suited for. It is the 1st June 1953 that I wish to acknowledge as my real first day at work when I started as a Probationer Junior Clerk in the County Architect’s Department of Warwickshire County Council, at Shire Hall, Warwick. It was such a welcome and friendly environment in contrast to that of Flavel’s factory. The County Architect at that time, was Geoffrey Reynolds Barnsley, though I was not to meet him for a few days. I was answerable to Chief Clerk, George Lamb, who had appointed me a couple of weeks earlier. My immediate supervisor was a young lady, Nora Chandley, who shepherded me and to whom, all these years later, I owe so much of my early days there and what she taught me.
So on that warm Summer’s morning, I boarded a Midland “Red” L44 bus from High Street, Leamington, with a fourpence halfpenny workman’s return ticket to the Market Square, Warwick, for a 9.00am start, feeling quite nervous, but the welcome I received, soon restored my confidence, helped by another junior start with me, Valerie Potter, whom I met again recently. After a brief tour of the Department, Valerie and I were placed in the General Office, under Nora’s direction, learning to help with public and telephone calls plus incoming and outgoing post and with the postal franking machine and some filing. A hot lunch was taken at the Staff Club, in Old Square, followed by a short walk in the town centre which was awash with Coronation decorations and atmosphere.
Before home time, at 5.30pm, I was told I would be welcome to come back after the Coronation – so I had passed the first test. Going home, happy in the knowledge, I could watch the Coronation, with my family on a recently acquired television, and a truly wonderful place to go back to work to.
