Your Memories of Work

Thank you to those of you who have shared your memories.

If you would like your memories to be added to this page please e-mail us

Joan, born 1928, worked at Crosfields during the Second World War.

"I started work at Crosfields when I was 14 in the panel department. The girls
worked on panels for Wellington bombers. My first job was screwing nuts on to
bolts, placing a washer on and threading on to a wire. We had to fill 17 wires,
each holding 100 bolts. There were only seven males in our department and
over 250 females. It was clean work, but the buildings were quite dilapidated.
The girls were friendly, but the foreman was strict and we younger girls were
scared of him. We socialised, held dances in Crosfields Theatre and gave parties to wounded soldiers."
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Alan, born 1927, worked at one of the tanneries in Warrington.

"When you first got a job on the tan-yard, according to what part you was going to be working on, you ended up at the front office. You was issued, if you was gonna be working on the tan-yard, you was issued with a pair of clogs, several yards of waterproof, rubberised canvas which you cut up into the various bits and pieces you required to work on the tan-yard to keep you dry. You made yourself an apron. You made yourself what you call leggings, which is self-descriptive. They were fastened to your leg with bits of string, one tie above the knee, 2 ties on the calf, and it hung over the clog which kept all the wet liquor and that from going into your clogs and wetting your feet."

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Joyce, born 1937, worked as a teacher in Warrington.

"I moved to Warrington to live when I married in 1961. I was a teacher at Bewsey Secondary School for Girls. Although the boys school was in the same building,
an invisible line divided the two schools and neither staff nor pupils mixed socially.
Women teachers were paid less than men teachers at that time. They were not allowed to wear trousers for work.
The aspirations for the pupils - leaving age at that time was 15 - were low. A job
on the counter at Woolworths was aiming high. The maths content of the syllabus
for girls in their final year was "Arithmetic for the home".
After a break of four years having children I returned to teaching in the affluent Cheshire suburb of Stockton Heath. Many things had changed: mixed sexes,
school leaving age raised to 16, equal pay for women and men teachers. It was
still another fifteen years however before women teachers could wear trousers to school!"
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Les (1926-2005) was a former Deputy Editor of the Warrington Guardian. He remembered starting work as a journalist.

"One of the first things I remember being told was how to answer the telephone properly because as a journalist a lot depends on your telephone manner 'cause you do a lot of work on the telephone. And filing and that kind of thing and keeping the stamp book, you know we had a cash float in the stamp book in which all the postages were recorded and it all had to balance to, I think it was a pound all the time. I think the first job I did for the paper we used to do little synopsis of films that were on at the local cinema, little paragraphs about that long, and that was my first job to do the synopsis of what was on at the Picture House."

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