Marion Davies , Voices from the Factory Floor
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Marian was born on 8th October, 1931. (Her sister is Beti Davies. VN009) She went to Ysgol y Glyn and on to the grammar school in Llangollen. She left when she was fourteen years old and got a job making bobbins in the woollen factory, just like her sister. (1945/6?) By the time she started work there, Beti who had started the year earlier, had moved on to the machines. Marian’s cousin worked on the loom like Beti, and taught Marian how to make the bobbins.
Marian enjoyed working at the factory and found the work easy to do. Beti left the factory a year before she did. She stayed until the factory closed. When she left her wage was seventy six (pounds?)
She went on to work at the brick factory in Newbridge but can’t remember how she got the job. Marian and her friend would travel there on the van that brought the newspapers to Glyn Ceiriog from Liverpool. She would travel by van at six o’ clock in the morning, and return home by bus in the evening. She got to know the driver through the shopkeeper. She didn’t have to pay for a lift and the van would drive right past the factory.
At the brick factory her job was putting clay in square tiles into the press. One person would put the tiles into the press and the other would turn the wheel and press them. Turning the wheel was hard work. At the other end somebody would take them out and stack them. Then the bricks would go to the kiln to be dried.
Both women and men worked at the factory. It was usually men who worked the kilns, and the women (and some boys) did the pressing and the turning of the wheel. There was a greater number of people working there than in the woollen factory, including many men who would take the bricks away. The wage was higher, although she can’t remember how much it was.
There was a canteen of sorts in the brick factory where a woman made tea for the workers. They would bring their own food, or paid for the food they had there. It was very basic – a few benches at the table. She had a half hour break for lunch and a quarter of an hour break both in the morning and in the afternoon.
The work was quite dangerous and it was possible to lose a finger in the presses if you were too slow, as the clay was put in and the wheel turned. This had happened to one or two but she never had an accident.
She worked in a row of two or three presses. She didn’t know anybody who worked there before she started apart from the friend she travelled with in the van. She knew everybody in the woollen factory but she had been forced to go further afield to look for work because there was no work in Glyn Ceiriog. The people working in the brick factory were nice but the majority were English so the language of the factory was English. This wasn’t difficult for her and she found that the people there weren’t that different. She doesn’t ever remember seeing the bosses. The supervisors were English and made sure that you worked.
They were allowed to talk as they worked, and indeed had to talk in order to get the work done. The work had to be done quickly too. The health and safety measures were few and far between, and she didn’t receive much in the way of training to do the work. The work wasn’t difficult, it just involved turning the wheel, and making a certain amount of tiles. She didn’t wear a uniform – she wore her own clothes which included trousers. She didn’t wear gloves and her hands became very dry because of the clay.
The bricks were used locally to build houses.
She doesn’t recall if there was a union there. She worked from seven in the morning until four o’clock and got home at six thirty. It was a long journey home. At the end of the day she would catch a bus to the Waun and then another onto the ‘Glyn’ unless she got a lift home.
She made friends in the factory but didn’t socialise with them because she lived in Glyn Ceiriog and they lived in the other direction. She would sometimes go to the cinema in Oswestry in her spare time with friends. She would go by bus as there were many buses running at that time.
She gave most of her wages to the family and would receive pocket money if she needed money to go somewhere. She would spend this money on sweets.
She can’t remember how long she was in the woollen factory. After she finished there she tried to get work in Llangollen working in a cafe. She got a job working in Boots the Chemist in Llangollen.
She enjoyed working in the factories, even though it wasn’t much fun in the brick factory. She worked in order to earn money. Even though it was heavy work she didn’t feel tired when she got home. She didn’t have to work weekends.
She has always worked. After working in Boots in Llangollen she got the opportunity to work in Boots in Oswestry. She worked for Boots for over thirty years. In Llangollen she didn’t want to work on the counter so she went to work in the warehouse receiving the goods and checking that the orders. The shop was behind the warehouse. In the Oswestry branch she worked in the office, on the computer, sending orders and invoicing, etc. She was on the dole for a while before she got the job in Boots, and was very happy working in Boots, Oswestry.
She never got married. She’s worked throughout her life, and always enjoyed herself. She has never moved from Glyn Ceiriog. She lives with her sister Beti, and Beti’s husband.
Duration: 25 minutes