Recalling work in the tanyard in Kendal

I worked at several jobs.

One was in the tanyard on New Road. It used to be just sheep skins. Downstairs there were two stone-built tanks and they threw the sheepskins in with lime which sort of loosened the wool off the pelts, and then these went upstairs and the trade there was taking the wool off the pelt.

You had a curved board on legs, which you leaned over, put a pelt over it and then rubbed the wool off, and you sorted the wool out, threw the best part in one heap, the rough part or the black in another heap.

After that, the wool was taken into the drying room.

The big room below had a huge coke fire and the ceiling was iron with holes in it.

So you opened these fire doors, brushed it, laid the wool out, come out, shut the door before you choked from the coke fumes.

We also had a spin dryer, which was a huge thing mounted on a concrete block downstairs on three big iron legs and sticking through the floor above.

You put the wool in there and set it off and, if it got out of balance, it used to shake the whole building, which was a wooden building at the time with windows all round and wire netting round the windows.

It was quite an old place.

Well they went broke, so I had to get another job, so I finished up going to the diatomite works at Kentmere.

It had more or less just started.

They took clay out of some flooded ground and brought it to this building and they put it through a huge mincer, like a sausage machine, but it came out brick shape. Then they cut the brick into sections and cooked it.

From there, it went into a crusher and came out as dust. That was, I think, for making toothpaste, face powder, basics for makeup. Your ears, your nose, everything was blocked up.

When I came home from work, I looked as if someone had emptied a bag of cement over me, and for that I got 25 shilling. I stuck it for a week.

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