The original Winding Department was upstairs in the cottages overlooking the river. A Mr and Mrs Barrett ran the department although Mr Barrett was a chemist and looked after the Plating Department as well and spent most of his time there, showing little interest in the Winding Department leaving this to his wife. Mrs Barrett, a platinum blond, who spent most of her time showing the girls different hair styles and teaching them about make up. Consequently output from the department was only a fraction of what it should have been. At that time I, with two assistants, was running the Winding Test Department being on loan from the test Apparatus Department owing to the shortages of Testers.
Eventually a new building was erected at the far end of the site near the Home Farm. The Barretts disappeared and Mr Taylor from one of the EKCO Aylesbury factories was installed as Superintendent of the Winding Department. He was assisted by a foreman, Charlie Rouse, from Cirencester, where he had run his own radio servicing business. In the following year Mr Taylor managed to turn the situation from chaos into total disaster! As most assembly departments were being held up owing to a shortage of transformers and coils. Mr Taylor went on indefinite leave suffering from a nervous breakdown.
Drastic measures were taken. More girls were employed and a night shift started. The day shift worked from eight in the morning until eight in the evening, and the night from eight in the evening to eight in the morning. Because it could be said that I had some experience of coil winding, I was roped in to run a shift. The shifts changed over each month so it was a month on nights followed by a month on days. Now each shift had a clerk whose job it was to record the job each girl was working on and how many items she produced. The girls worked a bonus scheme and the clerks records were used to calculate her bonus earnings. I worked the first night shift and Charlie Rouse the second month. For some reason which was never disclosed to me, Charlie refused to work any more nights, so I was lumbered with nights from then on. However I drew my own conclusions. The clerk on Charlie's shift was a dark very attractive young lady and a short time after her stint on nights she was very clearly pregnant. Eventually she gave birth to a lovely pair of twin girls and Charlie, who up until then was a confirmed bachelor, married the girl. They kept very much to themselves and immediately after the war emigrated to New Zealand.
Back to the night shift. I remember Phyllis Elms very well, her voice could be heard from time to time insisting on her "rights". Phyllis was a hard worker and very skilled coil winder who would tackle any job whereas some girls were very choosy about their jobs, There was a contingent sent up from Cornwall and Violet was one. I don't remember any other names. Les Cockerill, from Chippenham, was inspector on nights and Sam Hewins, also from Cornwall ran the Impregnation Plant. Reg Price was electrician on night duty. After transformer coils had been wound, laminations were assembled to the coils to complete the transformer. This was quite a skilful job and was commonly known as lamming. Our clerk, on nights, was a country girl born and bred and would insist on writing this operation as 'lambing' on the girls' time sheets!
Eventually when production had caught up and there were sufficient stocks to ensure there were no more hold ups on assembly lines, the night shift was abandoned and I returned to the Test Apparatus Department. Several crisis of this nature occurred from time to time, The Machine Shop went through a phase where it had to run a night shift to catch up with production requirements. The most important thing was that nothing was allowed to delay the shipment of completed equipments from the factory.
