| Kate |
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Must be some interesting ones.
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| Paul Reedman |
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Not in Stamford but funny all the same. Was a sign maker once I left school and it was alright for a bit until I crashed the side of the works van into a wall. Told my boss some lorry had reversed into me. Left a couple of months after as he didn't really like me after the incident.
Kate: Thanks Paul. Think he must have lost his no-claim bonus!
Hope we get a series of "my first job on leaving school". Also, if any more of you then want to add a piece about your next career move - send it and I will add it to your original "first job" posting. I'm all heart me.K
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| Roger |
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Lloyds Bank at 65 High St. Left after 18 months! When my father first came to Stamford he worked at Dolby Brothers which had been next door 66/67.
One of my former work colleagues is now a District Councillor.
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| phil |
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On leaving school I went to Grantham College but may as well have gone straight on to work.Very much later in life I was a milkman in the Eaton Square area.Mrs Thatcher was a customer and one day when she came out to pay me for her goods I said to her that we had somthing in common,that she came from Grantham and I went to college there in the 50s.She asked how I did there and I said not very good because our rooms overlooked the High School Girls playing fields.Making it difficult to concentrate.She just said OH!!When I got up the road a bit I thought what a prat for telling her that story.The strange thing is that I was talking to her armed guard outside one Friday and asked what he was doing at the weekend and he was going to his mother in laws in a small place I wouldnt know,Ketton!small world isn't it..
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| Peter |
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My first job was at Allis-Chalmers at Essendine for the princely sum of £3/7/0 a week.
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| Derek |
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In my early years as a teenager before leaving school I had a job as a delivery boy for Frank Dickinson the butcher. Pay was a little miserly to say the least so any tips I got from the customers was most welcome. Sadly any tips I got on my round were a little thin on the ground so much so I could usually count them on two fingers. The day started with loading up the basket with orders for the journey around the town then when this mission had been completed it was back to the shop to load up again.
I remember sometimes having to bike out to Wothorpe First Drift which in those days was more a bumpy old track than a road with ruts and loose stones everywhere. Coming back down the drift could be a little precarious so walking with the bike in some parts was perhaps a safer option. Anyway I didn't mind all this too much because the lovely lady I delivered to always gave me a nice tip. If I remember correctly her husband was a solicitor but I could be wrong there's been a lot of water pass under the bridge since then. Apart from the tip another thing I remember quite clearly is that if she happened to be out when I called she would leave the front door to the house unlocked so I was able to go in and leave her order on the kitchen table. Can you imagine for one minute leaving the door to your house unlocked today ?
Another customer who was always very generous was Mrs Addison a sweet lady who lived in St Leonards Street just a stones throw away from the shop. I would walk the few yards to her house with her delivery and without fail bless her heart she always gave me a tip.
The complete opposite to the generosity of these two ladies in the tipping department was a well-to-do farming family who lived outside the town in one of the villages. When loading up the delivery van in the morning the van driver who delivered out in the countryside would sometimes forget to take an order with him or more often than not an order would come in after he'd left on his rounds. Out of all the villages closest to the town in any direction you care to imagine this was the one I visited the most and always it seemed to the same customer. I perhaps wouldn't have minded quite so much if the delivery basket had been heaving with items. Sometimes I would bike all the way out to the farm no matter what the weather was like with just one small item which would leave me a little irritated and with an itch I couldn't scratch. Did I ever receive any monetary reward for getting their sausages on the table in time for dinner or their pork pie for tea ? Well if I tell you my pockets weighed exactly the same on the return journey as they did on the journey out and that includes my trek over at Christmas perhaps it's a bit of a giveaway.
Oh happy days.
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| Clem Walden |
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I was an errand boy for Hunters Tea Stores, Frank Sharman was the manager I was 12 years old at the time and remained there until I left school at 14. Hunters Tea Stores was in the High street opposite Burtons Tailors. I also had an early morning paper round so my day was rather busy. Papers-School-then delivering groceries after school. I was paid 7/6 for the paper round and 17/6 for the errand boys job. Total income £1-5-0 in todays money that would be £1-25p. On leaving school at 14 my Dad got me a job at Allis Chalmers but I only stayed there for about 12 months. I then got a job at Burghley Estates prior to moving into the electrical trade at 16. I was an apprentice with Stanley Taggs of Nottingham and Williams Bros. On completion of my apprentership I started work at Froments as the Contracts Forman prior to starting the Electrical Contracting partnership with my late partner Norman Steemson. The rest is history that many readers of this forum will be aware of. Very happy memories.
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| Peter Leatherbarrow |
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During the summer holiday in 1971 where I was at Stamford Tech I worked as an assistant for Farm Protection, a small agricultural chemical testing company, at Glaston. The following summer in 1972 I worked as a chain boy for Gleesons as they were building the Empingham Reservoir (Rutland Water). We were building the dam at that time whilst huge monstrous scrapers were digging the clay from the borrow pits. The limo-logical tower near the dam was also being built and from the bottom, looked like a skyscraper, so you can tell how deep the water is around it now. I was amongst the last people to drive a car from Edith Weston to Upper Hambleton across the valley before the River Gwash was dammed. Used to be a stone bridge over the river.
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| Betty Haddon |
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I started work at Dowmac Concrete at Tallington in 1960 as a trainee Comptometer Operator, I began on £3 15s 0d a week.A works bus picked up the office staff from the High St. as few of the staff had cars. Comptometers were used to calculate wages,production, transport,materials,contracts etc so the work was varied and interesting.The offices were surrounded by the yard,cranes and the factory production lines -there was nowhere to go until the end of the day when the blue Dowmac buses took us back, workers came in from Spalding,Bourne,Oakham,Stamford and many of the villages.I was given £5 per week on completing my training - a good wage at that time - half of which paid 'my keep'.
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| Steve earl |
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At 13 and believing I had learned enough I left school and started working for betty bentham from easton on the hill in her mobile shop, visiting tallington and lots of other local villages as well as lots of regulars in stamford. Now over fifty and well qualified i often think i learned more from betty than i would have at school. The truancy officers disagreed.
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| Richard Rollings |
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I worked for Allett Motor Mowers in Tinwell Road Lane in my holidays. They are still going as part of a larger company although not in Stamford unfortunately
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| Nigel Cross |
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This could have been written by me. I also worked for Dickinson's Butchers on a Saturday, in the middle sixties. It was a "Granville" type bike and I still have nightmares about pushing it up the Drifts at Wothorpe, with half a pound of sausages, for someone right at the top of the hill. I remember at Xmas the pork pies and Hams that were made by a chap I think called "Kite", obviously not his real name. Still have fond memories of this job, along with my other paper rounds, before school and on a Sunday morning and car cleaning for 2/6. I lot of my part-time jobs came from being in the Scouts and bob a job week. I used to do an ex. Army Majors' garden in Priory Garden every week as a result of this. Happy Days.
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