Shires Ltd.

Previous Comments:

Re E402
KenLee
I left school in the summer of 1959 and my first job was at Shires. I didn’t really want to work there, as far as my parents were concerned. It was only a stop-gap until ‘something better came along’ or as far as I was concerned, it was only stop gap until I could join the RN, which I did in early summer 1960. But what a year I had there. I loved every minute of it. I started off as the runner for the guys who worked on the ‘assembly line’. That meant that I worked one step ahead of them and made sure that as they finished assembling the cisterns required by one order, I had made sure that all the components for the next order were ready for them to seamlessly carry on. They were on piece work (and well paid), so I was in real trouble if I didn’t produce the goods on time. I often wonder what the health and safety guys of today would have said if they could have seen me climbing mountains of empty cisterns, sometimes piled almost to the ceiling!
After a couple of months someone decided that I had potential and so I was moved into the office, and became a trainee progress chaser, often referred to as a “time and motion” expletive! It was during this time that I met one of the loves of my life, a young lady who taught me an awful lot about growing up! Our little fling together didn’t last long but I still think of her with fondness. I also experienced my first ever office Christmas party, and needless to say, my first ever mega-hangover! During the winter months I had the honour of playing rugby for the Shires team (away games only as we didn’t have a pitch of our own). We must have been the worst team in Yorkshire – we never won a game and it wasn’t unusual for us to get absolutely trounced – but it was great fun, and once again a sharp learning curve in the art of ‘apres rugby’.
So, your photo of the factory has really invoked some lovely memories. Thank You.
20 June 2015.

allserene
I used to live at No:9 Sconce Bank, which is where the curry restaurant at Greenbottom is now…close to Shires. Farmer Strickland had the fields at the back of Shires and I used to buy fresh warm milk from him at his back door at Sconce Bank which backed onto Shires…Then I moved to 7 Edward Street which is where the fish counter at Morrison’s is now. As a kid, about 8, I used to play in the concrete air raid shelters at the back of Shires. They were flooded by that time and we used to climb down the iron ladders and sail around inside the bunkers on rafts made of bundles of cardboard boxes. The only light was daylight from the open hatch… I bought a ‘cap bomb’ from Rhodes’ paper shop on Otley Road and loaded it with sugar and weed killer…and then I threw it at Shire’s wall…it blew a stone out of the wall…. Hope its ‘statute barred ‘ and I don’t get extradited from the USA under terrorism laws !
17 August 2016.