VN018 Mair Williams, Dolgarrog Aluminium, Dolgarrog

Mair's family moved to Dolgarrog from the valleys around 1925. She began at the plant in 1936, in the light sheet mill, at the age of 17. She didn't have a formal interview but an uncle went down to ask a Mr Oswin who looked after the workers' houses if there was a job for her, and the next thing she knew she had a job. She was there when she married, but because she didn't have any children, she carried on working. She says if she had stayed in shop work, which she'd been doing before, she would have been called up when WW2 broke out but, because the factory did war production, they were under special provision. During the war, the women had to work in the large mill with men who didn't go to fight. This work was very heavy. Mair later became a forewoman and said it wasn't easy, as she'd been working with the girls she was now supervising. Her husband also worked there and she continued to work after marriage, until she took the offer of 'redundancy' in 1968.