VN001 Cath Parry, Ackroyd & Sons, Bala

Cath worked in Ackroyd's & Sons, where she made the hems for the pyjamas, first in the original factory on the High Street then in the modern building on the industrial estate. She started in the factory in 1974 and was made redundant at the age of 62, when the factory changed to its present form - ie importing the clothes from China for distribution in the UK. She described how everything went by the clock: “From the minutes eight o'clock came, you were sewing the whole time until break time. Everything went by the clock. You had to do seventy pairs of pyjamas in half an hour, and whatever was your job on that, you had to do it in the half hour. There were about six of us working in a row. One started off and if her machine broke down, we were all waiting. But you had to do your seventy every half hour by the end of the day, or he wanted to know why,”