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A collection of interviews and photographs recorded by Women's Archive of Wales in 2013-14

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VN007 Dafydd Llewelyn, James Kaylor Compacts, Caernarfon;Bernard Wardell, Caernarfon

Dafydd started as an apprentice tool setter in Kaylor Compacts on leaving school at the age of fifteen. He wanted to be a driver and only worked there a year before getting a job on the Co-op van. His main job was going round and changing the tools on the presses, and pushing the compacts into a tunnel where they were heated, and maintenance work, although he was suppose to be a tool-setter. He didn't like the job because of the way the foremen, two in particular, treated people, but he said his co-workers were great. When he walked down between the machines, the girls would pull his leg and call out things like “Do you want a thrill?” and he was only 15! The women looked after him. When he went to the canteen, there was a nice woman there who'd let him pay the next day if he didn't have enough on him. They didn't serve hot food, just snacks. He did work in another factory, Bernard Wardell, after leaving the compact factory but mainly did driving work thereafter.
The inside of the Compact Factory, with women at work, 1950s.The inside of the Compact Factory, 1950s

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