Now aged 88, Reg Stone of Skelmanthorpe worked at an extraordinary 16 jobs in a working life spanning 48 years. ‘A Life In Textiles’ goes some way to describing his journey through working life, though not completely. Here he tells his story to John Avison.

MY first job, aged 14 and straight out of school, was as a farm labourer for Mr Harry Dunning at Thorncliffe Spring Farm, on the Kirkburton/Emley Moor boundary, Reg recalls.

“This was in 1935. My wage was 8s 6d (42½p) a week. I was doing all the odd jobs, including hand-milking, mucking out and feeding the animals.

“There wasn’t enough work that winter, so I got my second job at Harry’s brother Arthur’s farm in Kirkburton. The work was pretty much the same.

“My father died on Easter Saturday, 1936 of injuries he received on his bicycle at Emley Moor crossroads. Money was tight, and we had to vacate our home at Highfield Farm, Emley Moor.

“My brother Jack got me a job at Abe Crabtree’s Springfield Mill, spinners, Kirkburton, where I was oiling spindles, and ‘donning and doffing’ which was putting on empty and taking off full ‘robins’ from the yarn spindles.

“This paid better than farm work – 12s 6d (62½p) a week. But an even better paid job was on the horizon, and a year later I left Crabtree’s for Garside and Sons, Dogley Bar.

‘The job was general work among the looms and in the warehouse and maintaining the boilers, and it paid one guinea (£1.1s, or £1.05) a week.

“Work was patchy until after September, 1938 and Neville Chamberlain’s ‘peace in our time’ declaration.

“Thereafter, we suddenly had a full workload with overtime and even night shifts. We wove cloth for the Army, Navy and Royal Air Force to make into uniforms.

“On my 19th birthday in 1940 I was called up into the RAF, returning home to my old job in 1946, though aged 25, my wage had gone up to £4 10s (£4.50) a week.

“I left in 1947 for a complete change, to hand loom weaving of hand wired wool hearth rugs, at Norman Beaumont’s of Brook Street, Huddersfield, part of the Beaver Brothers Uniform and Rug Mills.

“My bike ride – whenever possible I cycled to work – was now eight miles each way. But the money was £7 a week and I worked there for five years.

“I then worked at a small factory at Tandem, Waterloo, doing similar work on Dobcross power looms. The proprietors were a Mr King and a Mr Clark. After two years I was asked to take over the tuning of the looms.

“In 1954 I moved to Shelley Woodhouse Mill, part of parent firm Shelley Textiles, Near Bank, producing hand wired wool rugs, and in January 1955 moved into the Near Bank HQ, a larger set-up, where we tended to use synthetic yarn, which had just come on to the market.

“A new green synthetic yarn was tried, and we were able to weave the grass-like rugs for butchers’ stalls.

“My ninth job was at Martin and Sons of Lindley, who had just taken over Papes and Son of Spring Grove, Penistone Road. The work was weaving worsted cloth for the better quality market.

“Two-loom weaving had just started, and I was involved in weaving plain white worsted cloth. But the pay wasn’t good, so I moved again, this time to Haigh’s Mill, Farnley Tyas, which had about 12 Dobcross looms in a sorry state.

“I was asked if I could repair and tune them, and I said yes. So my job became what is now called a powerloom overlooker or loom technician.

“I brought all 12 looms back into use and my wage went up to £18 a week.

“Orders started to fall, though, and in August, 1963 I was made redundant.”

He worked next at Benjamin Armitage’s The Knowle, Shepley until the mill closed, so he worked at Carter’s and then Moxon’s mill, Kirkburton.

“During my stay at Moxon’s it was taken over by the Tulkeith Group but I was in charge of 20 looms, and it was an easy bike ride from Skelmanthorpe.

“During my time there, PM James Callaghan visited, and a special cloth was woven for him with J C Cloth on the selvedge.

“In June 1977 two section of 20 looms were scrapped and replaced by a modern Sulzer loom.”

Another redundancy soon followed, and by now, Reg was 56, so another job was hard to come by.

He finally got work at George Beaumont’s mill, dyers and finishers, as a tenter, and after a year was posted to the parent company in Brockholes.

“What they didn’t tell me was that I was doing the work for somebody who was off sick. When he returned, I was made redundant again.”

On his bike again, looking for work, Reg came across a job at the Salvation Army Hall in Denby Dale, which was being run by a small firm with knitting machines.

“The money was £60 for a 38-hour week and though I hadn’t done the work before, I got into it easily.

“In 1978 I was offered a job as a sweeper or lengthman for Denby Dale Council at Clayton West. There was a chance to join a government-backed pension scheme, so I leapt at it.

“The job was quite nice, keeping the streets clean, then I was offered a job as a driver’s mate at the Skelmanthorpe depot, going round picking up rubbish.

“It was the only job I was able to do walking from my home in Cumberworth Road.

“Eventually, on September 23, 1983, I had to retire. It should have been a happy year but a month later my wife Hilda – we’d been married in 1949 – died of cancer.

“It was a sad ending, but life has to go on.”