10 Maple Close

History of 10 Maple Close

1939

William Day, b 1897, builder’s labourer

Mabel, b 1897,

Dorothy, b 1922, upholsterer’s apprentice

Dorothy was interviewed in 1989 by the Cambridge Community Resource Team (transcript in the Cambridgeshire Collection):

I was living at home. My dad was in the Home Guard – he was a crack shot – he’d survived the First World War of course. We had a lodger from London. She hated it here in Cambridge. You had to work and you couldn’t choose your shift. I worked in munitions – at Lab Gear in Fair Street and later at Leys Road – a converted chicken run in an orchard! I was on drilling machine and a capstan lathe … making bits for tanks … at one time holes for hypodermic needles. I think shifts were from 8 at night to 6 in the morning. Eating at night affected my stomach. We didn’t sleep much! I was on Fire Duty and if the siren went our Air Raid Warden called us out to parade the streets. He’d come and throw stones at my window. My mother Mabel Day worked at Lab Gear too – in the despatch room.

Of course working at night you were in the blackout – at Leys Road the toilet was quite a distance. You used to have to go in threes. It was quite scary. Sometimes the Manager would just appear at 4 in the morning and stand and stare at us. You could only have a little slit of light across your bicycle lamp just enough to see.

Dorothy married her sweetheart Reg in August 1947 after his demobilisation. Commenting on the event she said: I had to save all my coupons for six months to buy the two piece I was married in. I was blue with white flowers. Reg and I had not really seen much of each other since we had met in 1943 at the Guildhall!

Note: Labgear was set set up by Laurie Jones of Pye Ltd in 1939 and run by his wife A M ‘Joan” Jones. Initially it was in a shed in the Jones’s back garden in Leys Road. Laurie was works manager at Pye’s Cambridge works in the 1930s.