Week 24: 24 June 2019

The final editing session of the project this week with 8 pupils from Thomas Gainsborough School making the final cuts on the filmed interviews with staff from Gainsborough Silks and Vanners. This is the last session with the school pupils on the project, the next time we all meet up with be at the website launch and film screening in September. While the pupils are editing I visit a 95 year old lady who’s daughter in law contacted me through the memory box in the library, she has some stories to share about her time in the silk mills. She was just 14 years old when she started work in the mill. She remembers one day carrying a tray of reels across the mill and a male colleague more than twice her age squeezed her bottom as she passed. When it happened a second time a few days later she put down the tray and told the man that if he did that again she would pick up whatever was nearest to hand and hit him over the head with it. He didn’t touch her again and they became good friends. She later went on to marry a weaver from the mill who continued to work there up to his retirement.