I started at Burtons in 1959’. Believe it or not my mom not only arranged the interview she attended it. She worked at Burtons, as did her brother and at least one of her sisters. I was lucky because I'd no idea what I wanted to do when I left school. I started off in the Post Room so I got to know the layout of the large factory.

There was a staff of eight people and the boss, dealing with all the incoming and outgoing mail. 4 permanent staff and 4 boys. I think there were somewhere in the region of 600 branches together with a number of factories so there was a lot of mail.

My mum was a Passer in the factory and when I passed through if one of the girls working with her saw me they’d start to shout “it’s Nelly’s lad!” It was so embarrassing.

It was an incredible place for it’s time. It had chiropodists, nurses, dental health, and other services all on site. The canteen was enormous and for the first year you got a 3 course lunch at a reduced rate.

In 1965 on the advice of the Surveyor who was my boss I looked for another job. It was difficult to grow up, the older staff would send young men in there early 20s, some married, out for cigarettes and newspapers. My boss put a stop to this but I still needed to leave to get experience.

So I left and worked for about 7 years in the Drawing Office of Evans of Leeds, a development company doing drawings for houses and industrial units.

In 1972 my old boss contacted me and offered me a job so I went back for a small increase in pay and a car.

I was there for 30 years from 1972 - 2004 working in the building surveyors and the building maintenance surveyors. I travelled all over this country, because at one time Burtons had between four hundred and five hundred shops. The first part of my job was looking after the fabric of the building, the outside, to keep the roof water-tight and just generally looking after the building. Later on I was transferred to internal maintenance - which was great because I didn’t have to run up and down scaffolding any more.They had a team of people who did all the planning and organisation for the internal work in the shops. And the department I worked for only came in afterwards to do the maintenance - there were a lot of different departments at Burtons.

I would have been 60 in 2004, I would have had about 6 months to go before retirement but I took early retirement because they were closing the whole department. Philip Green was bringing in his own property department from British Home Stores, so everybody in Burtons property division from the Director downwards, everybody, was made redundant. It was alright for me as I’d only a few months to go but it was very upsetting for others, there were young guys in their mid 30’s who’d not been there long and all of a sudden are given the chop. It wasn’t a nice time to be there.