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I think that the war spoiled my teenaged years. I had to spend weekends fire-watching and I’d just grown up and all the men had gone! I met my future husband …at the factory, though and he was allowed to leave and join up and we corresponded. I suppose might not have married him if he hadn’t gone away first.
When the war started I was 15 years old and working at a leather company called Sam Kay in Harvey Street. Walmsley. Government inspectors would come round because the leather was for the boots of the troops. It was a reserved occupation so I couldn’t go anywhere else, I had to stay at the factory till the end of the war.
We lived in a rural area, in Chadwick Fold, now part of Walmsley Old Road in Bury. There were no air raid shelters round our way, we just had a field, and although we were a long way out of Manchester, shrapnel came over during the 1940 blitz. No-one was injured on that occasion but when a bomb was dropped on Tottington, people were killed and houses were destroyed.
I remember one particular bitterly cold winter during wartime. There was no water —it was frozen in the ground and the troops came to dig the snow so that people could be let out of their own homes. We used to see the prisoners-of-war camps at the Warth and the Italians were at the Burrs country park The Germans had to stay in their camp but the Italians were allowed out to go to church on Sundays and then came for Sunday dinner to local people’s houses.

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