I just remember it was quite a joyous time
Readhead Commercial Road offices and bridge
I left school in 1964 or 65 and I went to secretarial college for two years and my first job was in John Readhead and Sons in South Shields as a junior shorthand typist. I was there for about two or three years, I can’t remember because I was very young, but I remember being there and I remember the office and how looking back on it now, it was beautiful. It was solid oak walls, and the big staircases up to the bosses, the big boss which I think was Mr Towers. We were just in the office and our office manager, I think, was called Mr Adaire. And it was the old-fashioned typewriters, not even electric you know, the ones that you really had to plonk hard down on, which you learnt your speed and your accuracy in college.
I just remember it was quite a joyous time, and I think probably because we had such a lovely manager, that makes it when you have a nice boss. I can’t remember taking that much shorthand, I think it was more copy typing and I just remember just being young and just being happy in that time. I just remember the panels and people being beyond the panels. Because we made so much noise with the typewriters, we had to be separated from people who were on the phone. If we weren’t that busy, we used to have to go and help with the accounts and I remember typing these cheques for something like, I don’t know, a few thousand pounds. Which I thought, it was then, a massive amount of money because you were building ships and you had a lot of people to pay for all sorts of things – for work, for products. When it came to the launches we weren’t really invited to launches and we used to giggle about that and say, “Oh, we’re just the plebs you know.” But Mr Adaire on one launch, it must have been quite a big one, used to get a lot of champagne for the dignitaries, you know the Mayor and other people and he says, “Oh they’ll never miss a crate.” So he brought it in and as young girls we got quite tipsy on champagne, we fell asleep on our typewriters and so that was my first taste. I didn’t like the taste of champagne, but I liked what it did.
So we never did go to the launches really, we weren’t invited. But I remember working over-time to get the orders out and it was very vibrant and I remember having to go over the bridge. Because we were on one side of Commercial Road and then you had to go over the bridge, through the drafts room where the young lads were, and I hated that. I’d persuade somebody else to take a message over to somebody because I was really quite shy at the time.
In the typing area there was just me and this other girl and then the receptionist was in a little booth. The only contact we had with the workers [they] used to come in and get their wages probably on a Thursday night, Thursday after work. And they used to come to the reception area and we used to have to hand the pay cheques or packets, that’s the only contact we had. We weren’t allowed to go into the shipyard. There was a bridge, so we had to cross the bridge that’s where the draftsmen used to be. So, that was the only contact we had anyway, to the men and boys. I did actually see an ex-boyfriend come for his pay packet, so I hid. It was definitely us and them.
I went down south at the age of 19 because Swan Hunters bought out John Readhead. I was born in 1948; 1967 I would have gone there. Because my dad found out that Swan Hunters were buying John Readhead, and I think work wasn’t very plentiful either, and he was probably not that old my dad and he decided we’d be best off moving down south to go and find work, So, we went to Hatfield in Hertfordshire and I absolutely hated it. I did come home after about a year or two. I had a boyfriend up here, so I wanted to come back and be with him and that inevitably fizzled out anyway.
I can’t remember how much I got, I would have been paid in pounds shillings and pence, but it was a lot better than what I was getting at Jopling’s in Sunderland which was a departmental store, I think that was £3 a week and you had to buy like an overall which was £3, you had to buy that. So that was a week’s wages and it was crazy when I think about it. But I thought I was going to go out there and earn money and go into the big wide world and earn money and of course my dad was proved right actually. It was a way out of the kind of life we had at home. Not poverty, we weren’t poor, but we were living literally from hand to mouth because my mam went out to work and my dad became the house husband which was quite unusual in those days you know. We weren’t frowned upon, but it was just, we were different. They did their best with what they had. I never felt badly for it I was quite proud of them, very proud of them.
When I worked at John Readhead there was a very icy day and this man, I won’t say his full name he’s called Robert and it was a very, very icy day and he’d walked all the way to work on the ice being very, very careful and he came into the office and he just went flying and broke his leg and we all just laughed because we thought it was funny that he actually broke his leg, not on the ice but in the office.
Clare was interviewed in 2025 as part of the Women in Shipbuilding project.