Taught how to candle the eggs
“THE place was so cold that after just a few minutes the eggs had frozen”
That was Kathleen Cresswell recalling the coldest winter she can remember, when she was working at the egg packing factory in Loughborough.
She said that the place was so cold that as soon as a crate of eggs were brought in, that they would freeze if they were left on the floor for too long.
Kathleen, 89, of Loughborough said that she worked at the factory in the 1960s right up until it closed, and she too remembers giving her two little boys a ride on the rollers like Jean Spencer recalled last week in Looking Back.
Kathleen said that in the 60s her family were friends of Frank Anthill who was the boss at the egg packing station at the time, and that he talked her into taking a job in the office at the factory, where she would have the responsibility of doing all the paperwork for the firm.
She said that she absolutely loved working there: “It was like a home from home, and I couldn’t believe how free and easy it was to work there.”
According to Kathleen the factory was owned by Melton Farmers Association, and it wasn’t a big corporation, but an old lady who she remembers taking her and all the other girls out for tea and cake when the factory closed.
Kathleen said that the recent Looking Back article brought back a lot of her memories of the place and she said that she used to get on really well with all of the girls that Jean Spencer remembered working in the factory.
Kathleen said: “I remember all the girls - Dolly Waldron, her and her husband used to keep a pub in Loughborough and they had twin sons and they would come into the factory on their bikes and ride around the factory, because inside it was as big as aeroplane hanger.
“I remember Elsie Marshall and her daughter Sylvia Marshall - Sylvia would make me laugh, her face was screwed up every morning when she came in and I would always ask her why, and she would say ‘my feet are killing me, I’ve got shoes on that are pinching my toes’,
“She said to me she used to wear these shoes that hurt her feet because when she got home it was a relief when she took them off at the end of the day, and to put on her comfy ones.
“I couldn’t believe that and she used to do it on purpose.
“The other girls there were Kay (can’t remember the surname) Angela (Nancy) Hart, and Florrie Foxx (Jean Spencer’s mother).
“I knew Florrie well she was a lovely lady and there was another lady who was there in her 80s, every one of them knew exactly what they were doing - you couldn’t beat them at it.”
Kathleen said that the girls taught her how to pack eggs because there wasn’t always something to do in the office and they also taught her how to candle eggs.
She said: “Candling was when you would sit on a stool with your head inside an open box, with a lid on and two sides, and there would be light shining down on the eggs and you were looking down as they were passing along a conveyor belt really slowly.
“You would keep turning them and looking for a blood spot, or a dark spot or if they were bad then that would show up straight away.
“Some of the eggs that I candled had three yolks - three yolks!
“They used to bring in some really big eggs. There were five different grades - large, extra large, small, extra small and medium and they used to have specialist eggs ordered in, duck eggs and things like that.
“They didn’t just teach me, but they taught my boys how to do it too, and then they would sit them on the rollers.
“Rena Brown who used to make the boxes to put the eggs in, would push the kids along and they thought it was wonderful, and Frank, (Anthill) if he had time, would take the lads out for a ride around all the farms in the school holidays.”
One of Kathleen’s most pivotal memories from her time at the factory was the cold winter of 1962 or 63 she couldn’t remember the exact year but she said: “It was the really bad winter, and everywhere was frozen solid.
“The delivery man Mr Crane, he would bring the eggs in off the vans and the factory was so cold because they had no heating that the eggs were frozen within minutes if you let them sit on the floor for too long. “It was so damn cold!” She said that Clarke and Partridge, the firm around the corner would let them use their toilets during the cold winter, and would also let them boil the kettle there because the egg factory had no hot water and was too cold to even boil a kettle.
Kathleen said she even remembers an inspector coming down to look at the factory because it was so cold and she said: “The inspector came and said that it was too cold to really work in and that they would try and do something for us, but what they were more interested in was the posters that the girls had up on the walls.
“The inspector told us that we better take down all the pin ups on the wall, of the film stars - but then they transferred the inspector down to Kent and nothing was ever sorted so we were stuck in the cold!”
Kathleen also recalls that all the eggs that were cracked were put into a big cauldron, and that every other day a man from Cauldwells bakery would pay for them and collect them.
She also said that there were some grand people that used to come and collect eggs including local lords and ladies.
Kathleen said that she still thinks of the place and her fond memories and she said: “It was a really happy place to work, and when we actually packed up I was sad, we all tried to help one another - it brought back memories seeing it in Looking Back and now I often sit and think of how good a place it was to work.”