WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THAT..........
........ upon leaving Denbigh Grammar school in North Wales in 1955 at the age of 15 I would have spent nearly 50 years in the shoe trade....... it all started when my uncle and auntie came to Denbigh for a holiday in 1957 and seeing I had been out of work for a few weeks suggested I could go and live with them as there was plenty of work in Rushden. On arriving in Rushden I was amazed at the amount of shoe factories there was in the area, virtually one on every corner!
I started work at the Tecnic shoe factory in Bedford Road, my first day came as a bit of a shock what with the overpowering smell of leather (all of the components of the shoe were made of leather in those days) and the size of the factory! Coming from a small market town in North Wales I had never seen anything like it.
After a couple of years learning various jobs in the bottom stock department I asked the foreman Mr Robinson (everybody had a title in those days) if I could learn to operate the revolution press, a machine used for cutting leather soles, insoles etc. it paid good money in those days because of the dangerous element of the job. After I had been working on the press for a few weeks the boss, Mr Tarry came walking through the factory as he did most days, stopped at my machine and said 'good morning, you will be careful won't you'; he was a real gentleman.
All in all I spent a total of 27 years working at the Tecnic, I left 3 times to work in various factories but they always had me back, it was a good shop to work for as they say in Rushden, so I've got a lot to thank Rushden and the shoe trade for.
I left the Tecnic for the third and last time in August 1987 to set up on my own in a shop in Bedford road in Rushden, doing shoe repairs, stayed there a couple of years and moved to the North Wales coast still doing shoe repairs, returned after 8 years and finished the last 7 years of my working life working at Alfred Sargent's in Portland Road until I retired in 2005.
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In 1980 Norman Shortland's widow sold the machine to Ron Jones. Ron says: "I used to live in Rushden and Higham Ferrers. I had shoe repair shop in Bedford Road in Rushden for a couple of years before moving to Wales for 8 years taking all the equipment with me as I was still working then. We returned to this area to live in Raunds in 1997 (bringing all the machinery back with me!) I've been retired for 5 years so I only repair my wife's shoes, and mine of course!
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Norman with the machine behind him (see white arrow)
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Ron Jones operating the same machine
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The thing that grieves me now is the quality of the shoes on the market, mainly due to foreign imports whereas when I first started in the trade every factory made quality shoes, now sadly there's only a handful in the whole county that make good quality welted shoes.
Ron Jones.
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