Memories of Rowntrees

IT is nearly 40 years since Anne Wood left her job as a secretary at Rowntrees to have a family. But she still remembers her time at the company with huge affection.

She remembers the overpowering smell of mint whenever you got near the Polo section. “It used to make your eyes water.”

She remembers walking past the area where the fresh raspberries and strawberries were stored for the fruit pastilles. “There were crates and crates of them… and a lot of wasps.”

She remembers the rush to leave the factory at lunchtimes and at the end of shifts – the flood of bicycles, and the crush of people all leaving at the same time. Driving instructors used to take learner drivers past the factory gates at the time they knew everyone would be coming out, she says, to give them the experience of driving on a busy road. Her own driving instructor once did this to her. “It put the fear of God into you.”

But above all she remembers what a great place Rowntrees was to work. The company really cared about its staff, she said. And in turn, the staff felt as though they belonged.

This started from her first week with the company, as a teenager fresh from Margaret Clitheroe Secondary Modern School. Anne Render, as she was then, joined a group of trainee typists who had been recruited through adverts in The Press. They spent a week being inducted, and taught about the history of the company: and then they were sent to York Technical College in Tadcaster Road to study for their RSA (Royal Society of Arts) qualifications in typing and secretarial skills.

The first three months was full-time at the college, the next six months part-time. The rest of their time during the six months they spent at Rowntrees, working in just about every department. “We spent time being messengers, delivering post. We went in every section – and everyone was happy to give you the benefit of their experience,” she says. “I learnt a lot – and they paid you.”

So good was her training that within three years she had risen from being a trainee typist to personal secretary to a divisional director. “They gave you the chance to get the skills you needed: skills that I’m still using more than 40 years later,” says Anne, who now works as an editorial assistant in the photographic and archives department at The Press.

There was a wonderful sense of camaraderie among employees at Rowntrees, she recalls. Whole generations of families worked there, including her mother. So there was always someone you knew, or who knew you or your parents. A photograph shows the young Anne Render with other trainee typists in their very first week at the company, in August 1968. “And I’m still in touch with some of those girls today,” she says.

What really made the company special, however, was the ethos, she says. It must have been something to do with the Quaker ethic of the Rowntree family and the company they built, she believes.

It showed itself in the training and career opportunities given to people; in the after-work activities (everything from amateur dramatics to outward-bound courses); and in the care the company took for the physical health of its employees.

There was a company rest house in Scarborough, where employees who had been ill were allowed to go for a holiday, she says. Dunollie, it was called. “They sent a young woman who worked at the company, and who had recently been widowed, there for two weeks. It was just one of the benefits of working at Rowntrees.”

Another indication of the company’s consideration was the cards that were given to women who were expecting a baby. That entitled the women to leave work five minutes early – so they could avoid the crush of other people leaving at the end of their shift.

Anne left Rowntrees after seven years to have a family, but she has never forgotten her time with the company. “I have fantastic memories.”

These are the sort of memories a new oral history project being run by the Rowntree Society hopes to collect.

The York Remembers Rowntree project aims to gather stories, memories, recollections and old photographs relating to the company and those who worked there, and turn these into an online archive that can be used and searched by anyone.

The Rowntree Society ran a postcard pilot scheme last year which resulted in more than 600 memories being gathered.

But York Remembers Rowntree aims to build on that. Funded by a £59,100 Heritage Lottery Fund grant, and officially launched earlier this year, a new project manager, Suzanne Lilley, has now been appointed. It is her job to co-ordinate a team of volunteers to help collect, transcribe and archive people’s memories.

The aim is to get as many people to come forward with their own stories about Rowntrees as possible, so as to build up a real picture of how the company helped shape the identity of York.

Suzanne, a 29-year-old who grew up in Derbyshire and who is just completing a Ph.D in archaeology at the University of York, where she has been studying York’s industrial-age houses from the late 18th and early 19th centuries, says there is huge affection in York for the Rowntree family and the company they built.

“The loyalty and sense of community and identity that Rowntrees managed to create was crucial to this city. And it is very apparent from the memories we have gathered so far,” she says.

So if you have a story about Rowntrees, or memories you’d like to share, Suzanne and her team of volunteers would love to hear from you.

There are four particular themes they are interested in (see panel). But everyone’s contributions will be welcomed.

Ultimately, the aim will be to conduct in-depth interviews with 35 people who have particularly interesting stories to tell about Rowntrees. But everyone who gets in touch with a memory will see their contributions included in the eventual online archive, Suzanne promises.

“So get in touch. We’d like to hear from you.”

• If you have a story to tell about Rowntrees, or old photographs you’d like to share, contact the Rowntree Society on 01904 543383, email your memories to memories@rowntreesociety.org.uk or write them down and post them to The Rowntree Society, Clements Hall, Nunthorpe Road, York YO23 1BW.

Society keen to hear your stories

Suzanne Lilley and her team at the Rowntree Society are particularly interested in gathering stories and memories about four aspects of life at Rowntrees. These are:

• The factory, the production line, and ancillary workers such as joiners, carpenters and others

• Transport, including the Rowntree Halt railway stop, and memories (and old photographs) of people who used to go to work at Rowntrees by bicycle.

• Memories of the ‘model village’ of New Earswick, and how it has changed over time

• Entertainment and leisure activities organised by Rowntrees, including the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, the Rowntree Players, sports days, the brass band and so on.

• There will be a ‘York Remembers Rowntree’ day at York Explore Library next Wednesday from 10.30am to 3.30pm. Come along to find out more about the project, share your memories – and take part in some Rowntree activities: including a competition to find out how quickly you can pack a box of chocolates, and a ‘dexterity test’ developed by Rowntrees in the 1930s to test whether applicants had the ‘right stuff’ to work on the factory floor.

•  A blue Civic Trust plaque to commemorate Joseph Rowntree will be unveiled at 28 Pavement, where he was born, ahead of the York Residents Festival from January 25-26 next year. The plaque will read: “Joseph Rowntree 1836-1925 was born here over the Rowntree shop, which opened on this site in 1822. A Quaker businessman, social reformer and philanthropist, he worked here until 1869 before leaving to run the famous Rowntree confectionery company”.