Work

Main Street, Sharnford, 1965. The view hasn't changed too much in the last 40 years. Courtesy of the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester & Rutland.

Interviewer: Can you tell me about the jobs that people used to do in the village?

Mr Morton: As I say, the main stay of the village was, well my dad were in the building and my uncles were all builders and, then, my uncle was the biggest employer of labour in the village, no doubt about that an’ all. Of course, there were farming in the village, that’s all, and the remainder had to go the quarries at Stoney Stanton and Sapcote, that’s where most of them went to work them days.

Interviewer: Were there any large houses or influential families nearby?

Mr Morton: No, that’s the point of Sharnford, there isn’t many within 12 or 14 miles, real big places like these halls as you like to call them. On these big farms they had little girls go in, you know, as servants and all. That’s where they used to land as a rule, more than anywhere, but as they got older they got into these more big houses like Willoughby Hall, and Bosworth Hall, Merryvale Hall. Well they never got much money you know, that’s where the trouble was them days, they weren’t paid enough, nah. My sister was, she was in service in Hinckley, then she got married and went to live in Coventry and she was on 30 bob a month, 30 shillings a month, that’d be what today? [£1.50].

Interviewer: At what age would the girls go into service?

Mr Morton: About 12, 13. That’s the first thing they had to do, they had to go straight away to find a job as soon as they left school. A lot of the boys went on farms or went to the quarries just the same as the men. They’d find the boys some jobs at the quarries just the same.

Interviewer: At what age would they go down, work in the quarries?

Mr Morton: The same again. There used to be a little job called whipping. That was after the sett makers had done their chipping, they had to break these chips, they come off bits as big as your hand, and you’d see these chaps, these boys with a little hammer on a heap, and they were cracking up, you know. It were a rum life, nothing like it is today lad.

©EMOHA