Recorded Memories

Clif Maund Interview. June 2000.

A Shropshire lad, working as a knitter at Bennett Bros and Nicholls & Wileman, and Mary a Sapcote girl

'The price for these [knitting] machines were governed, at the time, by a union blue paper...'

Cliff, originally from Shropshire left school at 16 and worked as an apprentice motor mechanic.

He did national service and came to live in Sapcote with his wife Mary soon after they married in the early 1950s. He worked as a knitter at Bennett Bros and describes the various circular knitting machines, and their functions. Machines included B5s, Spiral Kays, Bentley 4-Feeds, and Zodiac 8-Feeds and Samo 8-Feeds. The ever changing machinery brought their own problems which had to be sorted and Cliff relates trenches being dug to accommodate the Italian Zodiac machines. From Bennett Bros he worked at Corah’s for a year and then took a job at Nicholls and Wileman where he worked the Samo 8-Feeds. Some of the machines were more difficult than others and for the last 8-9 years of his working life, before being made redundant in 1997, he worked on the Goal knitting machines which produced pattern work on socks.
 

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