New Work

For my work this semester I am going back almost 5 years in time to when I was employed at Amann Industries in Tralee, Co. Kerry.

It was a dream come true to be able to work in Tralee after 12 years working in textile factory on the outskirts of Bury, near Manchester.  An old-fashioned textile factory that produced sewing threads on old machines, truly a dark satanic mill really, with windows that were white-washed to keep out the sunshine and uneven wooden floors so impregnated with machine oil that the whole place would have gone up in a flash if ever there was a fire there.  What made this job bearable was the people - really good, down-to-earth, Northern mill -workers who worked hard under some of the most horrible conditions you could imagine. 



This is an internet image of the factory called Peel Mills.  I never took any photos of the factory which I now regret as this once listed building now looks like this. 


source:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/fragglehunter/7712686506/


Peel Mills closed in 2002 and I was transferred permanently to Tralee.  In the factory in Tralee, there were no windows at all and the floor bore the marks of other machines that had been at this site before, when it manufactured denim.  The other workers in Tralee were incomprehensible to me at first - they seemed to speak so quickly and combined with the noise levels in the factory, if I didn't get what they were saying in the first 3 words I just had to smile and nod.  It got easier and the massive advantage of this factory was that it was 20 minutes from the Atlantic Ocean and for the first 6 months I lived in a hotel and didn't have to wash up once.

In 2010 the factory closed for good and I got the chance to go to art college.  This made me very amibivalent towards the closure.  Although hundreds of people lost their jobs it wasn't a disaster for me or for lots of others.  The work was physical and tiring.  Shifts were 12 hours long in high temperatures with noise levels sometimes in excess of 90 decibels.  We spent thousands of hours wearing ear defenders and shouting or using sign language to each other.  This is the reality of spinning mills, they need high temperatures and high humidity to spin the thread and the machines are very noisy.  I miss the people though; in a town like Tralee if you work with 300+ others you know most of the town in one way or another.  You can salute half the town on a Saturday afternoon in the main street. 

I don't miss the money, the routine or the conditions.  Yet I still have a fondness for both places.  For anyone born in the industrial north-west of England before 1975 or so, textiles are in the blood.  My dad worked in dye-houses all his life.  My sister started in textiles before escaping and textile manufacturing is all I know.  Well that and a bit of printing now ...