The History of Ruddington Depot
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Post War Changes
Alternative uses for the spare capacity
After D. Day the stores held in the large hangers and rows of Nissen huts on the site were gradually depleted as the battlefront moved steadily eastwards across Europe. There was vacant space available and efforts to find an alternative use for it were already in hand when the war ended. Taylor Woodrow were the first firm to rent one of the empty buildings from the Ministry of Works, which became responsible for redundant buildings on the site. Harold Lowe worked there for a time:
“The pre-fabricated houses came in from Taylor Woodrow, and were taken to the large hangers on Asher Lane. The smaller pieces were in boxes, like big ammunition boxes, and each one was filled with corners, brackets, screws and nuts etc. belonging to the larger pre-fabricated units. They were taken out of the boxes and put in piles on a shelf. Our job was to take the boxes away. The girls were on the landing where the shelves were. They stood by the piles and a bag was passed from one girl to the next until it came to the end. Then it was tied up and weighed. There had to be the same weight in every bag. If the weight wasn’t the same everything had to be emptied out to see what was missing or if two had been put in by mistake ….. These were only the small parts. In one bag there would just be everything that belonged to a door, or window or something like that.”
On the building site the larger pre-fabricated parts were fitted together like a Meccano set, the door and windows were fixed with screws etc. from the bag, and finished with handles, bolts and catches that were also inside.
The Story > Chapter 5 > Section 5.02