The History of Ruddington Depot
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Post War Changes
Another abrupt change
In 1947 there was a further re-organisation of the Depot.
The Ministry of Supply vacated the buildings they occupied along the southern
boundary of the site. These buildings were demolished and the land eventually
reverted to agriculture, the only piece of the site ever to do so. It is still
farmed today and is beyond the fence at the far side of the Country Park.
For Eileen Selby, who had become an established civil servant it meant a return
to the building she had worked in while the Depot was being constructed:
“We just changed over. One day we were in the Ministry of Supply in building 8D25, and the next day we were in the main admin. block at the opposite end of the site. There were three established people in my section and I was one of them. We were old hands because we had several years’ service. There was a little bit of misunderstanding when we met Co-op people who thought they were in charge of us. We very carefully told them that this was not so. We had all this service and still worked for the Ministry of Supply.”
In such a situation a sense of humour was invaluable. The displaced office workers laughed and joked together:
“It was a standing joke among us that they (the C.W.S.) gave ‘divi’ on the bombs. We had an assistant Superintendent who always wore a bow tie. When things went awry we used to say, “Bentleys got his bow twisted again.”
The new regime settled down into a regular routine:
“Going down to the main admin. block we were more or less thrown into the defence side of the Depot too. The Chief clerk would bring into the typing pool as many as 30 or 40 letters to type in a morning, and we were working for other people as well. We did a list of all the wages for everyone on the Depot, two of us, every Thursday morning. There were big sheets like newspapers, and we typed them every Thursday. Several hundreds of people had to be paid in cash on Friday. I sometimes typed out the cheque for the total amount to be paid out, which was taken to the bank to get the cash. A car used to go from the front office each week at 10 o’clock with two wages clerks, one patrol man, an Alsatian dog and the driver. They used to go and bring the cash back on the stroke, and I used to remark that anyone could rob them."
The Story > Chapter 5 > Section 5.10