Joyce started working at Royal Worcester in 1937 at the age of 14 as an apprentice in the Enamellers’ Department, where she worked until the outbreak of the Second World War. She was then persuaded by the factory’s Managing Director Joe Gimson to transfer to war work and was relocated to the ‘Welwyn’, a small factory within Royal Worcester working on radiolocation tubes for radar. Despite the fact that this work was hard and dirty, Joyce enjoyed it and made many friends, some of whom she was still in touch with at the time of this interview. At the end of the war, Joyce moved to china decorating and then to stencilling. She met her husband Jack Holloway at Royal Worcester – he was the Foreman of the Aerographers’ Department. Joyce left the factory in 1955 to have her first baby. 

EXTRACT Joyce on War Work in the Welwyn. Duration 0.59

Copyright Museum of Royal Worcester

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