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  1. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by thewideeyedowl View Post
    My grandmother worked in a munitions factory in London during WW2. She was a little woman with small nimble fingers so was good at assembly work, but I am not sure whether it was bombs or ammunition that she worked on. The work was well-paid.

    The factory was Cossors, probably then based in the Aberdeen Works at Highbury in North London. My grandmother lived at Stroud Green and I have been told that the factory was "about ten minutes away" (but I'm not sure whether that was on foot or by bus).

    I am now trying to find out about Cossors but have only a small amount of info:
    Alfred Charles Cossor (1) started his original factory about 1860s-ish and it was his son, Alfred Charles Cossor (2) who started a dedicated electronics factory - they went into developing cathode ray tubes and, during WW2, did a lot of work on radar. This factory was, I believe, in Highbury and was known as the Aberdeen Works - but is probably no longer there. Years later the Cossor business was sold to Philips, I gather, and has probably been much subsumed since. However, it is the WW2 incarnation that I am interested in.

    If anyone can give any help on Cossors/Highbury/WW2 munition production there, I would be very grateful.

    Have to do other things now.

    Owl
    My mother also worked in Cossors Highbury before and during WW11. It originally made radios, and was used to make electronic parts for planes during war. My mother never mentioned Cossors making munitions, and its unlikely that such a factory would be placed in a residential area.

  2. #12
    thewideeyedowl
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    Good morning, Andygs, and a very warm welcome to Brit gen..

    Thank you for your help here. If you read through posts #2 - #10, you will see that forum research was pointing to fuses/assembly work/radar. If my grandmother had ben involved in the assembly of fuses, she might have said that she was "working in munitions"(?).

    There is now nobody left to ask - my grandmother died in 1998 and my mother (glossed as 'an elderly relative' here) in 2017.


    Swooping off.

    Owl

  3. #13
    Newcomer to Brit-Gen
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    Quote Originally Posted by thewideeyedowl View Post
    Good morning, Andygs, and a very warm welcome to Brit gen..

    Thank you for your help here. If you read through posts #2 - #10, you will see that forum research was pointing to fuses/assembly work/radar. If my grandmother had ben involved in the assembly of fuses, she might have said that she was "working in munitions"(?).

    There is now nobody left to ask - my grandmother died in 1998 and my mother (glossed as 'an elderly relative' here) in 2017.


    Swooping off.

    Owl
    Thanks for reply and info, yes I see point about fuses being part of munitions. My mother only ever mentioned valves and maybe that was the only dept she was ever in, I doubt if she would have been told about what was going on elsewhere. She died in 1993 and I really regret not discussing her experience at Cossors and finding out more. She gave birth to her first child, my sister, in September 1943 so would have stopped work there before the war finished.

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