Getting On, In & Out of the Forest

The latest contributor to our website is Glenda Griffiths who grew up in Broadwell. Some of her most enduring recollections are of the Second World War.  She finished her schooling in Gloucester where she faced challenges having come from the Forest. Glenda’s grandparents, and later her parents, managed the Bird in Hand public house in Broadwell. Glenda left her pharmacy job to work at the Meredith and Drew biscuit factory that offered better pay and conditions. The factory, that offered jobs to over 300 people, thrived for a decade but sensing that it would close Glenda moved to Rosedale, another Cinderford factory producing moulded plastic toys. Glenda recalls her future husbands’ failure of etiquette in that era, of not asking her father if he could marry her. Her employer showed a reluctance to support her through her pregnancy reflecting prejudices towards pregnant women and working mothers in the workplace. She later discovered that a woman described as her Aunt, was in fact her sister.