HALL'S FACTORY

New Cumnock will perhaps be best remembered as a coal-mining town set in a rural landscape . There is no doubt that many of the characters in the town belong to the mining or farming community. However, for many years at the heart of the town stood Hall's Factory, a hosiery owned by C.W. Hall & Sons Ltd. and brimming full of New Cumnock worthies. I was lucky enough to get a summer job at Hall's (or Afton Glen Textiles as it was later known) for each of the 6 years from 1975 through to 1980, and to meet many of the characters in the place.

Sadly the factory, later to become Afton Dyers has now closed and the building inevitably will be demolished but hopefully some happy memories remain. Below are some photos I took during my last summer job in 1980 .

One person missing from these photos is the late Andy Watson. He was usually in charge of 'co-ordinating my activities' or 'mission control' as he called it. Each day would start the same way . We would pull up a bag of socks each, plank ourselves down, Andy would make sure his bunnet was at its customary angle, the pipe was lit and a few puffs later the whole day was planned out and off we went..................