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Summer Job working for Birds Eye

An interview with David Cooke

By Richard Dade

I this interview David Cooke reminisces on his summer time job working for Birds Eye testing the peas in the field to make sure they were tender

"Birdseye paid the best wages that you could find in the town. I was probably 18 by then and was probably one of my last summer jobs in Great Yarmouth and we were on 12 hour shifts from 6 in the morning to 6 o'clock at night or 6 o'clock at night to 6 in the morning so you had to alternate.

The wage went up to about 2 shillings to 2/6 for 12 hours that's 25 bob a day what I had to do they had all these pea vining machines and every hour on the hour I had to go round to all the different machines there was about 6 or 8 machines in this field and you had to take out a sample of peas and put them in a box and you had to put these peas in a machine called a "tender-o-meter" .

Now if the peas were not tender enough, cause this is Birds Eye remember and the adverts on television fresh as the time when the peas went pop or something like that on their advert on television so they had to be fresh straight from the field straight to the factory to be frozen and so that was my job to test the peas.

So you could reject them reject this load of peas and you had to go out and tell the man on the machine that these peas were not tender so the whole lot got dumped and it was up to me to decide to do it and I had just come straight from school which was a bit crazy really. Anyway I did the job properly and at the end of that period of 6 weeks I had earned enough to buy my first car and I bought a Hillman Husky".

This page was added by Richard Dade on 23/02/2008.

Comments about this page

I worked at Birds Eye Great Yarmouth from late 1957 to mid 1963 in the Quality Control Department.

During the greater part of the summer, when peas and green beans were processed, the factory operated non-stop except for a daily cleaning period of about 4 hours.

The men worked 12 hours Monday to Saturday and either 8 or 16 hours on a Sunday to effect a shift change between days and nights, i.e., either 80 or 88 hours a week.

A large number of university students were employed and everyone looked forward to the summer when they could earn extra money through the overtime.

Prior to 1960 harvesting, threshing and vining of peas were carried out in the field and vined peas were tested with tenderometers at a number of locations.

From 1960 peas were harvested and brought for threshing and vining to two large stations at Filby and Upton. Each batch of vined peas was tested with a tenderometer and graded 1 to 6. Periodically tenderometers were checked against control samples provided by Unilever's Research Establishment at Colworth House in Bedfordshire.

The tenderometer, as it name implies, measured pea tenderness by forcing a set of grids through a sample of peas. The resistance caused a counter weight to rise and also a pointer to move across a scale. Greater resistance caused the weight to move higher, the pointer to move further across the scale and a higher reading

The intention was that peas would be processed, frozen and placed in cold storage within 90 minutes of vining.

At the factory peas would be further graded using salt graders and later size graders. Peas were produced in 3 very high quality categories - Green Seal (or Birde Eye), Blue Seal (or Albatross) and Red Seal (or Market Day). Normally peas Graded 1 and 2 by the tenderometer would all be processed as Green Seal, Grades 3 and 4 would be separated into Green and Blue Seals, and Grades 5 and 6 would be separated into Blue and Red Seals.

The tenderometer reading was a good guide to pea texture for processing purposes but ultimately the category of the processed pea was determined by the factory quality controllers.

In my opinion the second category of peas (Blue Seal or Albatross) produced about 50 years ago were the best in terms of appearance, colour, texture and flavour and superior to the peas now produced by Birds Eye.

Peter Mancini, Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire.

By Peter Mancini
On 16/05/2008

I worked at Birdseye. Jan 1956 just after I was married. I started on the fish fingers conveyor belt, then went on to the end of the belt on the packing machine. I worked with a chap who had one leg. One had to be quick on this machine so it didn't clog up. I also sorted peas and strawberries. It was very good pay for shift work. I earned 7 pounds a week and in those days it was a fortune.
Doris Beckett Western Australia

By Doris Beckett
On 11/01/2010