World War Two jobs

According to the 1939 Register my Aunt worked as a "Viewer Auto & Aero Compositor", possibly in a factory in Bayton Road Exhall. Does anyone know what this job entailed please. Chris.

Hi Chris, welcome to the forum Not my area of knowledge I'm afraid but maybe someone can help you. It could be more of a specialist site question. Though we might nail it to a business in Bayton Road. Having looked at the map, in 1936-38, the road was two roads, one called Colliery Lane and the other Little Sydnall Lane. At that point there seem to be only pubs, farms and the Exhall Colliery. By 1950 it is called Bayton Lane and there is an aluminium works, a small W M works, whatever that is and the colliery is disused. Bayton Lane 1950

Not W M Works, Helen. There's a works, and there's a weighing machine

Thanks MR. Ok, a works producing or receiving heavy stuff.

Exhall Colliery closed in 1938 and I believe the buildings were then left unused. Alfred Herbert's factory in Cross Rd was badly damaged in the November 1940 blitz and so some production was then moved to the old colliery buildings at what is now Bayton Rd industrial estate in Exhall. This could have been the location where the original poster's mother was employed. Some of the old colliery buildings still survive among the more modern industrial units, or at least they did a few years back when I looked. I know about this because my long departed friend worked on scrap reclamation after the war and his employers were tasked with removing huge piles of steel swarf from Alfred Herbert at the old colliery site. Apparently there had been no time to dispose of it during the war. The swarf was loaded into lorries which took it to the goods yard at the side of Foleshill Station where it was loaded into railway wagons and transported to a steel works in the Black Country.