WHEN she first started working for the firm documents were laboriously written out by hand, photocopies were hung out to dry and staff bonding sessions consisted in a dinner dance.

In an era when employees rarely spend more than a few years at the same company, Joan Davies, 77, has just retired from Attwaters Solicitors in the High Road, Loughton, after having spent over six decades with the firm.

In her time there she has witnessed how the workplace has changed and evolved to reflect wider changes in society, and how the technological changes in the second half of the 20th century have revolutionised the way we work.

Mrs Davies, who lives in St John’s Road, Loughton, joined the company in 1951.

She said: “It was very different to how it is now. When I finished my training I looked for a job straight away. Not so many people did things like GCSEs.”

There were no female partners at the firm when Mrs Davies started as a junior secretary and typing out documents was a physically tiring task.

“We had these really old, heavy typewriters,” she said.

“It was hard to return the keys and I think that that is the reason I have this bad shoulder now.”

“Technology has hugely changed things. There was a chap called Mr Fox and he would write deeds of ownership documents out for us in this lovely hand. Now it is all typed,” said Mrs Davies.

Joan gradually worked her way up to the position of fee earner at the firm after attending law courses.

"The type of client we have now has changed. When I started few working class people owned their own homes, it was predominantly middle class people. After people started buying their council flats in the Debden estate in the 1980s we got a much broader range of clients."

In April Joan spent her last day in the office before going in to hospital for a shoulder operation.

“It was very sad. It was a friendship I had with my colleagues there as much as a working relationship."

Joan’s granddaughter, Lauren Agambar, who is 20, is now working as a secretary at the same office her grandmother started in all of those years ago.

Mrs Davies said: “My granddaughter goes on these staff bonding weekends where they close the office for a couple of days. We would certainly not have had the afternoon off. The best we could hope for is to get off a couple of hours early for the dinner dance.”

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