A LOYAL receptionist has retired after almost 50 years' service.
Pat Beadle, who was 65 on Thursday, left the Clariant leather treatment works in Darlington Road, Northallerton, this week.
Colleagues past and present gathered on Wednesday to mark the occasion.
Site manager Tony Kelly presented Miss Beadle with flowers and gifts, and said she had become the voice of the firm as people's first point of contact.
"Little did people know when they rang up that the clicking noise in the background was not some high-tech machine but you doing your knitting," he told her.
Born in Northallerton in 1937, Miss Beadle went to Allertonshire School. She left at 15 and started work at the firm, then a family business called Earnshaw's, in Malpas Road.
She spent 27 years at the factory before moving with the company to its Darlington Road premises.
Miss Beadle stayed so long because of the atmosphere.
"It was a family firm when I started and it has kept that feeling of being one big family. I will miss them all when I leave," she said
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