Choosing a story here also changes the pictures in the gallery below:
James Nutter and Sons, Bancroft Shed, Barnoldswick, Lancashire. Commissioned before the first world war to a design that was already old-fashioned, Bancroft wove its first yard of cloth in 1919. When I photographed there, almost sixty years later (in the age of Johnny Rotten and Concorde), the place was more-or-less untouched and wandering through its many noises was like stepping into something told by Dickens.
Mary Cawdrey, with a hook in her mouth, is taking up an end. That's Gwen with the mirror. Frank is the one in the Fair Isle sleeveless. And, yes, that is twenty-five years of wear on the handle of Jim Pollard's drawing hook. Mary reads a newspaper and chews. The weaver with the fent brat and clogs is Billy "two rivers" Lambert. Sydney Nutter, last of the family in his green eye-shade, stalks the office. Under a ceiling of healds and reeds, Phyllis Watson carries a box of weft pirns through the warehouse. The tacklers with their dart board and cigarettes are Ernie Roberts and Colin Macro.