Loom with a view: Lancashire’s old cotton mills – in pictures

Charlie Sutton, boss of the Weldone fluing gang from Brierfield, taking a break, Wakes holiday, July 1976

Three times a year Charlie and his ‘inside man’ Jack (right) would crawl into the cramped and awkwardly shaped passages around, beneath and behind the boiler to clean out flue dust. Also once a year, during the July holiday (‘wakes’), they entered the vessel itself to chip limescale from rivet heads