Workers at Spring Bank Mill, Nelson (1900)

Lively Lancashire millworkers, including young boys and girls, at the mill gates.

The practice of employing children to work 'half-time' was widespread in the cotton mills of Lancashire. Here, many of them appear to be in high spirits, though they may have been encouraged by the filmmakers. James Kenyon had a habit of staging colourful incidents for the camera and he - or another showman - may well have prompted some of the rough and tumble action seen here.