Backbarrow mill

I've posted an image of Backbarrow cotton mill - now the Whitewater Hotel, because it relates closely to my current paintings. For many years, the new factory system flourished by using the free labour of 'apprentices'. These were children of poor people in parishes from distant regions. Many in Backbarrow came from London parishes.
​They weren't apprentices as we know the term - they weren't even guaranteed work once they finished their term at the age of twenty one. Imprisoned in their dormitories, working long hours on very meagre diets they must have suffered greatly.
Backbarrow is a beautiful place with a forgotten past of industrialisation and exploitation.

I use domestic cloths in my paintings as reminders of this past which is echoed throughout the northwest. Many of my ancestors worked in cotton mills around Ashton under Lyne and Droylsden, many had to work from the age of thirteen as power loom weavers. The handloom weavers were driven out by the industrialisation of their trade, replaced as family providers by their young daughters and sons. 

Image below: detail from a tray cloth glued onto canvas.