I very much enjoyed the series of photographs of the Lancashire cotton industry in the mid-1970s (Loom with a view: Lancashire’s old cotton mills – in pictures, 5 March). As a sixth former in 1962, I spent the summer holidays working as a boiler scaler for a well-known north Manchester firm of chimney sweeps and boiler scalers – possibly the worst job I have ever done.
We worked in many a Lancashire mill during wakes week and once – in Baxenden I think – just managed to get our lads out when a cloudburst on the fells above sent thousands of gallons of water flooding into the boiler house. I saw one old scaler emerge from a flue and fall on a heap of coal, and saw his heart beating through the cloth of his overalls. Luckily, it stayed beating.
