大象传媒 Scotland - 大象传媒 Scotland - What 鈥榳ork hard, play hard鈥� meant to the women of Paisley鈥檚 textile mills in the 1950s

What 鈥榳ork hard, play hard鈥� meant to the women of Paisley鈥檚 textile mills in the 1950s

01 June 2017

鈥淔riday was a different day for the ladies, that was the day the weekend was looming鈥�

There was always a mill girl in the Paisley dance halls.

in Paisley’s thread mills over the decades.

Many had to develop their own way of communicating, thanks to the thunderous noise of machinery processing millions of miles of cotton thread.

Workers became adept at signalling each other, holding virtual ‘chats’ above the din — sometimes behind the backs of their supervisors.

鈥�..it was as if the whole war had started in one building鈥�

Former Paisley mill worker June Quail recalls the noise levels in the mills.

From roughly 1800 to 1850, Paisley’s weavers became the foremost producers of the delicate woollen shawls whose exotic patterns originated in Kashmir.

Unique additions to their hand-looms and Jacquard looms allowed them to work in five colours when most weavers elsewhere were producing paisley using only two.

The design became known as the Paisley pattern and, while the shawls themselves, fell out of fashion in the 1870s, the pattern that decorated them remains popular around the world today.