Mill Girl Margaret is a signed giclée print from the Owd Lasses collection, celebrating Northern factory life, friendship and social history with warmth and humour.

Margaret still takes the long way past the old mill, remembering fire-escape fag breaks, Friday nights and the girls she worked alongside.

Watch what you say though — she’s a dab hand at lip reading.

Mill Girl Margaret is one of Sue Dewhurst’s Owd Lasses — characterful women whose stories celebrate Northern humour, working lives and the social history hidden in ordinary streets.

Margaret was most definitely a glamour puss in her day. Dressed in her best factory seconds, she’d be off down the Milk Bar on a Friday night as soon as she’d opened her pay packet, ready to jive away to the latest offerings on the jukebox.

These days, her family have moved away for work, she’s widowed, and she has one cat for company. But Margaret still takes a little detour past the old mill on her way to the Weigh and Save.

She remembers the girls, the gossip and those precious fag breaks on the fire escape — and all the fun they had whistling at the shy yard boys below.

That’s how she met her Jack.

She may be quieter these days, but watch what you say around Margaret — she’s a dab hand at lip reading.

Part of the Owd Lasses collection, Margaret combines humour and affection with memories of women’s working lives, industrial communities and a Northern world that has changed almost beyond recognition.

In a cream, archival acid-free mount ready for you to drop into a standard 25 x 25 cms frame

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