‘It got darker as they climbed but there was always a square of sky at the top. Up, up, up and up they climbed. The chimney was really dirty inside. Both boys had switched on the torches on their helmets…Their hands were black with the soot and sweaty too from the exercise of climbing the ladder.’

Two nine-year-old school friends, Frankie Joe and Bilal, were in the middle of a history lesson they would never forget.

Growing up in modern-day Bradford, the pair lived in Manningham, with its rich industrial heritage based around the towering Lister’s Mill, in its heyday the largest silk factory in the world.

They knew it, however, as homes to hundreds of people, living in apartments created by property developers who took it over in the year 2000.

It was on the way to visit friends in the mill that the pair opened the door of a dry riser outlet - a chute within the building to help fire crews in event of an emergency - that their adventures began.

The boys found themselves floating down the chute and when they reached the bottom they found themselves in a different time. On the first occasion, they found themselves having to crawl under the textile machinery picking up bits of thread that had dropped on the floor.

Next, they found themselves part of a gang sent up the chimney to check the structure. They also experienced the future, when the mill served as a national monitoring station for a country half submerged by rising water due to climate change.

The charming book is illustrated by fellow Manningham resident Christine Nias. The characters are based on Mollie herself, and Frankie Joe on local boy Joe Joe. Bilal is fictitious but Mustafa Riaz, photographed, is a friend of Joe Joe McMahon at school and agreed to be 'Bilal' for the photo purposes and at the book launch.

In 2013 Mollie co-wrote a book about the people of Manningham (Manningham: People through the mill) with Christine’s husband Peter

“We talked afterwards about its impact and realised that although adults had bought it and enjoyed it; it didn't seem to reach children.”

This book certainly does, and is as interesting to adults – I learned quite a lot myself. I had no idea that the mill chimney is so wide at the top that you could drive a horse and carriage around it.

Mollie has visited schools so far and read to children in assemblies and been delighted with their reactions. “One mother said that her son, who has never read anything for pleasure, read the book before he went to sleep and when he woke up the first thing he did was sit up and finish it. That's what it's for."

*Postal copies (£3+£2post) are available direct from the author m.somerville@phonecoop.coop or 01274 493191. It is also available from Books and More, Bradford Road, Frizinghall, Carlisle Business Centre, Carlisle Road, Manningham and Saltaire Bookshop.