By and large, old industrial machinery doesn’t do much for me. Not being brought up in a textile town, it’s not surprising that wool and worsted is not in my blood, as it were.

The warp and weft of the lives of mill workers suits me more. As Gina Bridgeland says in her introduction to Laisterdyke Pieces: Memories Of Working In Textiles, published by Laisterdyke Local History Group – which marks the 25th anniversary of recollecting Laisterdyke history – “The redemptive factor, even when the work was hard or tedious, was that the workers were genuinely ‘all in it together’ and helped and supported one another in practical ways.”

The hills used to be alive with the sound of manufacturing. Although most of the mills have gone or wait to be converted, the people who worked in them, lived near them or travelled to and from them, wove a pattern in their daily doings that has not yet faded from the fabric of ordinary life.

Pat Elliott (nee Wood) started work at Moorside Mills, Eccleshill (now Bradford Industrial Museum) after Easter, 1936. She bagged up materials for storage and twice a week, on Wednesday and Friday, went to the chip shop for her workmates’ dinner.

“Fish and chips were threepence ha’penny, but the majority gave me the fourpence – that was a ha’penny for me… The bill used to be about 14 shillings (70p) and out of that I used to get a penny-in-the-shilling commission,” she says.

Fish and chips at fourpence a time meant that in 1936 it would have been possible to buy 30 nourishing meals a week for ten shillings (50p). The cost of living, like the currency, forms of government and schooling, was very different 75 years ago.

Specialist forms of work usually have particular words and phrases, and this book of memoirs is full of them. Here are some of them: ‘Making a mullock’ meant making a mess; ‘being quartered’ meant having a quarter of your day’s wages docked for being late; ‘fuddling’ was clubbing together for a Christmas feed at work.

Susan Thompson left Tyersal Secondary School on July 17, 1959, when she was 15 and went to work at Tankard’s Mill, Bowling Back Lane, the following Monday.

“So began eight happy years, working, earning money, being independent! Funny to think that we all looked forward to going out to work, then,” she says and goes on to describe the colour room.

“It had to face North, so that the colour matchers could stand at the big picture windows to catch every minute of daylight for their work.”

One of the biggest adjustments new mill workers had to make was to the incessant racket of machines. Kathy Nicol (nee Land) started work in the burling and mending department at Priestley’s Mill, Laisterdyke, in 1962.

“I used to hate that,” she recalls. “Your ears hurting for ages when you came back, they’d be ringing with the noise of 400 looms! But they could all lip-read, could the weavers, and you’d have your ticket with your number, and you’d to find the right loom, with the right shade, because they’d keep strips on the side of whatever they were doing.

“You had to take the label off your piece and take it down there, so you went and found your right loom, and if you tried to say owt, you’d shout – because I couldn’t lip-read! So if they were trying to tell me something, it was awful!”

What was the money like in the early 1960s? Pauline Shackleton (nee Harris), Kathy’s friend, remembers pay day at Priestley’s with a novel way of describing pay packets.

“Every Friday the wages were brought around in little see-through pockets. My first wage was £3.10s (£3.50p) for a 40-hour week. Mum gave me ten shillings for myself; five shillings bus fares and ten shillings for food. I remember I bought my first radio, a red and silver one with a strap, from the Co-op store on Tong Street, paying weekly deposits every Saturday morning.”

An engaging little book and a worthy addition to the growing industrial and social history of Bradford.

Laisterdyke Pieces: Memories Of Working In Textiles, is published by Laisterdyke Local History Group, priced £6. Copies are obtainable from Gina Bridgeland on (01484) 721845 or g.bridgeland@talk21.com.