REMEMBER the days when cotton was king and thousands of workers flocked to the steamy mills to earn their daily crust?

That's when textiles was the leading trade and 'England's bread hung on Lancashire's thread' as the old saying goes. One former mill worker who recalls slaving away at Tulketh Mill in Balcarres Road, Ashton, Preston, is 94-year-old John Lee.

Now he's about to re-live the hardships and history of life in the mill when he goes along to a special open day on June 22, as guest of the factory's current occupants, Littlewoods Home Shopping Group.

The firm has invited former winders, carders and doffers to attend an open day at the factory, built in 1905, which closed due to the decline of the industry just 63 years later.

John started at the Tulketh Spinning Company when he was just 12. He worked a 12-hour shift, six days a week, dashing in out of the carriages on the old spinning mule.

"When I think how hard we worked, we must have been mad. Talk about sweating, it was hellish," he recalled.

He worked alongside his father and four sisters but his memories are not happy ones.

"They were not good times for me," he said: "I didn't like it but I stuck it out for 25 years, some worked there all their lives, for 50 years."

Many of the workers suffered industrial accidents. John lost his big toe when he stood too close to the mule.

But women who worked in the card room suffered more - if they didn't have their hair tied back and it got caught in the machines, they risked being scalped.

John of South Meadow Lane, Preston, will put the bad times behind him when he walks down memory lane next week, and meets up with some of former colleagues.

He said: "I once counted the steps, there are 93 if I'm not wrong. We used to have to carry baskets up them on our backs."

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