A rare insight into the lives of Lakeland bobbin makers has been documented by a mill worker who spent 27 years mastering the trade. HELEN PERKINS helps to unravel his tale.

IT WAS 1929 when nervous schoolboy Douglas Philipson first stepped into the Spark Bridge bobbin mill, on the River Crake at Greenodd.

The 15-year-old was apprenticed to staff by his father, a wealthy mill owner, in order to learn a trade that had generated 70 mills across Cumbria.

Bosses were told the teenager was to receive no special treatment and he started his career, with its long hours and low wages, by sorting bobbins in the packing loft.

In the late author's book Lakeland Bobbin Makers he retells his first-hand experiences with rural, and often eccentric workers in a changing South Lakeland industry.

There was Frank Walker, a man who, like many others, had worked for Douglas Philipson's family business for decades. He had a strong accent, mutton chop whiskers and an old bowler had, which had developed a green tinge.

There was also Jim Pattinson, a morose firm cart driver, who was known for his blunt manner of speaking and was often seen carrying his heavy sack through the mill.

Sixty workers from across Dalton, Ulverston and Lakeland filled the busy environment of Spark Bridge Mill, at Penny Bridge, south of Kendal.

The mill became a small hub for the production of bobbins, in order to help with the country's seemingly insatiable desire for cotton products. However, after the industrial revolution developed, the mill and its staff would alter their roles.

At the beginning of the revolution a large bobbin outfit could churn out as many as ten million bobbins per week, but from around 1900 the volume of orders began to decline, with contracts going to companies overseas where more reliable woods like Baltic birch were used.

Unfazed by a decline in contracts, Spark Bridge Mill diversified to specialise in sewing cotton bobbins, toy parts, funnels, whistles and domes, buffers and wheels, handles and hundreds of rollers for cigarette-making machines.

Mr Philipson's great grandfather, William Philipson, began work in the trade in the early 1800s at Cunsey Mill, west Windermere. More than 150 years, and three generations later, the mill closed its doors for the final time.

Douglas Philipson ended his career as production manager in a cosmetics factory, in Canada, but decided to pen his own account of the trade and his family connection with it.

His notes, found in an old folder after his death, have been republished by Sedbergh publishers Handstand Press to help preserve the legacy of a lost Lakeland industry.