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1-17 of 17
- A comprehensive historical survey of the British Isles.
- The history of the English language.
- The Time Team head for Manchester England to uncover the oldest cotton mill in the city, the Arkwright Mill. The building is important because Richard Arkwright used a number of cutting edge technologies to drive the mill. To understand the building the team needs to find the position of various steam engines and water wheels. A seemingly easy process is complicated in the knowledge the building was destroyed and rebuilt many times
- In response to Esther's investigations in Liverpool her sister Martha arrives at the mill. Timperley tells her Esther has run off but Tommy tells her the truth and she goes to see John Doherty. Samuel Greg dies at much the same time as the bill to shorten the working day is defeated. Robert gives the newly married Daniel a half share of the new loom's patent profits as a wedding present but Daniel sees it as a bribe and destroys the money. He and Susannah defy Robert by going to a Sunday meeting addressed by John. The workers are locked up to prevent their attendance but they escape and convince Hannah that Timperley was responsible for Catherine's death, after which she has him arrested. They carry on to the meeting, where Esther and Martha are reunited and Esther is given her birth certificate, revealing her true age. Rather than have John reveal his cruelty to Esther in a news pamphlet Robert agrees to let the workers join a union and to improve working conditions though the reduction of the working day is still some years in the future.
- 1833;- Workers at the Quarry Bank cotton mill - many of them young orphans from the work-house - rise early for a long day. Over-looker Crout neglects his duty to sexually molest apprentice Miriam, leading to young Tommy losing a hand in the machinery. Hannah, the kindly, abolitionist wife of mill-owner Samuel Greg, nurses the boy back to health but her husband is more concerned that this will reflect badly when the parish commission arrives to look into working conditions. Spirited Esther Price reports Crout to them but he talks his way out of it. Meanwhile engineer Daniel Bate is released from debtors' prison to build a power loom for the Gregs' son Robert and immediately attacks John Doherty, an agitator for shorter working hours, which is being considered by parliament. Daniel impresses Esther with his concerns for safety and rescues her from Crout's lustful attentions. However she steals one of his spanners to sabotage the bell which signals the start of the working day and is found out.
- Esther appears in court for assaulting Crout but proves that she was defending herself against his sexual advances and is charged only with taking the clapper from the bell. On return to the mill Robert sacks Crout, who reveals that Robert's younger brother William impregnated apprentice Susannah. Robert agrees to look after her and her child providing she keeps the paternity a secret. Supervisor Timperley brings the Garner sisters from the Liverpool work-house but the younger girl is deemed too sickly to work and has to be returned. Timperley lets her escape - rather than repay the work-house its fee - but she dies. Esther befriends Lucy, the elder girl, as a fellow Liverpudlian and seeks her help in finding her birth certificate to prove that she is seventeen, not fifteen, and nearer to freedom from her indentures and they plan to run away. Whilst Daniel makes Tommy an artificial hand Hannah takes the boy, whom she refuses to give back to the workhouse, to an anti-slavery meeting but John Docherty accuses her of hypocrisy since her husband has inherited a slave plantation in Dominica. She beseeches Samuel to free the slaves and is shocked when he tells her that they pick the cotton for the mill. John visits Daniel, offering a truce after Daniel's assault on him for letting Daniel's poorly father, who was in the Dochertys' care, die whilst Daniel was in prison.
- Esther and Lucy steal Timperley's horse and cart and reach the Liverpool work-house, only to find that Catherine was not returned. They suspect that Timperley killed her but Timperley follows and brings Lucy back to the mill. Esther eludes him and tries in vain to find her birth certificate but eventually she too is captured and, back at Quarry Bank, her hair is shaved and she is locked in a cell but rescued by Hannah, who accuses Robert of brutality. Timperley's callous, over-weight wife drops dead whilst climbing the stairs to the cell and the apprentices roar with laughter at the undertakers' clumsy attempt to remove her body. Robert discovers that Daniel is pro-Union but retains him as he needs his skill. After Daniel has completed Tommy's artificial hand he is given permission by Hannah to date Susannah, taking her to a meeting addressed by John Docherty in pursuit of a shorter working day, which now seems likely. Aware of her pregnancy Daniel asks Susannah to marry him and she accepts. However Robert Greg will only allow it if Daniel signs a paper swearing that he will not join a union - which he does.
- It is 1838 and whilst John and Daniel celebrate the reprieve of the Tolpuddle Martyrs the new Poor Law drives economic migrants from Southern England to the mill in the form of agricultural worker John Howlett and his family and shoemaker Abe Whittaker and his grandson Will, who takes a shine to Esther. Hannah has also brought Peter, a freed slave from the former plantation, to work in the garden whilst Robert is now an MP and younger brother William, the father of Susannah's eldest child, is in charge of the mill. Esther threatens to tell Hannah of her son's indiscretion unless he recognizes when her indentures end and loans her money for sister Martha, still unemployed. She is successful but wages are cut, William attempting to blame the fact on the Corn Laws. However Daniel knows that William intends to spend the money saved on more machinery. John Howlett fails to see this and refuses to countenance Daniel's proposal that they espouse the union though Peter is more sympathetic.
- William Greg appoints Howlett as the mill's over-seer, aware that his gratitude will make him compliant, but his ignorance of the machinery brings him into conflict with Daniel, who accuses him of running it too fast. Daniel is proved right when Howlett's son Jack is almost crushed under a loom and Howlett is relieved of his duties. Esther is now eighteen and a paid worker and she leaves the apprentice house to live in a basement cellar, where she flirts with Will. She is given domestic help by Susannah and Daniel, the latter suggesting she joins the union to gain female support. Mill-girl Miriam is befriended by Peter who has returned from a tour talking about his time as a slave and who comes to work as Daniel's assistant though the friendship provokes gossip from the spiteful Patience.
- Learning that a Chartist meeting is to be held at nearby Kersal Moor but on a Monday Daniel requests that the mill closes for the day to allow the hands to attend. Most are nervous as to choosing to go so Esther suggests a secret ballot, as a result of which the mill shuts down. Daniel is saddened that many of the workers just wanted a day off but he is heartened by the enormous regional response as thousands attend. Some of the younger girls are also inspired by the meeting to deal with the bullying Patience. Esther and Will begin an affair but his family finds out and Howlett persuades the boy to stop seeing her whilst Miriam and the newly-freed Peter grow close as she teaches him to read and he tells her of his life as a slave. He also informs her that he wants to track down a man called Vernon, whom he knew in Dominica and is now in England.
- Six months have passed and Daniel learns that the Chartist petition to parliament has been rejected and no changes made. Several Chartists want to march on London but John Docherty and Daniel see no point. To make things worse an economic down-town leads to redundancies at the mill, the apprentice boys being sent to the workhouse though Miriam gets a job at Lancaster mill whilst Daniel and Susannah take in her brother George. Esther's baby is born and Will agrees to support her, offering marriage but is angry when she turns him down. The Howletts receive bad news when a letter arrives to inform their eldest son Job, a soldier, has been killed. Peter confronts Hannah with his belief that his grandfather was killed on the plantation by her nephew Vernon Greg but she denies it, telling him that she has no nephew Vernon and the old man died of alcoholism.
- As the strike begins only the Howletts cross the picket line with Howlett's wife Rebecca and Will sympathetic to the hands. Daniel is impressed by the national scale of walk-outs but the strike committee's pay is low and a worker is shot whilst poaching to gain food for his family. As the weeks progress strike breakers are brought in and William offers Susanna money if she will leave William with their daughter but she refuses. Daniel is arrested on charges of sedition and jailed so Esther takes his place at a Chartist meeting in Manchester though on return she finds that her baby has taken sick and died. Eventually the workers agree that they will relinquish Chartism if they are given their jobs back and William agrees. Hannah dies with Peter still unable to prove the identity of Vernon.
- With the economic slump continuing Greg announces further wage cuts and reduced hours in line with other mill-owners. To combat opposition troops have arrived and Howlett is appointed leader of a group of special constables. Will, also out of work, pawns his tools, giving money to Esther, with whom he is again close. Daniel is anxious to call the workers out, hoping that they will be part of a national strike. Hannah, severely ill, receives a letter confirming all Peter's accusations about his grandfather's murder. She is not to know that the murderer was mill manager James Windell, who burns the evidence before she can see it and fobs Peter off. An angry Peter gives the signal for the hands to strike and join the other marchers, freeing the occupants of the work-house.
- 1991– 30mTV Episode