The working day for the majority in 21st century England usually involves long hours spent in front of a computer screen, or working in service industries. The photographs in this book evoke a time when work for the majority of people meant long hours of hard manual labour, toiling in factories, or working the land. The images are of men breaking stones by hand in a quarry; women working in cotton mills; children packing tea. Industries which have all but disappeared from England's shores, such as mining, shipbuilding and fishing are also depicted. Many of the photographs show rural life before the impact of mechanisation, when ploughs were pulled by horses and the harvest was gathered by hand. There are also glimpses of trades and crafts now almost lost to us: coppicing, thatching and the art of the blacksmith.