Bolton has a proud and distinctive identity. Flemish weavers settled in the area in the fourteenth century, introducing a wool- and cotton-weaving tradition, but it was the introduction of textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution that prompted the town's rapid urbanisation and development. Through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Bolton was a boomtown and one of the largest and most productive centres of cotton spinning in the world, but Britain's cotton industry declined sharply after the First World War and by the 1980s cotton manufacture had virtually ceased in Bolton, forcing the town to come to terms with the inevitable further chang ..

Bolton was the centre of the Lancashire cotton industry, and experienced rapid expansion and population growth in the nineteenth century. The twentieth century saw the town coming to terms with this growth and the inevitable changes. Today it is less industrialised and hard-edged; an altogether much greener and cleaner place. Local photographers Ray Jefferson and Jeff Layer know Bolton's ginnels, streets and squares, as well as its attractive moorland setting. Charged with capturing the essence of the town, they have turned their cameras on its inhabitants, the people who make Bolton what it is today. These are the people you'll find in these pages - the shopkee ..