Parting shots: the death of a factory in pictures

Barry Haslegrabe, pictured here pulling rope over his shoulder, retired a year before the John Pring & Son Ltd factory closed. The picture is inspired by an old trade union poster headlined Pull Your Weight. Photograph: Chris Coekin

Chris Coekin had originally gone to photograph the manager of the factory in Sandbach, Cheshire, but found he didn’t want to leave. The place was entrancing – with its huge copper coils, corroded tools, baths of hydrochloric acid and borax, ancient cranes, wooden beams dating back to 1834, and two overhead heaters attempting to warm up a mill the size of a football pitch. Photograph: Chris Coekin

At the factory, the workers drew copper wire into different thicknesses. It was tough, physical work. Photograph: Chris Coekin

These photographs are clearly staged: Coekin wanted the workers in heroic poses, something akin to the workers featured in Russian constructivist art or the first painted trade union banners to emerge in 19th-century Britain. Photograph: Chris Coekin

"I wanted my pictures to be strong and bold," Coekin says. "I wanted the workers to feel proud of what they were doing.” Photograph: Chris Coekin

Now the factory has closed, the workers are glad Coekin spent time with them. As worker Nick Baker says, without him a way of working would have vanished without being recorded. “If Chris had not done it, no one else would have, and that bit of history would have been lost."
A book of these photographs, The Altogether, is available from walkoutbooks.com at £20. The images are also currently on show at the People's History Museum in Manchester. Photograph: Chris Coekin