Inspiration for The Mill

The Mill has been a passion project for probably everyone involved in making it. We delved into the political turmoil and moral ambiguities of early industrial Britain, and emerged with characters and a story rich in resonance for the present day. It is also an unusual project, as it represents an extremely happy collaboration between drama and factual creatives, with a shared vision and ambition - to show history from the worm's eye view of the working classes, and in particular from the perspective of one stroppy teenage girl - Esther Price.

It began when Emily Roe of DSP described to me the extent of the records at Quarry Bank Mill - paper after paper documenting working hours, wages, punishments, pregnancies. But how could we bring documents and the mill to life? We quickly abandoned factual approaches for drama and focused on Quarry Bank during the 1830s, when the mill and the way it was run by the Gregs was being challenged by outside forces. Writer John Fay immersed himself in research and surfaced with a brilliant pitch - 'The English Roots- with laughs.’ And we were off.

The Mill is about a moment when Britain was an emerging economy, making trade-offs between wealth creation and the welfare of individuals. It is about a moment when Britain relied on child labour but was beginning to feel morally queasy about it. It's a moment when the working classes were beginning to demand a say in their own lives. In our use of Quarry Bank's records and other historical sources we have combined, elided, borrowed, edited and invented - always with our eyes on the prize of a costume drama with something to say to a 21st century audience.

Julia Harrington Commissioning Editor for History and Sophie Gardiner, Commissioning Editor for Drama, Channel 4