WE just love this photograph of a group of women who have taken time off in their lunch break to watch a man at work — an early version of the famous Coca Cola advert perhaps!

Apparently for more than a year traffic in Chorley Old Road in Bolton had been inconvenienced by road works.

This group of mill girls stopped during their break to watch the workmen who were carrying out asphalting.

Several layers would have to be laid and this was the first “carpet”.

The picture was taken in January 1956 and the final surfacing would not take place until the spring of that year.

Clearly road work involved a great deal of back-breaking work in the 1950s probably more so than today when machinery would be used to carry out the same job.

We particularly love the outfits worn by the mill workers which include head scarves.

Virtually every woman in the 1950s and into the 1960s would wear a head scarf. They were worn by the mill workers to protect their hair while they worked.

Very often women would wear rollers under the scarf ready to remove as they headed out to the Palais in the evening for a night of dancing after work.

The work men, as we can see, are not wearing hard hats as they would today. They are, instead, wearing flat caps. Hats were pretty much obligatory for many men at this time — they were considered smart work wear.