Idris Bowen

The mill runs four Dobcross box looms built between 1948 and 1961. Idris tunes them: shed timing, picking strength, the temple setting that decides whether a cloth comes off square. Spares for these machines stopped being made decades ago, so he turns them himself on a lathe in the back of the shed.

Ask him why the mill has not replaced them and he will point out that a rapier loom would weave the same cloth faster and slightly worse, because the old looms beat up more gently and the twill lines stay rounder.