The unlikely friendship in a mill - now they have been reunited

Fifty years ago, a boarding school-educated photographer fresh out of art school travelled to the north of England to capture the dying breaths of Lancashire's cotton mills.

Daniel Meadows, who was 23 at the time, met Stanley Challenger Graham, then aged 40, at Bancroft Mill in Barnoldswick.

The two men forged an unlikely friendship and now they have been reunited for a special reunion on BBC Breakfast.

"I was definitely working class," said 90-year-old Stanley, who was given the nickname "The High Priest of Steam" by Daniel.

"You couldn't get much more working class than a steam engine tenter and Daniel was definitely a posh boy.

"Basically, it was love at first sight. We just fell for each other!

"He came to tea that day and that was it."

Stanley ran the engine which powered 1,000 looms at Bancroft Shed, one of the last steam-powered weaving sheds in the UK.

His work and life were captured on camera by Daniel, with his photographs now on display at Bancroft Mill Engine Museum in Barnoldswick until October.

Against the backdrop of a declining industrial landscape, Daniel, now aged 74, began documenting life at the mill and speaking to the people who worked there.

Daniel's camera and microphone captured the sights and sounds of the mill from 1975 to 1980 as he worked as photographer-in-residence across the towns of Nelson, Colne, Barnoldswick and Earby.

"It was the time of the Sex Pistols and Concorde and all these wonders of modernity and yet I found myself stuck up there in the middle of the Pennines," said Daniel.

"I was next door to something that looked like it had come out of Dickens.

"Stanley wasn't a man who just wanted to talk about steam engines and stuff, he sat and we discussed the philosophy."

When the mill was eventually demolished in 1978, Daniel introduced Stanley to a man who encouraged him to go to university.

Stanley earned a degree in history and Daniel went to his graduation ceremony.

Half a century later, Stanley knows exactly where he belongs and he has made one last wish to prove it.

"One of the one of the best laughs that you can have at our age is to arrange your own funeral," he said.

And so, when the time comes, Stanley said: "My ashes will go in a cardboard cylinder and they'll just throw them in the boiler fire and then they'll burn."

For Daniel, this will be a fitting final wish from his friend.

"Your last journey will be up Bancroft chimney and you'll just dissolve into the sky above the town," he said.

After a lifetime of friendship and memories, there is no place Stanley would rather be.

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