This website offers free access to the Bolton/Worktown corpus, a corpus of conversations among working-class people which took place in Bolton, an industrial town in the North of England, in the late 1930s. The corpus is drawn from the Worktown papers of the Mass-Observation Archive (see Web Resources page) where written records of these conversations can be found. It provides, I argue, an unorthodox, but unique and rich source of data for researchers with an interest in spoken corpora, historical linguistics and historical sociolinguistics. While it is primarily a resource for linguists, there is also material of interest for social historians as the data reveals much about social attitudes at the time, including reaction to events in the build-up to the Second World War and the early stages of the war. It has taken me around 10 years (on and off) to collect the spoken data from the Worktown papers of the Mass-Observation Archive. I hope you will find the end result as stimulating and enjoyable as I found the process. Please note that all the photos on this website are copyright Bolton library and reproduced with their kind permission; the spoken data is reproduced under Creative Commons Licence by kind permission of Mass Observation (www.massobs.org).
 Dominoes 7 by Humphrey SpenderMass Observation was interested in the games played in pubs. A unique form of dominoes was played in Bolton. Normally the highest number on a domino is double six. In the Bolton game the highest number was double nine. We have not identified this pub interior although it has been suggested that it is the Golden Cup which stood at 12 Haigh Street. |  Planning Observations(left to right) Walter Hood, Tom Harrisson, John Sommerfield, unidentified man. “there was a daily session which usually took the form of Tom seizing about half a dozen national newspapers, reading the headlines, getting us laughing and interested, and quite on the spur of the moment, impulsively hitting on a theme that he thought would be productive. For instance, how people hold their hands, the number of sugar lumps that people pop into their mouths at Restaurants….. anything.” |  Mill Interior 19 by Humphrey SpenderThis photograph was staged during an arranged visit to a mill. It was impossible for Humphrey Spender to be a secret observer in work places and homes. It is likely that this mill belongs to the Barlow family who helped to fund the Mass Observation study in Bolton. |
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 Dance HallDancers on the floor of a dance hall, Bolton. The location of this photograph has not been proven. Film maker and Mass Observer Humphrey Jennings filmed in the same dance hall for his short film ‘Spare Time’ which was shot in Bolton, Manchester, Sheffield and Pontypridd The dance hall also features as a subject in a sketchbook by artist Graham Bell which is held in Bolton Museum’s collections. Bell was invited to work for Mass Observationin Bolton by Tom Harrisson. |  Demolition of Davenport StreetDemolition of the Davenport Street area in the early 1980s. St George’s Church is visible in the back of the photograph. Mass Observation had their headquarters at 85 Davenport Street during the 1930s Worktown Survey. Tom Harrisson and other observers lived together in the house. Other Spender photographs in the archive and observer’s diaries in the Mass Observation Archive show how much it was like a modern student house- in a state of perpetual squalor. By Humphrey Spender |  Bowling at Gibraltar RockMen practice before a bowls tournament at The Gibraltar Rock Hotel, 244 Deane Road. The pub has now been closed and turned into a convenience store and the bowling green has become a car park. By Humphrey Spender |