Liam

You've had a weekend every week of your life. 🇬🇧 Nobody told you where it came from. The lie-in. The Saturday game. The Sunday roast. ⚽ All of it began in the cotton towns of Lancashire. And it started with a whistle. 1840: A mill hand worked 6 days a week. 12 hours a day. Sunday was for church. Saturday was just another shift. So the workers took Monday off instead. They called it Saint Monday. 🍺 The owners called it idleness. They docked their wages for it. But a mill can't run without its hands. So the mills and the mill hands made a deal. Turn up on Monday. And on Saturday, the whistle goes at 2. 1850: Parliament made it the law. Every mill in Britain stops at 2 on a Saturday. Half a day. All their own. The other half day followed, trade by trade, over the next century. And what do you do with a free Saturday afternoon? You play football. The whistle went at 2. So kick-off was at 3. It still is. ⏰ 1879: A magazine printed a strange new word from Staffordshire: week-end. The world had no word for it. Because the world didn't have one. America was still working Saturdays in the 1920s. Lancashire had stopped at 2 for 70 years. Every weekend on earth started at a mill gate in the north of England. They teach you the mills. They never teach you that ordinary mill hands made Saturday happen. Nobody told you where it came from. It came from ordinary British people. That's what Proud Of Us is for. The mill hands made a deal and kept it. So do we. No sponsors. No ads. No agenda. Just people like you. Send this to someone who's off today. They gave you your Saturday. Give them a minute of it. 👇 proudofus.co.uk/support Be Part Of Us. ☝️🇬🇧 Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧