Synopsis

The film opens as the 'knocker-up', Edward Hollins, wakes the households in Cotton Street (Burnley Road in the original play). A knocker-up was someone, often a retired or disabled mill hand, who was paid a small amount by workers to wake them in the early morning by tapping on their windows. In this way, the audience is introduced to the Hawthorn family - father, Chris, his wife, and their daughter, Fanny. Chris and Fanny work in a local mill. We then cut to the Jeffcote mansion in Midas Avenue. Nathaniel Jeffcote, a long-standing friend and one-time workmate of Chris (which puts them on first name terms), is a prosperous mill owner and father of Allan. In Cotton Street, Fanny is packing for the Wakes holiday. She is going to Blackpool with her friend Mary, daughter of Edward Hollins.

The factory hooter, summoning the mill-hands to work, interrupts the morning activities. We see Fanny at work in the mill with her friend Mary. We also see Allan Jeffcote, who works in the mill office and is frequently late to work. Allan is engaged to Beatrice Farrar, daughter of another wealthy mill owner. A trip she has to make with her father, Sir Timothy Farrar, upsets Allan's plans for the coming week's Wakes Holiday. When the final hooter sounds to end the day's work, Fanny and Mary, with other mill workers, join the excursion train to Blackpool for a week's holiday. Allan joins a friend and they drive by car to the resort.

Blackpool is a place of entertainment, pleasure, excitement and freedom from the usual constraints. In this mêlée, Fanny and Mary meet and pair up with Allan and his friend. That Allan persuades Fanny to go away with him for an illicit week in the middle-class resort of Llandudno. Fanny leaves a postcard with Mary to send to her parents so that they will think she is still in Blackpool. Allan wires his father for more money to pay for the trip, an indulgence that Nat tells Chris about.

Mary is killed in an accident. Chris Hawthorn learns of Mary's death and finds the unposted card in her luggage. He also hears that Fanny has not been in Blackpool for most of the week. On the final day of Wakes Week, Allan and Fanny return separately to Hindle. (This is the point at which Houghton's play opens, in the Hawthorn house.) Fanny's parents interrogate her. Shocked by the news of Mary's death, she lets slip that she spent the week in Llandudno with Allan. Mrs Hawthorne forces her husband to go to the Jeffcote house and confront Nat Jeffcote who, sharing the values held by Chris and his wife, decides that Allan must marry Fanny.

Allan resists his father's imposition. However, next day he tells Beatrice and she insists that he should do the honourable thing and marry Fanny. He therefore accepts his father's decision, though his mother still wants to prevent the marriage. That evening the Hawthorn family goes to the Jeffcote house to agree on the wedding. Fanny signals her resistance by insisting on wearing her work shawl rather than her Sunday best. To the astonishment of both sets of parents and Allan she rejects the offer of marriage. She claims that, just like a man, she is entitled to her 'little fancy'.

Allan renews his engagement to Beatrice. Fanny, faced with her mother's anger, leaves home but continues to work at the mill. The film ends as Fanny agrees to go out with a fellow mill worker.