The Gallows Pole: The real-life grisly story of the Cragg Vale Coiners

It's a tale of anti-establishment criminality gone murderously wrong. For a period in late 18th Century a gang of counterfeiters in northern England were producing fake coins on an industrial scale.

Their exploits were punishable by death. But the scale of the forgery was so vast, the Cragg Vale Coiners nearly brought down the British economy.

Now the story of one of the North's original OCGs is being told in a new drama directed by This Is England creator Shane Meadows. The Gallows Pole, a prequel to Benjamin Myers' fictionalised novel of the same name, stars long-time Meadows collaborators Michael Socha and Thomas Turgoose.

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But while the three-part drama, which debuted this week on BBC2, is inspired and informed by what happened in Calder Valley in the mid-18th century, it is a fictionalised account. Here we take a look at the true story of the Cragg Vale Coiners.

The mid-18th century must have felt like the end of days for the weavers of the Calder Valley. The Industrial Revolution was coming and a traditional industry, which had grown and sustained the valley's population since the Middle Ages, was being undercut by the advent of mechanisation.

Like their natural successors and fellow West Riding rebels the Luddites, these skilled textile workers were alarmed at the accelerating erosion of their livelihoods. While the Luddites broke into the new factories and smashed the machines that were destroying their livelihood, the Coiners took a more enterprising but equally illegal path.

The Coiners, led by 'King' David Hartley of Cragg Vale, just over the border from Littleborough in West Yorkshire, obtained officially minted coins from bent officials,