Carlisle company Linton Tweeds was forced to close The Bobbin Coffee Shop, which also sells a range of its textiles to members of the public, after it became engulfed by water.
The mill behind the shop, where the fabrics are produced, was able to remain open but it has been a long road to recovery for the coffee shop, on Shaddongate.
“If we had to close the mill, then it would have been game over completely,” said Keith Walker, Linton Tweeds’ managing director.
“But it only came about half way up in the car park. We had staff in the shop until around midnight on that Saturday when the floods hit.
“They were trying to move as much as they could out of the way but unfortunately there was still a lot of damage done.”
The coffee shop has now been refurbished and yesterday it was back to business as usual as things finally returned to normal.
“We were able to find roles for the staff working in the textile shop within the mill,” Mr Walker added. “But for the first five or six weeks, the staff working in the coffee shop couldn’t come in, although they were still paid.
“Since then, we’ve had our highest number of orders to date so we were able to find roles for them in the mill as well, which helped us cope with what we needed to do. It’s down to their hard work that we’ve been able to fill our orders. I’ve also got to thank the local tradesmen in Carlisle who have worked with us to make sure that we got everything sorted and were able to reopen again as soon as possible.”
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