Nicholas Freeston (28 August 1907 – 6 February 1978) was an English poet who spent most of his working life as a weaver in cotton mills near his home in Clayton-le-Moors, Lancashire.

He published five books of poetry, occasionally writing in Lancashire dialect, and won fifteen awards including a gold medal presented by the president of the United Poets' Laureate International.

[1] A UK national newspaper, the Daily Mirror, called him the "Cotton Mill Bard"[2] and the Lancashire Evening Telegraph, the "Wordsworth of the Weaving Shed".

[5] A profile of the poet in the Northern Daily Telegraph, a local newspaper, told how Freeston had the 'unusual hobby' of writing poetry after working by day as a weaver at Messrs. Hindle and Warburton's Oakenshaw Mill [in Clayton-le-Moors].

[6] In 1955 the BBC radio presenter Wilfred Pickles selected two of Nicholas Freeston's poems for inclusion in an anthology of poetry and prose of the 'north counties' of England.

The poem 'Paddy' was dedicated to an Irish man he worked with, who was, according to the Accrington Observer, "a great walker and bird-watcher until he died at the age of 93":[9] The book also included the semi-autobiographical verse, 'Above the Din', which was brought to a much wider audience a year earlier in a profile of the poet in the Daily Mail newspaper.

"I'm not one of those commercial poets who can write to order", he said, explaining how he thought of his poems at the loom or walking along the street: "I recall something that has struck me during a day in the countryside or something remembered from my childhood."

[24] Freeston's works have been performed on BBC radio by the singers Cynthia Glover, Gladys New, Donald Pilley and Raymond Budd of Black and White Minstrels fame.