00:00Today Bygone Burnley is in Lower St James Street. It's an old industrial area, in fact, Burnley's first industrial revolution mills were here to our left.
00:17In the background, we have St James Street itself, which has only been known as St James Street from the late 19th century. The street is a very old street. It linked what was known as bottom of the town, where we are now, with top of the town up at St Peter's, because Burnley really is an amalgamation of two small communities.
00:44The bottom of the town, otherwise known as Bridge End, and the top of the town, which is where the market and lots of facilities, including the church at St Peter's, was located.
00:57I think I should add that in the background there is one of Burnley's historic pubs, no longer a pub. It was the Weaver's Arms, and it was a very popular pub in the past, because although this area was initially industrial, there were lots of other things that made Lower St James Street distinctive.
01:20And that's what we're going to look at today.
01:22We're on Colder Street here, and Colder Street is named after the river, which is just to our left.
01:32But in the picture, in the frame, you can see an old public house. This was the Pack Horse. It was a very popular public house in the past, but I remember it closing, it must be 50 years ago now.
01:50And it became, for a short time, a church for one of the American Christian churches. I think it was a church of Christ's scientists.
02:05But later on, the concert artist, which was a working men's club, and had a lot of connections with the entertainment industry, the name like that, located here. Since that time, it's closed, and the building, which is a good one, is now in need of restoration.
02:27We're in Lower St James Street, and we've looked at two pubs that have had a checking history, and I suppose the one behind us, the Cross Keys, has had a similar background.
02:40It was the village pub, in ancient times, when Burnley was really two villages. There was the village around St Peter's, and there was this village, which was known as Bridge End.
02:56Now, the pub has been recently renovated. You can see it's been stone cleaned, and inside, particularly on the top floor, it's all been redesigned to have a number of flats there.
03:11Unfortunately, the ground floor had a very good restaurant, cafe, which unfortunately does no longer exist, and hopefully a company will come in and restore this building.
03:29But the top of the town was a village in its own right. In 1750, the brewery came to this part of town. It was originally owned by Holgate, who went bust in 1824, and six years later, Masses bought it, and it was Masses that had this building constructed.
03:54It was designed for this spot. It was designed for this spot. A lot of their later pubs, that is Masses pubs, are based on this design. We went to one a few weeks ago, the Pendle Inn in Bali. That is another one in this era.
04:10So, Masses had a big effort to improve the quality of their pubs, right from the middle of the 19th century. I know this is early 20th century, but this is a very good example of a Masses pub of the early 20th century.
04:33Over the years, Burnley Council has done its best to restore this part of town. It's an ongoing project. It's not the first one. In recent years, they've done a lot of work.
04:47But in the 1920s, behind me is a property known as Empire Buildings. These were built by Burnley Council in 1928. I think completely finished by 1929.
05:02They didn't use a Burnley firm of architects. They went to a Leeds firm that were really shop fitters. But the building represents a change between the old domestic retail units, like the ones that are around us now, and the big national chains, which started to come in in the 1920s and 30s.
05:31What you've got here are ground floor shops, not with living accommodation above, but with storage accommodation on a building that's got three floors.
05:46They were very popular shops. Some of Burnley's better firms occupied them. And for a short period of time, the success of this building was good. But in recent years, the number of retail units in Burnley have declined.
06:05And of course, this is reflected in this building as well. But it was a genuine attempt to restore this part of town almost 100 years ago.
06:19We're standing in one of Burnley's oldest industrial areas. This is now called Lodge Square. And ahead of me there is Lodge House, which was a spinning mill. It's now divided into units and it provides employment.
06:39We're in the car park. And the car park was full of tiny little one up, one down houses. All of them have gone now. In the background we can see the 1910 extension, in fact rebuilding, of the Empire Theatre.
07:01And it's not been in use for many years now. But a theatre trust purchased a building and are working to put funding together to restore it.
07:15Now any of you who know Morecambe, right on the front in Morecambe, there is the Winter Gardens. Winter Gardens is a magnificent building. It was in the same condition as this 20 years ago.
07:30And although it's not complete, the trust there have worked very hard to bring that building back into use. And this building, although it will take millions of pounds to restore,
07:44should be brought back into use in Burnley. It was a very sizeable theatre. In fact, behind this building, there was the Victoria Theatre. And of course, those of you are old enough will remember that during the Second World War, several London theatres left London because of the air raids, came to Burnley.
08:12And Burnley was the centre of the theatre industry during the war years of the 1940s. And this building, which you can see behind us, was right at the centre of that period of Burnley's theatrical history.
08:31We're on Bethesda Street in Burnley. In front of me is the old Webster's electrical store. And where we are now, I remember them building Webster's. And to do so, they had to take out a lot of bodies from the graveyard that was here.
08:52We're right beside Bethesda Chapel. We're right beside Bethesda Chapel. And it was one of the few chapels in Burnley that had their own graveyard and it was absolutely here.
09:01Behind me, you can see the building that became Woolworths. It was built as a furniture store and workshop by Collingers, who were very good Burnley furniture makers. There were quite a few furniture makers in Burnley.
09:22In fact, in fact, my father once had a sideboard which he converted into a workbench. But he found out how valuable it was. He wasn't too pleased by what he'd done.
09:38Woolworths came to Burnley in the late 1920s, early 30s. And this was their first store. There were a sixpenny store when they came. I don't think anything was above shilling.
09:53And they were not known as a store, but as a bazaar. And there's another bazaar in Lower St. James Street. And we're looking at that now. We're only looking down the side of it.
10:06And this is the impressive store which was built by Marks and Spencers. And it's always been a profitable store as Marks and Spencers. Extended at least three times in my lifetime.
10:22And Marks and Spencers has got a very significant role in Burnley. Because lots of people just come to Burnley to go to Marks and Spencers. So, we're in an area which has seen great change and which is still seeing change today. Hopefully, things will improve.
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