A £263,000 refurbishment has taken club owners on a trip back in time after they uncovered records dating back nearly 100 years.

James Street Sports and Social Club, Oswaldtwistle was built at the start of the last century at a cost of £600 -- equivalent to £1.2million today.

The club started as a tin hut selling Oxo and beer in 1901, but new owners, Accrington-based Red Leisure Group Ltd, are currently spending more than a quarter of a million pounds to give the club a facelift fit for the 21st century.

The two-storey club is the size of a football pitch and the refit will provide a sports bar with snooker, pool, table football and large screen television for sporting events.

An upstairs function room will also be refitted and the old concert room will be brought up to date to provide live entertainment three nights a week.

Former president Raymond Hilton rescued the historic documents, including hand-written ledgers dating back to 1909, and the minutes from the club's first committee meeting, which were heading for the tip.

They will now be displayed in the reception area of the club.

Among the revelations are receipts for structural work done to build the club, including £1,131 £3s 9d for masonry work on the new stone fronted double brick building opened by W Broad and Sons.

In today's money the same work would cost in the region of £450,000, while joinery work at the club, undertaken by Pilkington Brothers, at a cost of £540, would cost around £225,000.

JR Sudall charged £237 16s for plumbing work -- equivalent to £100,000 today, while slating cost £81 (£35,000), plastering was £93 (£47,000), painting was £23 10s (£12,250), and heating £67 (£60,000).

Among the resolutions from the minutes was one stipulating that the steward should be paid 12s a week -- £100 today; and all committee members should remove their hats when the chairman opened the meeting.

Any member whose wife turned up at the club demanding to see him was required to leave the club premises .

Current club manager Peter Aspden said: "If it hadn't been for Raymond's intervention the record books found in an old committee room cupboard would almost certainly have been thrown out during the renovation and it would have been a great shame."