NOSTALGIA lovers are sharp to carp at the loss of Blackburn's old town centre at the hands of the council-backed redevelopment in the '60s and '70s - especially over the demise of the much-loved Market Hall - but not local historian Matthew Cole.

In a new book on the town's old-time shopping scene, he concludes that Blackburn's dash to demolish and rebuild a generation ago was necessary.

"The changes were ones many Northern towns had to make at some point if they were to avoid losing trade and jobs, and which Blackburn at least made earlier and more economically than others," says Open University lecturer Matthew.

But if the town did make a mistake, he adds, it was through its inaction on renewing its shopping centre before the Second World War.

He cites an ambitious scheme proposed in 1923 by Thomas Ritzema, founder of this newspaper's forerunner, the Northern Daily Telegraph, for the removal of the town's market to the then run-down area between Penny Street and Ainsworth Street.

Because of the unfavourable economic climate in 1920s and 1930s, Ritzema's scheme, says Matthew, remained no more than a distant aspiration.

Yet the site the proposed for the market is the one where it was relocated in the often-criticised 1960s town centre revamp.

For the heritage-conscious, he points out that Blackburn's old town centre has not entirely disappeared.

"The shops and streets, the public buildings of the turn of the century are still to be seen, blended in more or less successfully with the legacies of previous and subsequent generations," he writes.

But, in his book, Matthew, who was educated at the town's Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School and now teaches history in Birmingham, also takes a fascinating look back at how shopping trends developed and changed in Blackburn, with his focal point being the turn-of-the-century peak of its manufacturing prosperity.

He tells us of how, at that time, an unbroken line of shops ran for a mile from the bottom of Darwen Street to Preston New Road and for a mile and a half from the Griffin to Eanam.

With the pound worth at least £50 at today's prices, a full basket of groceries bought in Blackburn came to no more than three shillings, or 15p - out of a skilled worker's weekly wage of £2.

But not all those town-centre premises were what they seemed, he reveals when looking at Northgate, one of the oldest thoroughfares.

Off here lies Lower Cockcroft where the still-to-be-seen fleur-de-lis emblem on the windows of one building tells of its past as the Prince of Wales Club which, says Matthew, was probably the venue for illicit pursuits such as cockfighting, as suggested both by local streets' names and a secret tunnel connecting the interior with nearby Barton Street.

But, inevitably for a town that was once known as Beery Blackburn, no look at its old-time retail premises can escape its plethora of pubs.

Matthew, who brought out a history of Blackburn's "posh" West End two years ago, has lots to choose from in the old town centre. He reveals that on one side of 500-yard-long Great Bolton Street there were once eight pubs, or one every fifth door!

Little wonder, then, that one shop firm, prosecuted then by the corporation, thought it might get away with selling butter, more than four-fifths of whose contents were actually other fats and water.

Fully illustrated with old photographs, traders' invoices and period advertisements, Matthew's book, Blackburn's Shops at the Turn of the Century, is by Landy Publishing, price £6.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.