THE future of two industrial museums in East Lancashire has been assured until March 2021.

Queen Street Mill in Burnley and Helmshore Mills Textile Museum in Rossendale reopened this year after Lancashire County Council reversed a 2015 decision to close them to save cash.

Yesterday the authority’s cabinet voted to find £1.2m to extended the original one-year reprieve until March 31 2021.

It also authorised the council’s officials to work with the National Trust to try to find ways of securing their long-term future as working museums.

Grade I listed Queen Street Mill, which was featured in The King’s Speech and earlier this year in Mike Leigh’s Peterloo, is the last surviving steam powered weaving mill in the world.

Helmshore Mills are the only ones to still have their original working machinery in situ, with visitors able to see how raw wool and cotton were transformed into yarn ready for cloth to be woven more than a century ago.