IT was exactly 100 years ago when George V and Queen Mary undertook an eight-day tour of Lancashire.

They covered 220 miles, visiting more than 30 towns to find out more about the industries and people of the county, which was then a powerhouse of the Empire.

On two of those days, July 9 and 10, 1913, just a year before the outbreak of the Great War, they visited the communities of East Lancashire, where they were greeted by vast crowds, flags, festoons and flowers.

The scenes of a century ago are to be recreated next month, with special screenings of cinema newsreels taken on the day and scripted by local historians.

A Right Royal Tour of Lancashire, 1913, by the North West Film Archive, will let audiences join the cheering crowds as they thronged the decorated streets to have a glimpse of the King and Queen on their first tour of the area since the Coronation, two years earlier.

The films will be shown at the Royal Court Theatre, Bacup, on July 9 and at Pendle Hippodrome, Colne, the following day, both at 7.30pm.

Tickets are £5 and are available from the venue’s box offices.

The archive’s service manager Marion Hewitt said: “We are so pleased to have been able to preserve these rare and fragile early films. Showing them in the same towns exactly 100 years later will bring them right back to where they belong – they are truly local films for local people.”

The royal couple’s first stop in East Lancashire was Colne and as they left the railway station, through a triumphal archway, they were greeted by a tumultuous crowd and the Colne Orpheus Glee Union.

The town hall and adjacent Co-operative store were festooned in bunting and banners and at the presentation platform in North Valley Road, the king and queen were greeted with the Royal salute by trumpeters of the Mayor’s Own Boy Scouts and the National Anthem from Colne Borough Brass Band.

Later in the afternoon sports were staged in Judge Field to mark the day.

The couple then moved on to Nelson where 6,000 children were assembled in Carr Road and the Arian Glee Union, conducted by Lawson Berry sang ‘Here’s Life and Health to England’s King’.

Then it was on through Brierfield to Burnley, where 8,000 children had the day off school to line the streets and then lunch with Lord Shuttleworth at Gawthorpe Hall. Driving through Padiham, pensioners had strung up a banner with the words ‘A gradely welcome fra’ th’owd folks’.

Youngsters were given free mugs and the Territorials and National Reservists souvenir boxes of tobacco.

Thousands also lined the streets of Rossendale, waving Union Jacks as the cavalcade passed through Haslingden, Rawtenstall, Bacup and Whitworth.

At Accrington, the royal motorcade was met by the town’s detachment of mounted police and surrounding the dais in the market square were the Territorials, Legion of Frontiersmen, Reservists and emergency services.

The couple then visited the print works at Broad Oak, owned by the Calico Printers Association, built in 1782 and ranked among the oldest, biggest and most famous industrial concerns in the world.

They both tried their hand at block printing before being presented to long serving workers John Hartley, who had worked there for 61 years and Mark Pickup, who had 56 years’ service, still six years less than his father before him.

All the children in Accrington received souvenir hankies and later in the day, bands played in the parks, where there was dancing until dusk.

Blackburn was transformed into red, white and blue for its Royal visit the following day, where the King laid the foundation stone for the public halls in Northgate.

Electricity was the magician which allowed the king to press a button on the dais in front of the town hall and a crane to lay the stone in place, where copies of the official programme were also buried.

The day was declared a holiday and a military tournament and torchlight tattoo took place at Witton Park.

At Darwen, old shipmates of the King, Alexander Reeling, who served as a gunner on HMS Bacchante in the 1880s, and Thomas Fradd, an able seaman on HMS Alexandra, were presented to the couple and the Queen planted an oak tree in Sunnyhurst Woods.