IS the new year of 1950 was welcomed in, Harry Green from Blackburn, looked at the changes during the first half of the century.

Writing in the Northern Daily Telegraph, in January, 1950, he said: “Had anyone told you at Yuletide 1900 that 50 years hence you could be sitting by your fireside, listening to a choral service being sung in Westminster Abbey, you would have said ‘nonsense’.

“In 1900 we had not seen an aeroplane over Blackburn, neither a wireless, a motor car, motor buses, electricity in the street or factory, automatic telephones or traffic signals.

“The big blocks of grimy old property at Blakey Moor and behind Ainsworth Street and at Nab Lane have been swept away, with attractive new housing on well laid out estates and we have three new parks, Queen’s, Roe Lee and Green and Pleasington playing fields.

“A new reservoir has been built at Parsonage, which has helped improve the general standard of hygiene, with homes now having baths and hot and cold water.

“Great strides have been made in the town’s electricity and gas undertakings; the Whitebirk station, once looked on as a white elephant, has come to be regarded as of the finest in the country.

“We have new Public Halls and Sessions House to replace the old police station behind the town hall, while we can also be proud of the Garden of Remembrance, created in 1924 and the new Infirmary wing, built in 1928, both as 1914-18 war memorials.

“New baths were built in Belper Street in 1906 and a fire station in 1921, while our market hall has been converted into one of the best in the country and the Free Library has been extended.

“My chief recollection of the town in 1900 is that the centre was pretty quiet except on market days, then Wednesday and Saturday and I never fail to feel surprised when I look on the crowds between the railway station and the Boulevard today, trying to commit suicide as they dash between motor cars, buses and lorries.

“One of the most exciting scenes was the coming home of Boer War volunteers in 1902.

Several thousand people were there to welcome them home in the middle of the night .

“Church Street now has modern shop fronts and banks.

“Darwen Street, too, has lost a lot of quaint old shops, such as Baines, the fruit and fish shop at the corner of Dandy Walk, where a new post office was built in 1907.

“It was 1900 when the first automated loom was brought over from America by Will Livesey and assembled at Greenbank Ironworks.

“That year, Blackburn had 130 mills, today there are 77.

“Blackburn has been in the front line of progress.

The first film show, or ‘moving pictures’ show as they were originally known was given by Sagar Mitchell in a room over his shop in Northgate.

The town was also home to the first specially built cinema in the world, the Alexandria, built in 1906.