TODAY’S headlines told how 10 workmen were flung 50 feet to the ground after scaffolding collapsed in a Blackburn church.

Painters and scaffold erectors were trapped in pews under a tangled mass of steel and planks at Gabriel’s Church.

Six were injured, two of whom were admitted to hospital – while one man, Jack Jones, of Lower Audley Street, Blackburn, grabbed a chandelier and desperately clung to it until a ladder was brought.

He said later: “As I fell I quickly realised that my only chance was to try and grab the chandelier. I gave a mad jump and held on but I couldn’t have lasted much longer.” Another of his colleagues clung to one of the scaffolding poles which was bent at a 45 degree angle.

Joseph Parsons, 17, of Dickens Street, Thomas Baldwin, 30, of Lansdowne Street, William Procter, 30 of Princess Street, Waterfall, Matthew Smith 27, of Park Road and Edmund Quinn, 60, of Brunswick Street, all of Blackburn, were among the injured.

Jan Modlinski, 50, of Clitheroe, was also hurt, but Henry Chesterton, of Trinity Street, Blackburn, who was in charge of the scaffolding team, had a lucky escape, after walking out unhurt when he fell into a pew from 45 feet up and was buried under a mountain of scaffolding and planks.

Contractor W Reader commented: “There is no sign of how the collapse occurred, there’s not a coupling or a fitting of any sort that is broken.”

The accident happened as six painters, with four scaffolders to rearrange the planks, were within a few feet of finishing the ceiling, at the end of a month-long renovation and painting operation.