THEY won’t help you find your way around East Lancashire in 2015 — but maps of the region from nearly a century ago will offer an insight into a changing way of life down the years.

Old Ordnance Survey maps of towns across the county from 1909 have gone on sale, covering Accrington, Colne, Nelson, Blackburn, Rawtenstall and Bacup.

They are all taken from the 1/2500 plans and reproduced by Alan Godfrey at about 15 inches to the mile, even showing individual houses, schools, works and churches.

They include two of Burnley, East and West, with the eastern areas detailed in a map extending from Todmorden Road to Heckenhurst Reservoirs, and from Hesandford Mill to Fulledge Recreation Ground.

It features the Turf Moor football ground home of Burnley FC, Fulledge Mill, Brownside with Brownside Shed, Queens Park, Brunshaw Bottom, Bee Hole Colliery and Rowley Colliery with tramways, Rowley, Ridge Row.

A spokesman for Alan Godfrey Editions said: “These maps will provide hours of fascination for historians, transport buffs and genealogists or for anyone who just wants to see what their area looked like in the days gone by and are terribly addictive.”

London Bookshop describes them as: “A fascinating series of reproductions of old Ordnance Survey plans in the Alan Godfrey Editions, ideal for anyone interested in the history of their neighbourhood or family. Selected towns are covered by maps showing the extent of urban development in the last decades of the 19th Century.”