HISTORIAN Steve Chapples tells the story of a Burnley company, which grew from a clay model made by a ten-year-old girl.

The business was PenDelfin, which produced, among other models, cute rabbit figures that were exported all around the world.

Young Jean Walmsley Heap was a pupil at Rosegrove Infants School when she created her first model, a bird’s nest, in a broom cupboard under the stairs, which she called Studio One.

Later, after winning a scholarship to Burnley School of Art, she attended clay-modelling classes with local artist Noel H. Leaver, who became her mentor.

Rabbits came on the scene when, one day, he asked Jean if she could bring her pet rabbit for the pupils to model at the next session. Jean cut some holes in a brown paper bag and took him along to class.

After leaving school, she worked at Burnley Building Society with her artist friend Jeannie Todd, who, she discovered, had a hut at the bottom of the garden that would be ideal for producing China clay models.

Their figures were made as a hobby, or inexpensive Christmas gifts, and they came up with the name Pendlecraft.

Jeanie, however, seeing the elfin-like qualities of some figures called the Pixie Bods suggested they change it to PenDelfin.

With Jean designing the figures, Jeanie set about mould-making and casting in her kitchen, which became thick with the overpowering smell of rubber and burning pans.

Instead, they decided to rent a tiny lock-up shop in Harle Syke, owned by an elderly couple called Parker-Dixon, who were sworn to secrecy and believed the girls were working on some hush-hush government project.

The step along the road to success began when the building society commissioned Jean to make a model of the character based on its monthly magazine called Little Thrifty.

By 1955 there was a part-time staff of five, and they had moved to larger premises across the street in the abandoned Co-op.

The full PenDelfin range included nursery rhyme characters such as Little Bo Peep and Little Jack Horner, but the characters the public clamoured for most was the family of rabbits.

Their first £10 order came from the Kendle Milne department store, in Manchester and, as more followed, the staff, who included artist Dorian Noel Roberts, were paid for the first time.

Success continued and, by 1973, they operated from Cameron Mill, in the Daneshouse area, and had a staff of 140, including Canadian Robert Bridgeman, who believed the figures would be a success on the other side of the Atlantic and worked as export director.

In 1986, however, the PenDelfin Studios, now at Brennand Mill, burnt to the ground, causing £1million damage to stock and equipment.

The company ceased trading in 2006.

There is now a plaque on the Tim Bobbin pub, in Padiham Road , the birthplace of the company’s co-founder Jean Walmsley Heap.