EAST Lancashire has always had its fair share of rain. Indeed, it was the damp climate which helped create its growth and prosperity during the Industrial Revolution.

It was the ideal place for cotton weaving and spinning, the weather ensuring that the fragile thread did not break during the manufacturing process.

Sometimes, however, there has been a little more rain than our numerous streams trickling off the moors and our rivers could cope with - and the result has been catastrophic flooding.

Freak thunderstorms and torrential downpours have caused raging flash floods, which have hit suddenly and destructively, as the one which hit our communities in the summer of 1967.

Rivers quickly became raging torrents, pouring into homes and washing cars away, as well as the roads they were on - Barrowford and many Pendleside villages, such as Roughlee and Barley were particularly badly hit.

Then there was the flooding in the Waterfall area of Blackburn, also in the Sixties, and many families returned home from their Wakes weeks holidays in the summer of 1965, to find their community under feet of water, with people being rescued by lorry and strong police officers.

Here's a selection of photographs from our archives, which shows just how badly East Lancashire has been hit by sudden, torrential downpours over the decades.