Best-selling author devastated to find old haunts bulldozed

And she admitted, it's emotional to return home.

"Blackburn was a great place to grow up. It's the sort of place you will never forget," said Jo.

"I've been gone a long time but in my mind and my heart and soul I can remember every street and house that used to be there. It's emotional for me to return and because I want it to stay as it was and if it's changed too much I don't want my memories changed."

On one trip to Blackburn with her late husband Ken, Jo was upset at the modernisation. "My mam had died a couple of years before and I thought I'll just go up and see Cicely Bridge Mill' where she worked. I used to walk up to meet her from work with my little brother Harry in the pram.

When I got there they were knocking it down. I stood there and bawled my eyes out. That wasn't just a building, it was my memories."

Jo feels similarly sad about the removal of the market hall clock in the town centre.

"That made me really cross," she said. "The old clock is in a lot of my books, it was absolutely beautiful. If people were meeting in town they'd say I'll see you under the clock'.

"It must have been the late fifties when I had moved south. I was skipping in the street and my Aunt Biddy turned up and said: Did you know they knocked the market clock down?' I was devastated."

And Jo gets angry when she hears about places she rem-embers being bulldozed.

"I have a lot of family in Blackburn and they tell me how rapidly it's changing," she said.

"All those terrace houses off Montague Street, where I used to live, have been knocked down to build flats. I don't know why they couldn't just modernise what was there.

"It's so sad that they don't look to see how they can preserve the character and history of the place, rather than just knock things down to build something else. It's like these things don't matter, but they do matter and it makes me cross."