By TONY FOSTER

Darwen Heritage Centre chairman

HERBERT Parkinson is easily the best-known name in the industrial life of Darwen. Everyone with an interest in the town knows of the chap.

Yet very few know anything about him, other than that his name is associated with Harvest Mill, today a vital part of the nationwide John Lewis Partnership

Herbert Parkinson is the only manufacturing business in the whole group and makes top quality premium soft furnishings.

Herbert established the company to weave jacquard furnishing fabrics at Orchard Mill, across from Heys Lane, in 1935 and it continued to expand until his death in May, 1953.

He died at his home, Hurstwood, in Buncer Lane, Blackburn, at the age of 76 and was buried at Pleasington, leaving a widow, Jessie, and a daughter Edna. His wife died in 1958 and daughter in 1992.

Edna, who never married, sold the company to John Lewis shortly after her father's death.

Herbert was a very private man and his death notice in the Northern Daily Telegraph the next day amounted to just six lines. It included the unusual request: No flowers or letters please.

There was no obituary. Had there been it might have recorded that he was born in Blackburn in 1877, the son of John Parkinson and Mary, nee Catterall and that he married Jessie Robinson in Blackburn in 1903.

When the 1911 census was taken, the Parkinsons were living in Whalley New Road and Herbert was employed as a salesman.

By 1930 the family had moved to The Willows, Gorse Road, where they lived till the early fifties.

In 1960 the John Lewis Partnership transferred the business to Sunnyhurst Mill, alongside Birch Hall.

It had been the last cotton mill to be built in Darwen, in 1913 and they renamed it 'Harvest Mill', though it's not clear why.

There is a suggestion that the previous owners 'took the name with them.' Perhaps a reader has the answer?

Herbert Parkinson currently produces curtains and blinds as well as filled furnishing products, such as cushions, duvets and pillows. It employs 239 'partners', who are co-owners of the business, as is the case throughout John Lewis.

Photos from the history of Herbert Parkinson are now on display in Darwen Heritage Centre. Some date back to the early days of the firm when they were at Orchard Mill.