IT was once a familiar sight in East Lancashire's industrial heartlands - flying sparks and red-hot,molten metal - as heavy machinery was crafted in hot and sooty foundries.

Foundries used to be round every corner across our area, back in the days of weaving and spinning, mining and heavy engineering, but today have all but disappeared.

There were many independent foundries which supplied the needs of industrial customers around the area, and among Blackburn's iron founders were once Joseph Harrison, William Dickinson, Mark Knowles and Henry Livesey.

Three major firms dominated the trade, however, William Yates and Sons, which grew into Foster Yates and Thom at Canal Foundry, Clayton Goodfellow and Ashton Frost and Co - and around 90 per cent of all local mills had engines made by one of them. Most had boilers made at the Canal works.

Some engineering giants operated their own foundries, however, as seen here in this latest image from our archives.

It shows charge hand Jack Naisbitt at work in the foundry of British Northrop, in Blackburn, back in 1975.

Northrop, in Philips Road, manufactured, of course, machinery for producing textiles, but particularly the British Northrop loom, used not only in Lancashire's plethora of weaving mills, but across the globe.