IT was all change for Blackburn town centre back on January 23, 2008, as the townscape changed forever.

Demolition on Lord Square - often dubbed Blackburn’s biggest architectural atrocity - began at last.

Forty years after it was built as a centrepiece to the town’s 60s planning ‘revolution’, the bulldozers moved in.

It was originally heralded as “ahead of its time” but critics said it had become a “terrible blot on the landscape of the town”.

Blackburn MP Jack Straw praised the Lancashire Telegraph for launching a campaign six years earlier calling for the eyesore to be pulled down.

It was to be replaced with a £66million new shopping centre and market hall.

At 11.30am a crowd gathered in the town centre, with onlookers using mobile telephones to record the action.

Blackburn with Darwen mayor Maureen McGarvey sat in an industrial “munching” machine to get demolition under way.

Victoria Holmes, of The Mall, said: “It’s going wonderfully well, and this is a great day for the town.

“There are exciting times ahead for Blackburn.”

Full demolition of the Lord Square section of the shopping centre was to take about 15 weeks.

The demolition firm, the Control Group, which has knocked down part of London’s Millennium Dome, used a 100-tonne machine, with a 20-metre reach, for the project.

The Lancashire Telegraph launched a campaign in 2002 calling for the square to be pulled down.

Mr Straw said: “The artist who designed so-called Lord Square should be imprisoned in a prefab in the building. What were they thinking of?”

“I am delighted that the Lancashire Telegraph has played such a lead part in getting rid of it.”