THE Merestone, or marker stone, is commemorated by a plaque on St James's Street near the end of Fleet Walk. The stone itself has long since disappeared but at one time marked the official centre of Burnley.

It was placed in the centre of the street following the passing of the Burnley Improvement Act of 1819. This required the Improvement Commissioners to "... put and place a Merestone in the Centre of the public Street opposite the great Front Door of the Black Bull Hotel .... upon a Level with the Pavement of the said Street, in such a Manner as that the same shall not be an Annoyance to Horses or Carriages passing along the same Street, such Merestone to remain there fixed for the Purposes of this Act; but in case such Merestone shall at any Time be removed or broken, the said Commissioners are hereby authorised and directed to put another Merestone in the same place".

The stone was the centre of a circle three-quarters of a mile in radius which marked the extent of the town at the time. Eventually this came to be known as the "Police Circle".

The 1819 Act was never fully implemented but the stone was put in place and is marked on Fishwick's Map of Burnley of 1827.

It was not until another Improvement Act in 1846 that the Commissioners took over the responsibility for "paving, lighting, cleansing, regulating and improving the town and for better supplying the inhabitants with gas and water" within the "Police Circle", which was extended to a radius of one mile by another Act in 1854.

We do not know what the stone looked like. It must have been a flat stone "upon a level with the pavement" rather than an upstanding one. It certainly cannot be seen in an engraving of 1854 which shows the Market Place, St James's Street (pictured).

It is not certain when the Merestone disappeared. The most likely time is when the tram lines were laid in 1881.

Perhaps it was deliberately covered with setts to avoid it being "removed or broken." Could it be that it still exists buried beneath the paving in St James's Street? Incidentally, it would be interesting to know the origin of "St James's Street" as it was so named over 20 years before St James's Church was built in 1849, and originally applied only to the stretch between Curzon Street and Parker Lane.

THE THORN HOTEL: A plaque at the end of Fleet Walk marks the site of the Thorn Hotel, which, before its demolition in the 1960s, was one of Burnley's best-known inns. It was on the site of the Thorn Croft, which dated from the 1500s and was one of several farms in this part of Burnley before the centre of the town was moved here from outside St Peter's Church, towards the end of the 18th century.

The farmhouse had become a tavern by 1736, when it was kept by John Crook and his son William.

In 1786, John Wesley preached outside the Thorn on his second visit to Burnley.

A newly-married couple, William Hopwood and his wife, who were walking home from St Peter's Church, stopped to listen. They were converted and became stalwart supporters of the Wesleyans in Burnley. Wesley, however, was apparently chased away by an angry crowd and forced to hide in a nearby privvy. Wesley had also experienced trouble on a previous visit to Burnley in 1784.

In his journal he described how "...all were eager to hear except one man who was the town crier. He began to bawl till his wife ran to him and literally stopped his noise: she seized him with one hand and clapped the other upon his mouth so that he could not get out one world".

The Thorn was the site of another disturbance during the weavers' strike of 1876, when the Riot Act had to be read from one of its windows.

THE SWAN INN: Not far away another heritage site plaque marks the Swan Inn, which can claim to be the oldest surviving building in the town centre. Like the Thorn it was originally a farmhouse but had become a tavern by the early 19th century. From June, 1819 the Town Committee, which ran local affairs, met at the Swan. In the same year, as a consequence of the unrest that followed the Napoleonic Wars, a jail was opened on the land behind the inn.

One of the cells with barred windows still survives: it is the gents' toilet for the public house!