FELLOW Blackburn exiles in Canada tell expat Derek Anderson he must be dreaming when he recalls seeing a windmill on walks he used to take around Shadsworth and the Roman Road area of his home town in the 1950s.

Yet Derek, of Welland, Ontario, swears there was one -- and asks Looking Back for confirmation of its existence, its history and when it was removed.

But searches in our archives and of Ordnance Survey maps of the area half a century ago failed to find the windmill he remembers. Can readers provide clues?

Blackburn did, however, once have a windmill elsewhere. But though it is now way beyond the extent of living memory, older folk may recall vestiges of it -- in a canal-side workshop that was named after it.

The windmill, situated at Eanam near the town centre and used for grinding corn, was the only one Blackburn ever had, according to JG Shaw, editor of the old Blackburn Times. It was in his Bits of Old Blackburn album, published in 1889 that this illustration of it (above) by Blackburn artist and draper Charles Haworth first appeared.

Built in 1822 by Samuel Derbyshire, of Audley Hall, in conjunction with another farmer, the aptly-named John Miller, it was a Blackburn landmark for two generations. But its existence might have been much shorter but for prompt action by Derbyshire when it caught fire soon after it was erected fire.

According to Shaw, the giant windmill's immense sails whirled round at terrific speed in windy weather and friction created as a result in the mill's shafts and gears was blamed for the blaze -- which was put out after Derbyshire ran from Audley Hall and jammed a large oak log into the works to stop the sails turning.

The mill was bought in 1829 by Darwen Street corn dealer John Polding and worked by his son Peter. They enlarged the premises and replaced the wind-power with steam engines and new machinery -- "to keep pace with the march of intellect," said Shaw.

After Polding's death in 1862, the business was carried on for another 20 years by his son, Henry. He had the mill's upper storey and redundant sails taken down about 1877 when they became unsafe and 10 years later sold the old round tower -- still six storeys high -- to blacksmiths and wheelwrights Houlker Watson and Sons, who began demolishing it.

The stone from the mill's two lower storeys was used to build the firm's new smithy and workshop in nearby Dock Street. One of the old millstones was used as a date stone for the new premises. It was inscribed with the words "Houlker Watson and Sons, Windmill Works, 1887."

There were also sufficient bricks recovered from the old mill for the building of seven houses in Eanam.

Windmill Works was later occupied by joiners and builders G Procter and Son, who specialised in making wooden ware such as heald staves and reed ribs for cotton looms, and in more recent years by an Asian food suppliers. The premises were demolished a few years after the former Alexandra Cinema next door was pulled down after it was wrecked in an arson attack four years ago.