DRIVERS hurrying by on busy Buncer Lane in Witton, Blackburn, hardly get the opportunity to appreciate the architectural gem at the roadside that is 163-year-old St Mark's Church -- a Grade II-listed structure that is not only picturesque, but also exceptional for being built the "wrong way round" for a church.

But even those who do stop to admire the Victorian building, which is said to be modelled on a church in the Rhineland, could never see it as it is pictured here.

For when this early view was taken of the parish church of the then-rural village of Witton, the trees that now obscure it were tiny, no houses stood in the way and Buncer Lane itself did not exist.

And at that time, the building still lacked its transepts -- the south one of which, built in 1870, included the vaults for tombs of members of the Feilden family of adjoining Witton Park while the northern transept was added 16 years later.

St Mark's was completed in 1838 at a cost of £700 -- with the site and £200 being donated by lord of the manor Joseph Feilden -- was originally a church in the countryside. But it was also singled out by its design -- unusual, probably, because it was the first commission of its young architect, Edmund Sharpe, of Lancaster.

He had studied Continental churches on an extended visit to Europe and the new Witton Parish Church, with its ornate Romanesque style, was said to be a copy of a church on the Rhine.

It was curious also because, unconventionally, Sharpe positioned St Mark's octagonal tower at is eastern end instead of at the west. Another unique facet was added in 1920 when a war memorial was placed on an interior wall, showing the photographs of men from the parish killed in the First World War -- a feature now catalogued by the Imperial War Museum.

St Mark's was also the "mother" church for three schools in the parish -- the oldest of which, the Day School, built at Witton Stocks in 1825, pre-dated the church by 13 years. In addition to Wensley Fold primary school, the church also oversaw the Girls' Industrial School which stood in Higher Witton Road until it was demolished in the 1950s. Built by the Feilden family, it owed its name to the lessons its pupils received in such subjects as needlework and housewifery and, like the other schools in the parish, it was also used for Sunday School instruction.

The rural nature of the parish was altered by the expansion of built-up Blackburn, into which the local-authority parish of Witton was absorbed in 1933 and by the construction of the by-pass in 1930 that turned once-quiet Church Lane outside St Mark's into busy Buncer Lane.

But overlooked as St Mark's Church often is is in the view of hurrying passers-by, it and its history and treasures are on show at a special "Open To View" weekend starting on Friday when visitors can see old photographs like these and also examine the church's baptismal registers dating back to the first in 1838 and its marriage registers, which commenced in 1845.