A CALL for one of the last remaining pieces of Blackburn’s history to be returned to its original location in the town centre was made this week.

The Thwaites fountain stood at the busy crossroads, at Salford, between 1884 and 1923, before it was moved to Pleasington playing fields more than 80 years ago.

Now, after Looking Back featured the monument in our ‘where is this’ puzzle, keen Blackburn historian Peter Worden has appealed for it to be returned from the wilderness, to where it once stood.

He said: “When the shopping centre expansion was still in the planning stage some three years ago, I asked if it could be incorporated in the landscaping at the Church Street/Salford corner.

“It may not be too late to hope that something may happen in the redevelopment of the old markets complex because it would be wonderful if this bit of genuine old Blackburn could be returned close to its original location, preserved for future generations.”

As Peter’s photograph shows, the Thwaites fountain stood at the crossroads at Salford, before it was installed at Pleasington, to quench the thirst of athletes and children.

When a pavilion was built nearby, however, it became redundant.

The White Bull is on the right and the railway station can be seen in the background.

It was presented to the town in 1884 by Miss Sarah Ann Thwaites, philanthropist and town benefactor, who was the granddaughter of brewer Daniel Thwaites, daughter of his son Thomas.

She lived at West Bank, in Preston New Road, and died in 1918, aged 86.

Made of grey granite, and described at the time as an ‘ornament to the improved square’, it has a carved tablet on one side with her intertwined initials.

When first installed it was topped by a globe-shaped gas lamp on a short pole, but with the electrification of Blackburn’s trams between 1899 and 1902, it was replaced with a longer one, with hanging electric lamps and a cross arm with a tram wire.

In 1923, as part of a scheme to clear the roads of centrally-placed tram wire poles which were to be found on the Preston New Road to Billinge End route, and in the Salford/Railway Road area, it was removed and put into storage.

When athletes demanded facilities to quench their thirst after strenuous exercise at Pleasington, the old fountain was considered to be ‘just the thing’ and it was moved to Pleasington in 1927.

Mr Worden helped conserve the Mitchell and Kenyon film archive of more than 800 films, shot in the town between 1898 and 1913.

The negatives were discovered by workmen in the cellar of Mitchell’s former shop, in Northgate, Blackburn, in 1994, where they had lain untouched for decades.

The collection comprises the world’s third largest single repository of film from a single source and has now been added to the UNESCO ‘Memory of the World’ register.