STREETS in a new housing development are being named after the women who fought for the right to vote – starting with a local ‘suffragette’.

The first street under construction at Blackburn’s new The Hedgerows development off Whinney Lane has been christened Entwistle Drive to mark last weekend’s International Women’s Day.

It commemorates Blackburn mill worker Louisa Entwistle, part of a group which raided the House of Commons in February 1907.

The 20-year-old travelled to London to take part in ‘The Battle of the Suffragettes’, was arrested and jailed for a week in Holloway Prison.

After her release, Louisa said: “It is not because we want to make ourselves into martyrs. It is because the working women suffer so much under the present conditions by which they are oppressed.

“We don’t want to make a name for ourselves, and it is for women who work in the mills, and who have their homes and their children to look after, that single women are trying to get the vote.

“It is for these helpless women that we are fighting. Our opponents know that if we get the vote we shall alter a lot of things, and they are frightened.”

Other streets will be named after prominent suffragettes and women’s rights campaigners including Millicent Fawcett, Nancy Astor, Bessie Braddock, Christabel Pankhurst, Constance Bulwer-Lytton, Emily Davison and Eleanor Rathbone.

The idea was the brainchild of local students, Cllr Julie Gunn and Blackburn with Darwen highways boss Cllr Phil Riley.

Cllr Gunn, a lecturer in social science at Blackburn College, challenged her students to compile a list of suffragettes for street names in the development.

Cllr Gunn said: “A group of students and I worked together on International Women’s Day to come up with some important and significant women from the North West and this idea came up.

“Louise Entwistle was a Blackburn lass, who at the age of 20 marched on Parliament. She appeared in court and couldn’t, or wouldn’t pay her fine and served time in prison for the right of women to vote. It’s really important to realise that she was a good old working class Blackburn girl.”

The Hedgerows development is being built by Wainhomes (North West) Ltd.