WE recently featured a photograph in Looking Back of the Beechwood on Livesey Branch Road in Blackburn taken in 1969.

This prompted local historian Barbara Riding to get in touch regarding the original Beechwood House which had stood on the same site and had links to one of the town’s most prestigious families.

Dating back to the 1800s, Beechwood House was built for George Whiteley, whose father together with Joseph Eccles, built and ran Albion Cotton Mill near Ewood.

George Whiteley and his brother Herbert were more interested in politics than cotton. They were both mayors of Blackburn in 1884 and 1894 and Members of Parliament for Stockport and Ashton-under- Lyne.

Mrs Margaret Whiteley had the distinction of being the only mother in England who could boast to have two sons in the Houses of Parliament.

When the Whiteleys vacated Beechwood in the 1890s, it was eventually converted into flats with garages. Mrs Alice Whiteley was related to the Dutton family and in 1962 the Dutton Brewery family decided to demolish the old house and build a nightclub.

This was not a popular idea locally so they built a public house with conventional opening times, called of course the Beechwood and later the Oaktree. For several years now the site has been home to a Tesco Supermarket.