WHAT have a former Archbishop of Canterbury, the nation’s largest paving stone, the country’s fattest man and the Titanic all have in common?

In the near future any visitors to Colne will be able to tackle that brainteaser, courtesy of a new heritage trail devoted to the ‘Bonnie Town on t’hill’.

Town councillors and community historians have come together to devise the colourful guide, which takes tourists from the railway station at Primet Hill to Keighley Road and back.

The Pendle town is already popular with walkers and cyclists, acting as a gateway to the leafy lanes of Trawden, Wycoller and Laneshawbridge.

But Colne leaders hope the heritage booklet, with a collection of street urchins on the cover, will further boost the tourism economy there.

Formerly centred around the village of Waterside, it was once home to 55 cotton mills and this legacy forms the backbone of the town trek.

Curious walkers will pass the former home of Wallace Hartley, the bandmaster on the ill-fated Titanic, who was a member of the nearby Bethel Independent Methodist Chapel choir.

His bust is next to the war memorial and his gravestone in Colne Cemetery.

The old Colne Grammar School, in the churchyard of St Bartholomew’s is on the site of a tithe barn where John Tillotson, a 17th century Archbishop of Canterbury was taught.

And just a short distance away is another Colne claim to fame – a monster flag from Cloughfold Quarry near Rawtenstall.

The two-tonne five-inch thick slab, measuring 10 feet by nine, was installed outside the front entrance to Colne Town Hall, opened in 1894.

As for the so-called ‘world’s fattest man’, one Daniel Smith, he died aged 28 at the Commercial Hotel, then known as The Railway, in 1834.

His funeral prompted a day’s holiday for Colne’s grammar school boys.

Other landmarks given their due in the trail include the town’s oldest surviving inn, the Craic i’ the Wall, the ancient Market Cross, the former police and fire stations and five-story Spring Gardens Mill.

The guide, backed by the town council, Pendle Council and Waterside Community Network, is available in tourist information offices across the borough.