A PAINTING by 'Matchstick Men' artist LS Lowry looks set to fetch £300,000 at auction - the same value as five houses in the East Lancashire street it is thought to be based on.

The 1957 oil-on-canvas painting, entitled 'A Street in Great Harwood', which has been linked to St Lawrence Street, will go up for auction at Sotheby's in London next week.

Laurence Stephen Lowry, who was born in 1887, painted around 2000-3000 paintings in his life but experts cannot exactly place the origins of this particular painting and Great Harwood Appreciation Society have been speculating over whether the street ever existed or if it was simply in his mind.

Owner of the Appreciation society website, John Duckworth said Lowry was known to have painted in Clitheroe and has his own idea of what happened on the day of the painting.

He said: "I think he was on the bus on his way home from Clitheroe to Manchester, got off the bus for a brew in Great Harwood, liked the area and painted from memory his idea of the then cotton milling town at a later date."

Great Harwood based art expert, Colin Speak, 49, of Garden Street, met Lowry when he was an art student at Manchester University after knocking on his door in Salford.

Mr Speak says he is certain the oil on canvas was a street in Great Harwood, adding: "The reason it probably doesn't look much like any of the streets we know is because he used to sketch scenes and then complete them when he got back home. He told us that when we met him. He said he preferred to do it that way. I think from the original sketch it would have been obvious where it was."

Most favoured suggestion is that the picture is based at the bottom of St Lawrence Street.

Ray Marsden, who lived in Lawrence Street prior to the Second World War, said he probably chose that particular street because it was named after him.

He said: "The painting resembled the street in many ways although the houses were painted in a Salford style as opposed to the stone faced ones which stood there in the 1950s."

Lowry, who became well known to pop fans with the 1977 hit single by Michael Colman and Brian Burke "Matchstick Men and Matchstick Cats and Dogs", was remembered for his unusual lifestyle.

When he died in 1976 with no wife or family, he left his estate to a young girl who had asked for his advice on painting.

Lowry, who was a rent collector by profession had received a letter from the girl when she was 13.