A HEADLINE from the Northern Daily Telegraph (the forerunner of the Lancashire Evening Telegraph) in 1891 hardly described the terror a young lady was forced to experience.

"The Romantic Abduction From Clitheroe" caused quite a stir at the time. Edmund Haughton Jackson lived with his sister at West View, Granville Terrace (Granville Road) or 2 Rover Street, pictured, as it became known when houses on the even numbered side of the road began to be built.

He married Emily Hall, a lady who refused to live with him.

Following the marriage at St Paul's Church in 1887 she went home to her family in Clitheroe.

Then, after some years, Mr Jackson decided to take matters into his own hands.

For three Sundays he set out in a carriage for Clitheroe, but on reaching Whalley was told by a messenger that his wife had not gone to church that day.

But on Sunday, March 8, 1891, Emily went to church with her sister and when she came out her husband and some friends were waiting for her.

She was bundled into a carriage and driven to his house in Rover Street.

During the subsequent siege the neighbourhood became quite famous.

The newspaper reported: "The number of people who walked up the steep incline of Dukes Brow to gaze upon the house was remarkable.

"Hundreds of people wended their way thither from all parts of the town. A lady in Granville Terrace told our reporter that the peculiar circumstances had created a nine days' talk and ten days' wonder."

Emily remained a prisoner there until her friends secured her release after applying for a writ of habeas corpus.

According to the electoral roll, from 1885 to 1898 the house was owned by Robert Raynsford Jackson, Edmund's brother.

He was the mill owner who had his house, Clayton Grange, gutted by fire during the 1878 cotton riots.

Rover Street was changed to Wellfield Road in 1902 and for nine years No 2 was the home of the Rev F F Pepper and his family when he was minister of Montague Street Baptist Church.