SPURRED by Looking Back's preview last month of the Cotton Town Project that is creating a photographic and information archive on the internet of Blackburn and Darwen's textiles-led heritage, 93-year-old Langho reader Mrs Bertha Warren sends for inclusion in it this souvenir of a big day in the industry's history.

It is a medal commemorating the visit 90 years ago next month of King George V and Queen Mary to Roe Lee Mills in Blackburn - during the week-long, 30-towns tour of Lancashire that the royal couple undertook in 1913.

At the time, Blackburn's cotton industry was undergoing a mill-building boom and was operating a record number looms that made it the weaving centre of the world, with Messrs Duckworth and Eddleston's No.2 mill at Roe Lee, opened the previous year, being among the newest.

There, the King and Queen were shown the latest Jacquard-type looms and were given a demonstration of the cottage-industry craft of handloom weaving that had preceded cotton's factory era. The Queen was greeted by co-proprietor John Duckworth and presented with a monogrammed handkerchief and a pair of miniature clogs.

She also met his partner, John Eddleston, and it was his wife, Ada, who passed on the souvenir medal of the occasion to Mrs Warren's late husband, Harry, who for many years was chauffeur and gardener at the family's large house at York, near Langho.

Mr Eddleston left the Roe Lee business in 1930. It closed in 1981 after previously becoming part of the Viyella textile empire. But the royal visit there 68 years earlier was to have much more than a one-day impact on Blackburn - where the visit was also marked by the King laying the foundation stone of the town's public halls by a remote-control electric signal sent from a dais outside the town hall to a crane at the site.

For as well as having the medal struck to commemorate the visit to their mills, Duckworth and Eddleston gave 16 acres of land at Roe Lee to the town for a park.

The outbreak of the 1914-18 war prevented work on the scheme. But in 1919, under a government-backed scheme, Blackburn Council drew up a plan to build 500 new houses for rent and acquired 25 acres of land adjoining the 'gift' site. The result was a combined plan for a new park with housing built around it, though the park's location had to be moved from the originally-intended spot.

When work began, the cotton industry was descending into slump and the creation of Roe Lee Park provided employment for jobless mill workers who were supervised by men from the council's direct labour department.

In addition to the pavilion, the park incorporated three bowling greens and five tennis courts and a local stream was dammed to create a children's paddling pool in the nearby valley.

Around the park, and close by at Brownhill, the council eventually built 396 new houses and the development of the area also included the new 4-mile Arterial Road - the present-day A6119 - running through it on its way from Whitebirk to Yew Tree. The road took eight years to build and was opened in 1928 - by when the new suburb that had grown up was so full of families that a new school was needed for their youngsters.

This led to the building of Roe Lee Park Junior School - which was the first to be built in Blackburn for nearly 20 years.

The parents of those whose new homes were positioned around the new park had to pay sixpence (2p) extra in rent for the enjoyment of the location.

In all, then, the medal Mrs Warren passes on for a lasting place in Blackburn's heritage commemorates so much more than just one special royal day in its Cotton Town history.

Take a look at the Cotton Town site...