OUR Pride of East Lancashire Campaign is highlighting the achievements and good things which the area has to offer. But what about the people who have made our home such a great place?

DONNA McKENZIE looks at seven of the best - those who have helped put East Lancashire on the world map...

MILLIONAIRE businessman and benefactor John Lancaster founded Ultraframe in 1983 from a unit in Duck Street, Clitheroe. With a workforce of two he masterminded its growth into the world's largest supplier of conservatory roofing systems employing more than 500 at sites in Salthill and Lincoln Way, Clitheroe. Set up charitable J&R Lancaster Foundation.

JACK Walker lifted Blackburn Rovers, a team he had supported since he was a toddler, from obscurity to of Premiership champions in 1995. But even before that. he and his brother Fred had become legends in the world of industry. Their leadership converted the tiny company launched by their father into one of Europe's largest steel holders. Walkersteel created hundreds of jobs.

FORMER Blackburn MP and people's champion Barbara Castle, later Barones Castle of Blackburn, was described as the most formidable woman politician of the 20th century after Margaret Thatcher. The fiery politician was seen as a champion for women and later, pensioners. She introduced the breathalyser and the Equal Pay Act, giving six million women workers entitlement to the same wages as men on the same job.

ONE-TIME Burnley tea boy David Crossland went on to build the giant Airtours travel group. Airtours is the most successful business to be launched in East Lancashire and is a classic rags to riches tale of a young Burnley boy who even failed his maths O-level and was turned down for a hospital administration job. In 1972 he bought Pendle Travel for £8,000 with his brother-in-law and by 1980 had nine shops in East Lancashire. The tour operators, Airtours, was opened that year and moved to Helmshore.

Thisislancashire's special Pride of East Lancashire section...

GREAT Harwood-born Ernest Marsden was an outstanding experimental physicist who unlocked the secret of the atom. Born in 1889, he went on to make ground-breaking discoveries as an undergraduate at Manchester University in 1909. His discovery that only a tiny part of the atom, rather than the whole, is made up of a charge led to the birth of nuclear physics. His work led to many medical advances of the last century including MRI scanners.

FORMER world snooker champion Dennis Taylor is one of Blackburn's most famous sporting heroes. The snooker player, who captured the hearts of a nation with his upside-down glasses, lived in East Lancashire for 36 years and still visits friends and relatives in Blackburn and Darwen. His most nailbiting contest was in September 1985 when he took the world snooker title from Steve Davis at the Crucible in Sheffield. The match went to the final black.

THE UK'S largest sports retailer JJB began with a stall on Blackburn Market. Former Blackburn Rovers star David Whelan launched his business career on the stall after a broken leg ended his football dreams. Last year he announced a four-year deal with Manchester United to become the club's Official Sports Retailer which gave exclusive rights to sell merchandise in the stores.

* So what is there to be proud of? We're putting together a list of East Lancashire's top 100...people, achievements, inventions and other things that have made the area such a great place.

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