AS work progresses on the revamp of the old Pavilions buildings in town-centre Church Street in Blackburn, no doubt memories will be cast back to how the thoroughfare looked before its £4million transformation began.

But none will recall when this old house and shop stood on the street's corner with what is present-day Grosvenor Way. For they disappeared in 1871.

Older readers, however, may remember the Golden Lion Hotel to the right of them. When the picture was taken, it was occupied by John Fisher whose name is seen at the pub's second-floor level.

The Golden Lion, seen in this view of lower Church Street in 1958 a few months prior to the demolition of it and the row leading to the Woolworth store at the far right of the view, was once a leading coaching house. Even after the stagecoach era -- until the 1920s -- it was the starting point for horse-drawn wagonette outings and a pillar in its Tudor Room was said to mark the very centre of Blackburn.

But the long-gone shop and house next door have perhaps stronger links with the town's heritage. For the business that was run from there was to end up providing Blackburn with Witton Park and the fabulous, near-priceless collection of thousands of rare and ancient coins and hundreds of mediaeval books and manuscripts housed in the town's museum.

The spectacular collection and the money for the purchase of the park was bequeathed to the council in 1946 by industrial tycoon Edward Hart, fourth-generation head of rope-making business that had occupied the premises after it was founded in Blackburn in 1789 by Leyland-born Thomas Hart.

After his death in 1802, Thomas's widow, Martha, continued the business, first renting the Church Street premises from Blackburn's first great cotton magnate, Henry Sudell, of Woodfold Hall, Mellor. They were bought in 1827 by her sons, William and Thomas, after Sudell's bankruptcy forced the sale of his properties in and around the town.

The spot on which the shop and house stood was on the corner of what was then a stretch of Ainsworth Street and which later became part of Victoria Street when it was extended in 1871 into Church Street.

Founder Thomas Hart had his first rope walk on a plot between Penny Street and the now-hidden River Blakewater, which flows parallel. But in 1797 he built a new works with a 225ft-long covered rope walk at Spring Hill, near the present-day Boulevard and railway station. It is pictured left in 1930 when it and the adjoining yard were used for storage by now-gone Dutton's brewery whose site is now occupied by Morrison's supermarket and car park. From the 1870s -- not long after the firm had acquired a new site at Lambeth Street, Audley, -- the business expanded tremendously, becoming internationally famed for the cotton driving-ropes that turned mill engines and machinery in industries world-wide, providing the wealth that were a generation on to finance Edward Hart's collecting and ultimately enrich Blackburn with Witton Park and the museum's unique treasure.