SENDING Looking Back a picture of a Blackburn Corporation bus in town-centre Bridge Street, reader Ken Roberts asks where and what was the "Shadsworth Hall" that, "via Accrington Road" is shown as its destination.

The 17th-century hall is long gone. It stood on Shadsworth Road opposite the junction with North Road and its site is now occupied by Wilkinson House, the Social Services centre for children in care, which opened in 1963.

Older readers may remember Shadsworth Hall as being the base for many years of the Queen's Tennis Club -- as it was in the above picture of taken in 1928.

Its history went back to the James I when it belonged to an old Blackburn family, the Astleys. But it and the surrounding area were linked by legend to the reign of the next king, Charles I, and, in particular, his enemy, Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, the parliamentary leader in the English Civil War of 162-51.

For according to local lore, Cromwell once slept either at Shadsworth Hall or Cromwell Lodge, a large house which stood nearby at the junction of Delph Lane and Shadsworth Road. And further down Delph Lane, now-gone fortress-like Lower Shadsworth Farm was known locally as Cromwell Castle -- on the strength of a tale that parliamentary troops had been billeted there and fought a battle in a nearby field. According to Blackburn historian George Miller, there was no foundation in fact for the Cromwell connection -- other than Thomas, the First Viscount Fauconberg, Lord of the Manor of Oswaldtwistle, having married Cromwell's daughter, Mary. But there was no evidence that she or her father was ever at Shadsworth. "Of such frail stuff are legends made," Miller scoffed.

Cromwell Lodge, which became a convalescent home, may have drawn its name from the legend, but it dated back only to the early 1870s when it was built by a cotton mill owner. But if Shadsworth Hall had no association in fact with warlord Cromwell, it was indeed once connected with civil strife -- during the Power Loom riots of 1826 when thousands of desperate handloom weavers began wrecking Lancashire's newly-mechanised mills which they blamed for the loss of their livelihoods. The hall was then the home of clerk to the County Justices William Carr, who was alleged to support strong measures to suppress the weavers' demonstrations. As a result, his mansion came under attack by a mob which tried to break in, smashed windows with stones and sticks and only backed off when the occupants appeared at the windows with firearms. Though the house itself had disappeared, Shadsworth Hall remained as a bus route until 1968 when Shadsworth became served by two circular services via Audley and Intack.