WAS there once a plaque commemorating an old-time murder erected near now-gone Spring Gardens in town centre Blackburn? asks Cherry Tree reader Jim Haworth.

He recalls one being there 30-odd years ago near the still-marked site of All Hallows Well behind the Adelphi Hotel in Railway Road.

Not a plaque, Jim. And not by the ancient holy well, either. But a brutal killing was marked by a memorial not so far away -- the curious, now-vanished gravestone -- though the foul deed of 1838 was committed at Horwich Moor, near Bolton.

The victim was 20-year-old Scotsman George Henderson, a traveller, who was shot through the head on the moorland road after leaving a beerhouse at Five Houses, about the three-quarters of a mile from the summit of Winter Hill.

Henderson, who came from Annan in Dumfriesshire, is said to have unwisely let it be known he had money on him.

Though the bullet passed through his head from his right ear and out from his left eye, he was still alive when he was found in a ditch by the track. But he died after being carried back to the beerhouse.

Two days after the murder, a poster was issued by his employer's brother, William, offering the then-immense sum of £100 in reward for information leading to his killer.

But though robbery was believed to the motive, the 22-year-old collier accused of the murder, James Whittle, who lived at Five Houses, was cleared at his trial at Liverpool Assizes after his counsel had upheld that no money had been taken from Henderson.

An oak stake was erected at the spot where the traveller was found dying, but was replaced by a metal post in 1887 after the original marker had been chipped away by souvenir hunters. The Scotchman's Stump, as the post became known, was repaired and set in concrete in 1912, with a memorial plaque being added to it.

But poor Henderson was buried in the small cemetery of just some 40 graves at a chapel in Blackburn.

This was the Mount Street Chapel built in 1810 now the site of town-centre Morrison's supermarket. But the building fell into decline with the opening in 1868 of the much grander, but now-demolished St George's Presbyterian Church in Preston New Road, which closed in 1974, though worship continued at Mount Street beyond the turn of the century.

The premises were sold off after the First World War and later became this newspaper's garage, as can be seen from the early-1960s picture of Telegraph vans -- with their distinctive bright pink livery -- outside the building.

It was demolished in 1964 along with other properties in Mount Street.

But the demolition of the old chapel also entailed the removal of its small cemetery and its gravestones. The bodies buried there were exhumed and re-buried at Pleasington Cemetery.

And lost in the process was the memorial that marked the resting place of the hapless Henderson -- which is what Mr Haworth evidently recalls.

Its inscription read: "In Memory of George Henderson, Traveller, Native of Annan, Dumfriesshire, who in the 20th Year of his age, when dutifully Following his Master's business, was barbarously Murdered on Horwich Moor, at Noon Day, on the Ninth of November , MMCCCXXXVIII "

"This stone was place over his remains by Wm. Jardine, Brother of his Master John Jardine in testimony of respect for the deceased."

Alas, the stone mason who inscribed the epitaph was confused by the Roman numerals for the year 1838 and, by mistake, chiselled those for 2338.