THE recent move to re-open the inside of historic Trickett's Arcade in Waterfoot to shoppers promises to breathe new life into the town-centre Victorian gem.

It is almost 50 years after the interior was shut and it is seen here in 1954 (right) with the entrance to its long-hidden inner shops then blocked by a gate.

But if only older folk have recollections of when the inside was last open -- and of the billiard hall which was among its attractions -- none will remember the spot looking as it did in 1891.

It was then occupied by the market building that stood alongside J Richardson's boot, shoe and clog maker's shop and the famous Big Lamp dominated the junction of Bacup Road and Burnley Road East.

The old buildings disappeared in 1897 when work began on the arcade that was the venture of Rossendale's "Slipper King" Sir Henry W Trickett, pioneer of footwear manufacturing in the Valley.

He started up in 1883 at the age of 26 with just six workers in a small room, but in the space of 20 years his business was employing 1,500 people making 80,000 pairs or shoes and slippers a week in an up-to-date factory at Gaghills Mills, not far from the site of the arcade.

The arcade was such a splendid addition to Trickett's home town that, on the occasion of his knighthood in 1909, the local newspaper described it as a "stately block of shops which call forth eulogy from all who visit the district." More than two million bricks and one and a half miles of steel girders went into the construction of the building which, at its opening in March, 1899, consisted of 23 single and double shops, half of them with living accommodation in the two storeys above.

A crowd of 15,000 turned out for the ceremony that was heralded by two brass bands and a procession through Waterfoot and climaxed with the unlocking of the main gates by the Valley's MP, Mr JH Maden, using a golden key presented to him by the contractor, Mr Ormerod Ashworth.

But though the new building and its shops were a big attraction in themselves, what made them even more magnetic was the novelty of the arcade being lit by electricity.

The premises were equipped with an "engine room" to provide the power that flowed through four and a half miles of wiring to no fewer than 500 lights, which could be "turned on and off at pleasure," according to a Bacup Times' reporter, impressed by the marvel of the electric switch.

Originally, at first-first floor level above the entrance, there was a stone tablet carved with the words "Trickett's Arcade" above the 1897 datestone.

But these were obliterated in June, 1914 when the two-dial clock that remains a prominent feature of the building was erected by employees as a memorial to their old boss following his sudden death the previous August at the age of 56.

Trickett's firm was taken over by the Lambert Haworth group in 1970.