COMING from a recently rediscovered collection of photographs given to Blackburn library, a 30-year-old picture, is of a now-vanished feature of the town centre that could be located by smell as well as by sight -- the old Fish Dock adjoining Blackburn railway station.

Also known popularly as the Fish Hillock, the spot was where trains coming from the country's fishing ports would unload cargoes of seafood was the base for several firms of wholesale fish merchants. In times before road transport superseded rail for the shipment of fish, dozens of fish sellers' carts would gather early in the morning to collect supplies from the Fish Dock and, according to one reader who lived in nearby Mount Street in the 1920s, some suffered from pilfery by passers-by on their way to work.

Here, the track alongside platform, or 'dock,' had fallen into disuse by 1971 though the fish boxes and weighing scales beneath the canopy in the centre of the picture show that the place was still in use as a fish distribution centre.

In the background at the left is the rear of the Star and Garter Hotel in Railway Road -- known today as the Boulevard -- and to its right can be seen the dome of the old Palace Theatre which closed in 1984 after ending its days as a cinema and bingo hall and was demolished in 1989.

The premises to the right of the Fish Dock are now occupied by the car park of Morrison's supermarket.