AS part of the facelift at Blackburn Railway Station, a new floor has been laid in the below-platform subway. The worn, hollowed, mill stone grit flagstones, laid when the station was first built, have gone.
Free from the elements, they were worn by thousands of feet over 150-plus years -- workers, shoppers, holidaymakers; men, women and children, long gone; and many, too many, First World War lads, for whom they were the last contact with home.
I don't suppose many will miss or regret the removal of the uneven old flags, but, for me, they provided a solid, physical link with our own history.
Not worth preserving, they were a sort of 'street level memorial,' of which not many remain.
To tread the same flags as the lads who fell in Flanders, in both world wars and in other conflicts was a very tangible thing that I will miss. Perhaps we should have 'saved' one.
D PRATT (Mr), Plantation Street, Accrington.
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