JUST as the huge demolition programme that was to rip the heart out of old Blackburn got under way, amateur photographer John Eddleston got busy.

He spent the Easter of 1963 capturing its now-vanished town-centre streets and buildings with his camera.

The upshot of his project was 120 black-and-white slides that are a unique record of the town before the transformation that, over the next two decades, radically - and, some would say, detrimentally - altered its image and character.

But now the hitherto-unseen photographic archive that Mr Eddleston compiled of his home town comes into the open in a new book *- which not only comes about through an unusual chain of circumstances, but is destined to raise thousands of pounds to help East Lancashire stroke victims.

Mr Eddleston, now in his eighties and living in a retirement home in Southport, gave his collection to a young relative, Simon Allen, to help him with a dissertation he was doing at university.

In turn, they were passed to Simon's father Ernest who recently spent some time in hospital in Blackburn - where he met nursing orderly and voluntary worker Dino Christodoulos.

In chatting, Dino mentioned how he would like to give slide shows of 'Old Blackburn' to hospital patients and residents of nursing homes - if slides were available.

Ernest provided the John Eddleston collection, but, in turn, Dino talked to Ribble Valley businessman Peter Street as he recovered in hospital from a stroke of his aim to stage the slide shows. It was a conversation that led to Mr Street financing the publication of the slides in book-form - with the entire proceeds from the sales going to buy items of equipment for the B8 Stroke Rehabilitation Ward at Queen's Park Hospital, Blackburn.

Printing services were provided by John Brown who runs the Blackburn Churches in Action charity for which Dino also works and as well as doing the research for the pictures' captions, Ray Hull, of H and H Graphics, converted the slides to film to enable the printing to take place.

For younger readers the photographs will provide a fascinating tour of a vanished Blackburn they have never seen. For older ones, they will provide a nostalgic trip back in time - and perhaps a rueful reminder of architectural treasures Blackburn discarded in its rush to redevelop.

Certainly, present-day council leader, Malcolm Doherty, who has written the book's foreword, is among those who regret the demolition in 1971 of the town's elegant Thwaites Arcade (left) - a deed decried in the book as "nothing less than an act of vandalism."

*Copies of the book, 1963 Blackburn -- a proud town, are available, priced £5, from the front counter of the Lancashire Evening Telegraph's head office in High Street, Blackburn.