DEMOLITION workers entered Burnley's former Prestige factory this week and it felt akin to boarding the Marie Celeste.

The once-great flagship of industry in Burnley stood in eerie silence, wind whistling through the shattered windows of a one-time centre of quality workmanship which employed many thousands of workers over nearly six decades.

The pillars of the great art deco frontage still erect, albeit weatherworn and the traditional wood-lined boardroom as grand as ever. Equipment, desks and papers still in place, waiting for staff to return to another day's duties -- just as they were when the last employee left the top-brand kitchenware company more than three years earlier.

An era of Burnley's industrial heritage ended when the factory failed to survive the economic storm which had battered it for years.

Profits in the final months of production proved a false dawn.

On New Year's eve 1996 the death-blow was delivered when receivers were called in.

They failed to bail out the stricken vessel and within six months the entire 400 workforce had gone.

Now, the 11-acre site is set fair for a new future with the multi-million pounds development by superstore chain Sainsbury, demolition men have entered the site to clear almost all of a factory once at the forefront of Burnley's economic prosperity.

The boardroom, like the Colne Road frontage, will be preserved as a reminder for future generations, but all else, like the production lines which made Prestige and Burnley synonymous with quality are to be swept away in what is the biggest demolition contract currently being undertaken in the North West. Seventy years of industrial history will be replaced by a new vision of Burnley's commercial future, promising a major shopping, office and leisure development to link with town centre developments.

It was in the 1930s that councillors in Burnley, worried by a series of depressions in the textile industry, financed the building of a modern factory for Platers and Stampers Ltd.

But in doing they broke the law. At a time when textiles and coal mining were both in decline the council built what is thought to have been the world's first local authority advanced factory.

In an unusual move, it was financed by the rates. As a result, the council became a lawbreaker because it was found to be illegal to have invested local rate finances for such a project. But the impetuousness in acting first and arguing later paid off.

The firm provided many jobs for redundant textile workers and was later taken over by Prestige Ltd which expanded the site and went on to become Burnley's biggest exporters. Stormclouds gathered in the 1980s and reports later showed the company had shipped massive losses for years, forcing owners, tobacco giant Gallaher to pump in an extra £40 million in new share capital in 1991.

The firm was sold to a venture capital company for just £1 in 1995 after pre-tax losses topped £17 million.

Losses were cut, but the firm continued a financial haemorrhage which eventually killed it.