AS the anniversary approaches of the opening of Blackburn's "new" market 35 years ago next month, how many are aware that townsfolk might have gone shopping on the very same spot and as much as 50 years earlier if the plans of the visionary T.P. Ritzema had materialised?

For just as the new market of 1964 entailed closing its 116-year-old predecessor, demolishing the much-loved old market hall alongside the town hall and moving the whole institution across the town-centre to the site between Ainsworth Street and Penny Street, so, too, did the project dreamed up by this newspaper's founder.

And, like the eventual scheme that became the first chapter in the 1960s of the town's central redevelopment, his brainchild also called for the culverting of the River Blakewater for his new market to be built over it.

He planned to name it after King Edward VII who had died in 1910 and also to change Penny Street's name to that of the late monarch.

One marked difference between the two projects, however, was cost. Mr Ritzema worked out in 1917 that his would come to £281,000, whereas the real one of 47 years later cost £1 million.

He had, in fact, been advocating the building of a new market as early as 1912. But the outbreak in 1914 of the First World War held up his proposals. Yet, three years later, when the government called on local authorities to draw up construction schemes to create employment for the thousands of men who would return from the war, Mr Ritzema dusted off his plans for the King Edward Market - and more besides.

He also dreamt of two "garden city" housing developments in an expanded Blackburn and of a people's playground on the banks of the River Ribble - together with a rum way of financing a house-building drive nationwide.

His plan for a covered market entailed more than 15,000 square yards of space for stalls, surrounded by 71 shops, while the sites formerly occupied by the old market would be allocated for a shopping centre - which, indeed, they did become in 1967.

"With the termination of hostilities and the 'push' that all the municipalities are expected to make will come Blackburn's opportunity to ennoble the face of the centre of the town, so as to take full advantage of the growth of population and wealth which is expected to follow the development of the nations on new lines," he wrote.

Curiously, this artist's impression seems to be of an amended version of the town-centre plan which appeared in his Blackburn Weekly Telegraph in August, 1917, together with his detailed correspondence with the Mayor of the previous October, reviving the redevelopment proposals he had put before the Town Council four years before.

For, the plan in the newspaper - the weekly arm of the Northern Daily Telegraph which Ritzema had founded in 1886 - was devoid of the domed oval building shown in the drawing at the left of the proposed covered market.

This may have been the new fish and poultry market that he had envisaged being isolated on a separate site at the junction of Richmond Terrace and Victoria Street, diagonally opposite St John's Church. Also puzzling is the drawing showing the old market hall and clock tower, despite both being ostensibly doomed by the plan, remaining in the town centre - on a new site and depicted at the far right, at the junction of Penny Street and what would have been a continuance of Richmond Terrace.

But missing is any depiction of the finishing touch the newspaper chief planned for his King Edward VII Memorial Scheme - an equestrian statue of the monarch on King William Street, opposite the front of the town hall.

But on top of all this - and as president of the Blackburn Garden City and Housing League - he was also calling for a huge programme of house building.

The new homes he wanted to see them replaced by were semi-detached ones, with at least three bedrooms and a bathroom, for he "had an impression that within a generation no self-respecting man with a family would tolerate a house with only two bedrooms."

His proposals to "open up two important districts to be developed on Garden City lines" also entailed the extension of the town's tramway.

He wanted the track to branch along Whalley Old Road and go through Little Harwood and on past Eddyholes Farm and Roe Lee Park to rejoin the Wilpshire line at Brownhill.

"It would open out an important and growing district and encourage the building of a better class of property," he said.

"The site could be planned for houses for the working classes, with gardens and allotments, plots being reserved for blocks of villa residences. The whole would ultimately make an ideal garden city for those who are compelled to live in the East End of the town."

At the town's West End, he wanted the tramway to carry on to the River Ribble at Jackson's Bank, Balderstone, and four miles of its banks acquired by the council. "Whether a Garden City is ever developed on this site or not, I think the Corporation should secure the banks of the river frontage as a playground for Blackburn for all time," he stated. He wanted it laid out for cricket, football, tennis, bowls, etc. and other parts let out for camping and even a temporary hall for dining being built.

The whole of the land between Revidge Road and Mellor Brook on both sides of the new tram route he saw as being the site of another Garden City development of homes for the working classes and private villa residences.

"Blackburn would thus become, with the two tramway extensions, one of the best residential manufacturing towns in the Kingdom," he claimed.

His enthusiasm was evidently not shared by the council, but his scheme brought out an imaginative streak in others - among them a reader who wanted an underground railway to run from the town's railway station to the Hare and Hounds at Lammack with stops along the way opposite the Y.M.C.A. in Limbrick and at Four Lane Ends and the tube eventually extending to Mellor.

"You would then be able to get to a probable future garden city from the centre of Blackburn in five minutes. If the town would make the subway, the houses would soon follow," he wrote.

But where was the money to come from for such grand schemes in Blackburn and around the country?

The resolutely teetotal Mr Ritzema had a ready source of revenue - from nationalising the booze trade and then watering down drink while putting up its price immensely.

"If one half of the nett profit was earmarked for the provision of people's palaces in place of the present public houses, the housing of the workers, and smallholdings, there would be no difficulty in raising the price of beer from seven pence to one shilling per quart and doubling the price of spirits and wines, the specific gravity of beer and spirits to be considerably reduced," he maintained.

Even allowing for a drop in consumption of a third by those who did not want dearer and weaker drink, Mr Ritzema estimated the state would still have an extra £50 million a year for the sort of social purposes he suggested.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.