A FACTORY is not an obvious wildlife haven.

But Delta Electrical Repairs on Pendle's Lomeshaye Industrial Estate has become a home for everything from frogs to birdlife.

Instead of creating extra car parking spaces on the spare land around the building, company directors Brian and Jackie Howarth decided to create a wildlife pond.

Jackie said: "Some people thought we were mad at first but it has been a real success. We had the spare land and it was quite rough and unused. So the obvious thing would have been to make the car park bigger.

"But we have a big enough car park already and I thought it would be nice to make a pond area.

"We are next to the Lomeshaye Marsh wildlife area so we wanted to do our bit to extend it.

"We were really impressed by the marsh and that inspired us to create our own small pond. We got a lot of advice on what plants to use to help attract wildlife.

"As well as the pond, we have also planted trees and Hawthorn bushes around the perimeter and we have a large area covered with bark.

"We put that down for the frogs."

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