The area of Waterside [“Wapping” means “by the water”], depicted in this old photo of the Robin Hood Inn, was known as Damside.

It featured crammed in “back-to-backs” houses.

These included the notorious Bank North & South Terraces, known by ‘Watersiders’ as ‘The Landings’.

These were located on the right at the top of Bank Street, near Colne Lane, [now a cobbled footpath].

Bank Street can be seen in the picture to the right of the Robin Hood Inn, above St. Helen’s Street.

Notice the horse-drawn baker’s van of Luke Lund in front of the Pub as well as a prominent gas street lamp.

Such street lights were first introduced into Waterside and Colne in 1840.

Close by, at the junction of Bank Street and St. Helens Street was situated a “Dandy Shop” with a room upstairs, accessed by an outside flight of steps.

It had good natural light where a worker weaved cloth on a loom while his family lived downstairs.

Most of Damside, apart from the Lord Rodney Pub, was demolished in the 1930s along with St. Helen’s Mill.

Another old photo, included with this article, is of Damside in 1900, looking from the top of Waterside Road/Colne Lane down the cobbled alley towards Haslam's Mill, the only 5 storeyed mill left in Colne.

Famous people were born in humble circumstances in Waterside: William Pickles Hartley, the national jam producer, was born in 1846 at No.8 Damside [near the present playground].

His relatives ran a grocer’s shop in Damside. He only started making jam to sell in the shop, at the age of 10, when he picked wild rhubarb from nearby St.

Helen’s Field. After running a business in Colne, he went on to establish the world’s largest jam factory in Aintree, Liverpool.

Tom Shaw was born in a worker’s terraced cottage at No.6 Waterside Road - the house can be seen in the picture on the right below the Inn.

He was born in 1872, a son of a coal miner, and worked as a weaver at nearby Haslam’s Mill [Spring Gardens Mill], where he became a Trade Union Leader at the age of 21 and, later, Secretary of the Colne Weavers’ Association.

Tom taught himself French and German and was appointed Secretary to the International Congress of Textile Workers.

He was elected MP for Preston in 1918 and served as Secretary for War in the Government and the Cabinet in 1922.

Meanwhile, Peter Birtwistle, born in 1842 at No.32 Lenches Road, over Waterside Bridge, made his fortune in Canada as a jeweller and left a large bequest to the Borough of Colne, which established Trust Homes and Centre.

Edmondson Spencer, a world famous scientist, was born in 1885, at No.30 Lenches Road, where his mother ran a corner shop which served the now demolished ‘tree’ streets on the left hand side of Lenches Road.