IT is 100 years to the day since the 1911 Census was taken.

And, as East Lancashire folk take part in the 2011 survey, the results from a century ago give an amazing insight into the lives of our ancestors.

In 1911, hill walking and rambling were the most popular working class pursuits and alcohol consumption was considered a problem.

The economy of East Lancashire was completely dominated by textiles with more than 30,000 textile workers, of which 17,000 were women.

The next biggest group was domestic servants with around 5,000 people working in the homes of the local gentry with another 4,500 working in the mining industry.

The last 30 years of the nineteenth century had witnessed a fertility decline and generally women in the area were having fewer babies than they had done in the mid-Victorian period.

Improvements in child and infant mortality were also increasingly by 1911 and they were partly due to the long-term efforts of local health officials.

Dr Andrew Gritt, director of the Institute of Local and Family History at UcLan, said: "It is too easy to see life in industrial Lancashire as being grim, poor, dirty, and tough.

"For some it undoubtedly was, but large numbers of Lancastrians lived decent, if modest, lives."

Literacy was generally high amongst local people, in excess of 85 per cent in some areas.

Dr Gritt, added: "Although this enabled self-improvement and adult education for some, the public house and the consumption of alcohol was a perceived social problem."

Dr Gritt says houses were usually small terraces and many of them still survive today which suggests that they were clearly not slums.

"The wages of textile workers were sufficient to enable many to have an annual holiday in Blackpool, and outdoor leisure pursuits such as rambling and hill walking were extremely popular amongst the working class." he added.

The 1911 Census found Blackburn was still a centre of the cotton trade producing light fabrics, mainly for the Indian market.

There were several first-class engineering firms, as well as power loom machine makers, and several breweries. Large quantities of freestone were quarried locally. The population was 133,100.

The staple trade of Burnley was also the manufacture of cotton goods, both spinning and weaving.

There were several large machine works, iron foundries and paper mills. A local abundance of coal, stone and slate added to the town's prosperity. Burnley’s population was 106,800.

The prosperity of Accrington in 1911 was also based on the spinning and weaving of cotton, and there were extensive works for printing cotton fabrics, one of which employed some 1,300 hands.

There were also large establishments for making the various machines used in manufacturing textile fabrics, as well as a brewery, collieries and quarries.

Accrington’s population was 45,000.