JUST about everyone living in Darwen over the age of, say, 40, has an association with the textile industry.

I certainly have. My parents and my wife's parents all worked for a spell among the clattering looms and spindles.

It was a different world in the mills. The noise was unbelievable.

It was incessant, often round-the-clock. You couldn't talk; you couldn't hear anything, but the non-stop hammering.

Many folk went into the industry as children, and I remember my uncle telling me how he used to run four looms as a 12-year-old to earn a few shillings to help his widowed mother hold her young family together.

Before the Great War there were nearly 70 mills in operation in Darwen.

There were 37,000 looms and spinning factories, such as the giant India Mill, contained some 270,000 spindles.

King Cotton, noisy and grimy, ruled in Darwen at that time, as indeed it did in most of Lancashire.

Sadly it was all downhill from then on. After the Second World War our ravaged country badly needed to earn American dollars and the Government coined the slogan: Britain's Bread Hangs By Lancashire's Thread, after a brief boom.

But the textile industry was soon looking at another steady decline.

Forty Darwen mills had gone by the late 30s and further closures in the 50s, and then in the 60s and 70s, signalled the end.

India Mill had stopped production by 1992 and I don't think anything is now left, apart from Harvest and Anchor mills.

Many of the factories have been demolished and most of the surviving great houses built by the cotton dynasties are either nursing homes, flats or hotels.

Another nail was tapped gently into the coffin of a once-thriving industry the other day when the 130-year-old North Lancashire Textile Management Association met in Darwen for its final dinner before disbanding.

Dogged by the collapse of mainstream spinning and weaving, and beset by the secrecy that surrounds our remaining high-tech firms, they had decided to call it a day.

They were founded for what they used to call "mutual improvement" with the free exchange of technical knowledge between men who believed in progress.

Few cared more about progress, about advancing technology and all-round "betterment" than the members of the mill managers' associations.

Industrial secrecy killed the idea of mutual improvement.

When the industry went high-tech, speakers had to admit that they couldn't talk about what they were doing.

They couldn't even talk about what they made. "All we can do is tell you about health and safety," they used to say.

"It was pathetic," one veteran told me.

Their last treasurer was Gordon Thomson, a colourful character who started work at 14 as a wartime weaver at Progress Mill, Kirkham, and went on to manage and own Albert Mill in Lower Darwen. David Frankland was also there.

He used to work at Harvest Mill before heading off to Africa.

They and their colleagues looked back sadly on the end of a memorable era as they drank a final toast: "King Cotton!"