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Blackburn Leasing

Did You Know?

There is little evidence of prehistoric settlement in the Blakewater valley, in which Blackburn developed. Evidence of activity in the form of two urn burials has been discovered from the Bronze Age in the hills around Blackburn. In 1879, a cinerary urn was discovered at a tumulus at Revidge, north of the town.

A former mill town, textiles have been produced in Blackburn since the middle of the 13th century, when wool was woven in people's houses in the domestic system. Flemish weavers who settled in the area in the 14th century helped to develop the woollen cottage industry.

The origins of the name ‘Blackburn’ are uncertain. It may be a combination of an Old English word for bleach, together with a form of the word "burn", meaning stream, and may be associated with a bleaching process. Alternatively, the name of the town may simply mean "black burn", or "black stream".

All Hallows Spring was excavated by Antiquarians in 1654 and found to contain an inscribed stone commemorating the dedication of a temple to Serapis by Claudius Hieronymus, legate of Legio VI.

Christianity is believed to have come to Blackburn by the end of the 6th century, perhaps in 596 as there is a record of a "church of Blagbourne" in that year, or 598 AD. The town was important during the Anglo-Saxon era when the Blackburnshire Hundred came into existence as a territorial division of the kingdom of Northumbria.

Gandhi once paid a visit during his campaign to boycott British textiles, and the local workers famously showed him solidarity in his political struggles, and he stayed overnight with a local poor cotton-weaving family living in neighbouring Darwen.

Darwen Street is oldest place of settlement in town. Made a Conservation area in 1994 conservation it's Blackburn’s earliest historic centre and includes the course of a Roman road that historically ran north-wards between Manchester and Ribchester.

Opera singer Kathleen Ferrier, brought up on Lynwood Road in Blackburn after her father William was appointed head teacher of St James Primary School, was described at the time of her death, from cancer aged 41 as “the second most famous woman in the world after the Queen”.