Category: Transport

A rich American wants to buy and relocate Blackburn Cathedral across the Atlantic Ocean to the USA.

Due to recent bad publicity in Blackburn Diocese, there was speculation the cathedral could have been closed down.  This prompted interest from a billionaire American property developer with local connections.  He was already interested in building a replica of St John’s Tavern, which he used to enjoy going in as a young man, while studying at Blackburn College.  But demolishing the cathedral and relocating it stone by stone across the Atlantic Ocean would be the icing on his cake.

This unnamed property developer, who didn’t wish to reveal his name, hails from Fall River, Massachusetts.  In the 19^th century, this was the birthplace of America’s textile industry.  It attracted many workers from Blackburn, who emigrated there to work in this industry during the 19^th and early 20^th century.

Fall River was also a pioneer in American Association football and even had a team called Rovers.  They won the American Cup in 1888 and 1889 and their National Challenge Cup in 1917.  The town also had a team called Fall River Olympics, possibly as homage to Blackburn Olympic.  Its most well-known resident was Lizzie Borden, who allegedly killed both her parents with an axe!

This practice of shipping buildings from Britain across the pond is not a new concept.  Stately homes have actually been sent across by ship, with stones and bricks numbered so they could be reassembled.  Perhaps the most famous case of this kind of relocation was the situation with the old London Bridge.  Parts of this were shipped across to the USA and reassembled in a desert in Arizona.  Various stories are associated with this, saying its buyer made a mistake and thought he was buying Tower Bridge, but this has always been denied.

Shipping Blackburn Cathedral may be a bridge too far, due to its size and challenging logistics.  There is also how far down you go with its crypts and catacombs.  There has been a church on the cathedral site for over a thousand years.  Plus, an estimated 30,000 people are buried in its immediate vicinity.  Perhaps sticking to building a remake of St John’s Tavern might be a cheaper and far more realistic alternative for this American property developer.

The author also used to love going in the Tavern.  His Great Uncle Ernie was killed in the First World War.  When hostilities ended, Ernie’s widow and daughter emigrated to Fall River.

While enjoying a recent holiday in Cyprus, one thing which seems to still be around is the sight of the flag of Greece fluttering on buildings here and there.

This lovely island has been divided since 1974 into two separate entities.  Two thirds of this island, mainly in its south, comprises of the Republic of Cyprus, an EU member, populated by Greek Cypriots.  Whereas the northern third of this island is made up of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC).  A territory populated by Turkish Cypriots, but not recognised as a sovereign country anywhere, except by Turkey itself.

As we approach 50 years since Cyprus was partitioned, attitudes amongst some people on both sides seem as entrenched now as they were when Turkey invaded in 1974.  One of the main factors behind this division was many members of the Greek Cypriot population wanting union with Greece.  This situation was unacceptable to its Turkish Cypriot diaspora.  They wanted Partition rather than being part of Greece and it looks like they got what they wanted – but at a price!

That price is almost total isolation from the rest of the world, apart from Turkey.  All exports and imports to TRNC have to go through their Turkish benefactor across the Mediterranean Sea.  Calling Turkey a benefactor, apart from saving Turkish Cypriots from being massacred, is starting to wear a bit thin now as we approach 50 years since their armed intervention.

Flag flying Greek Cypriots also seem to be missing a trick here.  Turkey has encouraged mainland settlers to cross the Med to help boost TRNC’s population to try and outnumber their southern neighbours.  But this may be starting to backfire.  Turkish Cypriots tend to be secular and hold liberal views.  Whereas many of these settlers are farmers who tend to hold right-wing points of view, along with embracing a traditional religious way of life.

This may lead to a situation where Turkish Cypriots see themselves as having more in common with their southern rather than northern neighbours.  Many Cypriots lived together in peace and harmony across the island up to 1974.  There are still some places where it happens to this day.  Pyla is an example of this.  Situated inside the United Nations buffer zone separating both Cypriot territories and near Britain’s Sovereign Base Area of Dhekelia (my birthplace), Pyla has had a long tradition of cross community friendship and co-operation between its mixed Greek and Turkish Cypriot population.  It also hosts a campus of the University of Central Lancashire.

Pyla shows there is still hope for unity amongst both sets of Cypriots.  So Greek Cypriots continuing to wave the flag of a foreign country, which has no interest in them, doesn’t seem a very appropriate or helpful way of bringing these two communities together.  It’s a bit like Austrians waving the German flag.  This was done in their recent past, creating much regret.  Sadly, Germany’s most well-known leader was an Austrian.

Blackburn’s River Blakewater through the town centre became a magnet for illegal kayakers some years ago.

Many of these kayakers would try their luck following the course of Blackburn’s river as it flowed underneath our town centre.  This gave a new meaning to the term Whitewater kayaking.  It was more like Blakewater kayaking. 

To try and deter these kayakers, hundreds of gallons of seized beer was flushed down drains and into the brook.  This beer had been confiscated from some of the town’s shebeens.  These are illegal drinking clubs which are not licenced to sell alcohol products but do so anyway.  Licencing authorities are fighting an endless battle against these illegal drinking clubs.

It seems this beer was so badly made; it gave people rotgut and other ailments.  One man’s drink is another man’s poison, but in this case, it was every man’s and woman’s poison.  But for some reason this liquid was like nectar to midges which lived in the river tunnel.  For our local council it killed two birds with one stone.  Not only did it dispose of this illegal booze, it also created an explosion in the number of midges breeding in this tunnel.   It was enough to put off illegal kayakers from using this water course for their highly dangerous and unlawful sporting activities.

Unfortunately when you try to interfere with nature, not everything always goes to plan.  Due to this explosion in the midge population, it was decided a predator was needed to reduce their vast numbers.  This led to laboratory bats being introduced to feed on these tunnel midges.  Having bats in our River Blakewater tunnel also had by-products, such as their guano and a way of studying their radar.

One by-product which nobody wanted was what happened when these bats started feeding on the tunnel reared midges.  Their diet of rotgut beer affected the bats, causing them to mutate into aggressive blood sucking predators.  They started attacking kayakers passing through the tunnel, leaving grisly remains in the river.  Fortunately these didn’t last long in the water as mutant Piranha fish, also living in the river, disposed of any remains.

Due to well-known fears of this infamous fish, it wasn’t felt to be such a good idea informing the public a creature like this had somehow been introduced to the Blakewater.  It is thought Piranha fish were introduced to our town’s central river by accident.  Some tourists may have brought a few home, didn’t like them, so flushed them down their toilets.  A bit like what allegedly happened with alligators in New York City’s sewers.

Good news is kayakers seem to have been put off using Blackburn’s River Blakewater in pursuit of their sport.  A small matter of biting Midges, mutant Vampire Bats and Piranha Fish may have left them thinking they might end up the Suwannee without a paddle.

Nearly everybody from Blackburn, especially Rovers fans, will know where Ewood Aqueduct is located.  This 200 year old Grade 2 listed building carries the Leeds Liverpool Canal over both the River Darwen and appropriately named Aqueduct Road.

But what many Blackburners might not realise is the Leeds Liverpool Canal also flows over an aqueduct on the east side of town to traverse Blackburn’s other river – the Blakewater.  It’s quite understandable why this structure is not very well known.  This aqueduct looks like an ordinary wall.  You have to look over the top of it to see why it is an aqueduct.

There can also be confusion trying to find its exact location on a map.  It is next to the oldest of Blackburn’s three Whitebirk bridges, this one is now closed to traffic and only used as a footpath.  It is Bridge Number 104B, not to be confused with Bridges 104, 104A, 104AA and 104C in this neck of the woods along the cut.

Just to add even more confusion, nobody seems sure what name to give the brook which flows underneath this aqueduct and what it is called officially round here.  It certainly is known as the River Blakewater as it flows through most of Blackburn and under its town centre.  But from its source near Guide it is known as Knuzden Brook.  When it reaches Intack it becomes known as Abbott Clough.  Though maps have it still called Knuzden Brook when it reaches Whitebirk.  Eventually it becomes the River Blakewater, flowing down to Witton Park, for its confluence with the River Darwen.

From where our multi named trickle starts, to somewhere near Greenbank Police Station, it also serves as an official boundary between Blackburn and Hyndburn.  It’s looking like our smaller populated neighbour has had a good land grab here.  Spending £1 buying Whitebirk Power Station’s old site turned out be money well spent by Hyndburn Council.

As for the Whitebirk Aqueduct, it continues a Blackburn tradition of blanking out views of this little river which gave our town its name.  But you can see the river when looking down from this canal vantage point.  Access to the riverbank from Bridge 104B is difficult due to it being overgrown and across a fly-tipped rubbish strewn terrain.

Whitebirk Aqueduct is not as large or spectacular as its fellow structure at Ewood.  But it has the distinction of being older and in use before Blackburn’s better known aqueduct.  This was because the Leeds Liverpool Canal was finally completed to the west of Blackburn, years after reaching Eanam Wharf.  So we can thank the Romans – and the navvies – for giving us not just one, but two aqueducts, carrying Britain’s longest canal through Blackburn.

Blackburn Bus Station has lived up to expectations since its opening in May 2016.  Compared to the cold and windy Boulevard, our new bus station is clean and modern with real time information and helpful staff on hand.

Unfortunately there is one thing they have done which hasn’t gone down well with everybody.  This is their erection of a Hollywood style Blackburn sign on Penny Street.  What has upset people is its letter ‘n’, at the end of ‘Blackburn’, being written in lower case.  Whereas the rest of our town’s name is in upper case letters.

For those with a keen eye, letters advertising the Mall’s ‘Next’ store can be spotted high above our bus station.  Like the bus station’s Blackburn sign, their letters are also all in white.  But they share only one letter in their respective names.  This is the letter ‘n’, which both of them have in its lower case – albeit in different fonts.

Could this be a coincidence, or did their letters come in one job lot?  Or could it be their suppliers had run out of the letter ‘n’ in this sign’s font and were sent two capital ‘U’s instead?  A bit of improvisation may have been put into action here and one of these ‘U’s may have been turned upside down and used to finish off the Blackburn name.

It’s quite appropriate that our new bus station sign is just across the road from Thwaites’ closed Fleece pub.  This pub is just below another well-known sign, also belonging to Blackburn’s local brewery.  Its sign has been known to raise a few eyebrows and even turned faces red on one particular occasion.  If this pub was open its landlord would probably say to the red-faced sign designer: “We don’t serve your type in here.”

But perhaps our mysterious lower case letter ‘n’ is really a master stroke of genius from the sign designer after all.  Following so many lengthy delays in building our new bus station and subsequent transport cutbacks, what better a subject for discussion than this alternative version of the Blackburn End?

It deflects attention away from problems affecting our bus station and transport problems in general.  This gives us something unusual to moan about.  We should class ourselves lucky they didn’t send us a small ‘r’ to go with their ‘n’.  Shoved together, this sign would have attracted even more hilarity to our new bus station.

October 2016 marked the 200^th anniversary of the completion of the Leeds Liverpool Canal.  This stretch, between Blackburn and Whittle-Le-Woods, was the final piece of the jigsaw in Britain’s longest waterway.

A cut above the rest

Our old ‘cut’ has changed over the years, mostly for the better.  As a teenager in the 1970’s I first enjoyed walking along the towpath through Blackburn and beyond.   In my pocket was a copy of a Nicholson Waterways Guide to the North West.  Unfortunately our waterway was like an open sewer back then, as industrial decline had finished off its commercial usage.  It wasn’t unusual to see the odd dead dog or cat floating by, along with all sorts of dumped waste items.  But there was a silver lining to this cloud.  A burgeoning leisure industry was starting to open up to the public.  Pleasure boats were replacing commercial traffic.

We even had a marina back then, which we could do with now.  Moorgate Marina was owned by a chap called Joe Bolton and its clubhouse eventually became a nightclub.  There used to be lots of cabin cruisers moored at the marina back them, but narrow boats were a rarity.  This reflected the situation on the canal at the time.  Now the narrowboat is king, but plenty of cabin cruisers are still to be found on the canal.  And in a reverse of fortunes, it is the canal which has become the place to be in Blackburn.  Housing has been built along its meandering western route.  Also the towpath has been resurfaced in such a way as to enable walkers and cyclists the ability to enjoy using it as a thoroughfare.  Anglers also park themselves at the towpath and watch the world go by along with the one that got away.

The canal eventually arrived in Blackburn in 1810, but took a further six years for the ‘missing link’ to Johnson’s Hillock to be completed.  It actually joined what was the old southern section of the Lancaster Canal, but the Leeds & Liverpool eventually took over this stretch to Wigan and continued on to its finishing point at Liverpool itself.  Sadly, the canals fell into decline during the 19^th and 20^th centuries due to the growth of railways and road transport.  But it is ironic that things started to change following our Blackburn MP, Barbara Castle’s 1968 Transport Act.  This encouraged canals to embrace leisure purposes and became the turning point in the fortunes for many of Britain’s waterways.

Many canals which shut down have since reopened.  This was thanks to the work of enthusiasts and a change of attitude towards their leisure and environmental value from the public and powers that be.  In Blackburn and along the rest of the Leeds Liverpool Canal, our waterway continued to operate where others closed down.  200 years of ‘the cut’ helped make our town into the large industrial base it became.  Hopefully our canal will continue to serve the town and add to its amenities and rich heritage for many more years to come.