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Burnley Express
  • 06/02/2025
Bygone Burnley: Padiham, with historian Roger Frost MBE
Transcript
00:00Today we're in Paddyham and the whole of this will be about the history of Paddyham.
00:07It starts in about the late 7th century. Paddyham is what is called an Ingham town
00:18because the word Ingham appears in the title. It was Paddingham before.
00:26Now the Ingham indicates the Anglo-Saxon origins of the place
00:33and Burnley doesn't have any of the early names or parts of its name
00:42which make sense in terms of what historic era.
00:47You can see that Paddyham is late 7th, early 8th century, probably older than Burnley
00:56but not much older than Burnley and it's the name that tells you.
01:01The town still retains its ancient road system, at least in part.
01:06The main road and Mill Lane are still as they were following the same route.
01:13In a quiet spot behind the town hall, which you can see in the picture,
01:19it is a 20th century building designed by a famous Bolton firm of architects
01:27who were specialised in building town halls and when the 20th century society came to Burnley
01:34and wanted a civic trust to take them round the town and show them their 20th century buildings,
01:41this was one of three that they definitely wanted to see.
01:46It was built just before the Second World War by Paddyham Urban District Council.
01:53It was a big opportunity for them to replace old offices in the centre of town.
02:03One of these was on Mill Lane, which we will see in the programme.
02:08They took the opportunity to build something special for an urban district.
02:14You don't normally get a town hall as ornate and as big as this in an urban district
02:24or even in a borough council.
02:27But Paddyham has got this town hall and it's full of great facilities.
02:31It's got a wonderful ballroom. The interior still contains the council chamber.
02:38There are offices for various organisations.
02:41The very substantial organisation, Paddyham Archives, are based here.
02:48What they don't know about Paddyham is not worth knowing.
02:52We're sitting in front of the Free Gardeners book.
02:58The Free Gardeners is a name that will be familiar to everybody in Paddyham.
03:05You might like to know that the Free Gardeners was once an organisation
03:10which provided assistance to working class people.
03:16Whenever a member of the family became ill or when someone died,
03:21you'd pay a few pence a week into the Free Gardeners
03:25and then they would pay for the funeral or pay a doctor's bill.
03:31Of course, every town had Free Gardeners.
03:35It was rather like the Freemasons but at a lower level.
03:41The Freemasons provided assistance to members who were ill, but the Free Gardeners did too.
03:49Here in Paddyham, the Free Gardeners was only one of many organisations
03:56that provided this service to working class people.
04:02Opposite the Free Gardeners is another interesting building in Paddyham.
04:09This is the old police station which was built in the 1840s.
04:14In those days, police was under the control, not of the county council
04:20because that wasn't founded until the 1890s, but under the county authorities.
04:28This area was in the 100 of Blackburn and we were in the higher 100 which was based on Burnley.
04:37So the police was run from Burnley, like it is today, but for the old 100 which was a division of a county.
04:48St Leonard's Parish Church, its origins lie in the 15th century,
04:54so although it looks to be Victorian, which the building is, it was rebuilt in the 1860s,
05:02and it really goes back for almost 500 years now.
05:07Not as old as St Peter's in Burnley, and it's not as well known as St Peter's in Burnley,
05:15but the building, although it's only 150 years or thereabouts, maybe a little bit more now,
05:24it's a very fine building and it's a very good building in the context of Paddyham itself.
05:31It was the very central building of 15th and 16th century Paddyham.
05:39One of the features of Paddyham is that the town has still got a large part of the medieval street plan,
05:47which was certainly in existence in the 15th century and 16th centuries.
05:53How far it goes back I'm not entirely sure, but we're on Mill Street here,
05:59and in the background there used to stand Paddyham's Corn Mill, which you've got pictures of,
06:07although you can't see the building from here.
06:10There was Paddyham's original school, behind us is the remains of one of the two cinemas in Paddyham.
06:20So this is a pretty historic street and you'll notice the stone sets.
06:26These are sandstone sets like most of the stone sets in Burnley were,
06:32although a few in Burnley were made of granite.

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