My usual difficulty – the identification of a building – is not, or so I thought, the problem. Very helpfully the name of the building is written on the back of what is a postcard. The author of a brief note is John Allen. The note reads: "This is a photograph of 'Old Barn', Hapton, and is, as you know, on Classic Ground. We did this late in the Autumn."

The name of the building is clear enough but the reference to it being on "Classic Ground" is not all that easy to explain unless Mr Allen means the structures depicted here are typical of farms in our area.
Similarly, I am not sure why "Autumn" is so important, but, more significantly, on examining the building it does not seem, at least superficially, to accord with the OS maps of the area which I have in my possession.

Someone has written (again on the back of the card) that the picture upon which the photo was taken dates from 1906 or 1907. Consulting a map of 1909 it appears that what I take to be the farm house (i.e. the building centre right) is further away from what I take to be farm buildings (centre left). If you look closely, in the photo there appears to be a single-storey building between the first two mentioned structures. This single storey building is absent on the map.

However, there is a possible explanation and that is that the view we see shows only part of the buildings at Old Barn. Recently, I tried to get to the site but it was a few weeks ago when the weather was very cold and, recovering from something like flu, I decided to get back into my car without undertaking a proper check. It could be that there is a large detached barn which, if the map is correct, would be situated on the land just off the photo to the right.

Mind you, if that is the case, Mr Allen's observation about the farm being typical of our area, if that is what he means, would not be correct unless the farm was a particularly large one. You can see that this farm is not a laithe farm (the more usual type; a farm house and barn in the same building). There are local examples of farm houses being totally detached, and at some distance, from their barns. Foulds House and Burwains in Briercliffe, which are among the larger farms in the township, are of this type.

I would like to know more about John Allen. All I will say here is that he was writing to a Mr Bell who shared his interest in things historical. Mr Allen refers to a recently published review of a very well-known local book, Taylor's "Lancashire Crosses" which he enclosed with the image you see before you. He added "I missed the one in the Manchester Guardian".

The building John Allen refers to as "Old Barn" is actually Old Barn Farm in Hapton but off the Burnley to Accrington Road between Bentley Wood Green and the Hapton Inn. About three-quarters of the way between these two properties another farm by the name of Horse Hill can be located. Old Barn Farm is accessed by a farm road which heads in the direction of Hapton Clough and, above that, the site of Hapton Tower.

This latter information might be useful to us. Another source informs us that Old Barn is said to have once been the home of the de la Legh family. The de la Leghs were Lords of the Manor of Hapton who succeeded to the Towneley estates when John de la Legh married the Towneley heiress, Cecilia Towneley, in the fourteenth century. Their sons, Gilbert, Richard and Lawrence appear to have used both the Towneley and de la Legh surnames though the former was eventually adopted largely because Towneley Hall became the family's main place of residence.

What we do know is that Old Barn is not all that far from what became a favourite Towneley residence, for at least some members of the family, up to the seventeenth century. I refer to Hapton Tower, the site of which is marked on the OS maps close to Tower Brook on higher land above Old Barn. It was this property, or to be more precise land near it, which is understood to have been the possible site of the medieval hamlet of Birtwistle, or Bridtwissel, first mentioned in 1302 but which was cleared when Sir John Towneley created a 2,000 acre hunting park there in the early years of the reign of King Henry VIII. To this day part of this area bears the name Lower Park and the former hunting area is remembered in the name of the council ward, Hapton with Park.

I ought to conclude that I regard this article as unfinished business. I had the opportunity to show the image published today to a friend who is interested in the history of Hapton. The result was that I was encouraged to make the photo available to residents of the village a little sooner than I might otherwise have done. If anyone has anything to add, please let me know.