However, when at school, I conducted a number of interviews with older people and can recall what they told me about the town during the week of Burnley Fair. With Blackpool's population bolstered by thousands from Burnley, the town was comparatively quiet. While whole streets of families enjoyed a week on the resort's sandy shores, Burnley's schools were closed, its mills, mines and foundries were no longer working and many of the shopkeepers had joined their customers – though they often opted for the slightly better accommodation found on the North Shore.

It would not be correct to assume the fair and/or a week in Blackpool was the only entertainment available to our townspeople in the holiday period. The pictures we publish today illustrate another. Burnley is surrounded by what amounts to one of Lancashire's greatest secrets, its wonderful countryside and local people were very much aware, perhaps more so than today, of what the area offered.

The more adventurous might make for the villages around Pendle or, perhaps, Wycoller but the stay-at-home with time on his hands need not travel that far. These pictures are taken at Roggerham on the Briercliffe-Worsthorne boundary just over 100 years ago. Roggerham was one of a number of very local places that attracted numerous Burnley people, often with children, for days out. Many of these destinations – Jack Moore's Monkey off Barden Lane, Castle Clough at Hapton, Delma Gardens and Catlow Bottoms in Briercliffe and Thieveley Farm in Cliviger – required quite long walks to get there, but that was part of the fun.

The attractions on offer differed from place to place. There was the famed monkey and a children's play area at Barden Lane. Castle Clough had its beautiful tree-lined walks. Thieveley had, together with the exciting climb to the old farm buildings, a play area, its magnificent views and light refreshments.

Roggerham was rather different in that, until 1905, it had the attraction of an elderly gentleman, Tattersall Wilkinson, who was one of the founders, though perhaps somewhat unofficially, of the study of local history in the Burnley area.

In fact there was little on which Mr Wilkinson did not profess to have a view – astronomy, archaeology, geology, natural history, folklore – so much so he acquired the epithet, the Sage of Roggerham.

We see him here in both of the postcards. The photos from which the cards were made were taken on the same day. One shows him surrounded by visitors at his refreshment rooms which you can see in the second picture. In the latter photo, Tattersall Wilkinson is the tall man, arms folded, standing in front of the door to the refreshment rooms which also served as his house. Notice in the first picture that, on the skyline, you can see the chimneys of Extwistle Hall, a small part of them visible in the second.

It is worth taking some time to study what is going on in these pictures because, between the two of them, you can see much of what Tattersall Wilkinson was about in the latter part of his long life. His guests had doubtless arrived at Roggerham to be given a conducted tour of the antiquities of that place. I am not sure how the animals fit into the picture but perhaps the donkey played a similar role to that of Jack Moore's Monkey.

For us, used to modern sophistications, it is odd that people should make their way to such a place as Roggerham. Those of this persuasion have to remember the pictures were taken in the different world of more than 100 years ago.

Roggerham, though, remains a favourite place for me even now. The walk round the reservoir, the remains of Old Tatty's house, the romance of Extwistle Hall, the overgrown site of the mill at Roggerham and the Roggerham Gate Inn itself, with its splendid locally-brewed beers, all conspire to make one want to return.