Locals would never have said Trafalgar Street: they always referred to the highway as Trafalgar. There was a time when newcomers to town might have thought there was a place called "t' Syke", rather than Harle Syke.

Similarly, those not born in Burnley, but aware of the Lancashire tradition of Wakes Weeks, often refer to our annual holiday week as "Burnley Wakes" or "Burnley Wakes Week" when, for many years, us locals have called the same event "Burnley Fair". I have to admit I get rather tetchy about this even though what we know as Burnley Fair grew out of the medieval "Wake of St Peter", the time of the year when our local patron saint was honoured by those who lived in what was then the village of Burnley.

I have thought twice about using the image I reproduce for you today because, this year, we have not had the visit to town of the Showman's Guild which for decades has transformed part of Burnley into a mini but very lively version of Blackpool's South Shore. All of you will be aware Fulledge Recreation Ground is undergoing restoration work which is being carried out by Lancashire County Council and the wet weather has made it impossible to use an alternative site in Towneley Park. Let us hope all the parties involved are better prepared next year.

The splendid photo before you was taken in 1906 on the cattle market in Burnley when the fair of that year was in full swing. For those of you who do not know, the cattle market occupied the site of the present magistrates' court and police station in Parker Lane. Notice the stone setts in the foreground. The ones running left to right constitute part of Parker Lane while the others gave access to the cattle market itself. Appropriately, these latter stones were almost opposite the Cattle Market Hotel.

The tall building on the extreme left is the Gaiety Theatre and one might think, at least superficially from the evidence in front of you, this was an attractive area of town. I recall the late historian Titus Thornber referring to the cattle market as "this grim area of gas works, mills and slums" and, if you look carefully, you will see there are a number of mill chimneys in evidence.

The reality was much as Titus remembered it. Just off the photo to the right was Burnley's old gas works with several cotton mills and a tannery beyond them. Ahead, there were more buildings associated with the gas works, the canal and a number of industrial buildings, including another tannery and a small boiler works just beyond. To the left there was a sizeable iron foundry, the electricity works, the sanitary depot and numerous small houses. I don't suppose the contrast between the activities being undertaken at the fair and its surroundings could have been greater.

It was in 1891 that Burnley Fair ceased to be held in the streets of the town. Originally, the fair had been held in Church Street near St Peter's, but, in the later 18th Century, as the centre of gravity of Burnley moved to St James's Street, the fair followed. The actual site was the market ground, where the road was wider and where St James's Street was joined by what was then called New Manchester Road.

The cattle market became the home of the annual fair from the 1890s though events of this kind can be dated to the site in the 1860s. Mr Thornber remembered its early days. "This was a vast area paved with stone setts and apparently of no use except for one week in the year, at Burnley Fair, when it became crammed to capacity with steam-driven roundabouts and swings and people shoulder to shoulder enjoying the side shows and nostalgic music of the steam organs."

Take a few moments to study the photo. Mr Thornber is right about the crowds – scores of capped and hatted heads disappearing in the direction of the helter-skelter in the background.

This picture also includes an interesting cross-section of Burnley residents. Notice the little girl wearing a dark shawl. She can be seen in the middle foreground and appears to be fascinated by the lady balloon-seller who has her back to us. If you look to the left, you will see a stall-holder who also has his back to us.

The stall, directly behind a cast-iron bollard, is stocked high with coconuts at 2d. each. On the right, there is another beshawled girl standing behind the rear wheel of a bike and very much aware a photo is being taken.

Back to Mr Thornber who writes: "For the rest of the year the cattle market was a desert of loneliness with grass growing over its deserted extremities beneath the canal embankment until, in the 1930s, when buses began to take over the railways, part of it found use as a bus station."

The land was first used for a fair in 1866 but little is known of the kind of fair which operated then.

We have accounts of the sale of livestock from the site as early as 1867 but the venture does not have appeared to have prospered as a cattle market. In the 1920s the sale of cattle, sheep, pigs and geese was abandoned though the sale of Irish pullets continued, in a small way, at the gas works end for some time.

Visiting the site today one would never suspect this area of Parker Lane had such an interesting, if not all that successful in some respects, history.

I can't walk along Parker Lane without thinking of the people who, by day and for most of the year, knew this area as grim and forbidding but who, for a few days in the summer, really enjoyed the "fun of the fair".