The date is more difficult but, as Elim Primitive Methodist Church was not opened until 1894, we know it was after then. If asked to hazard a guess, I would suggest the very early years of the 20th Century.

I intend to consider in more detail the row of houses in the near right of the picture, but before I do that, a few introductory words may be necessary. The picture is taken in Briercliffe Road very close to the site of Elim which would have been off the picture to the right.

Below the houses, right, there was Primrose Street and then a short row of back-to-back cottages before Elim Church, the Victorian version of which was a large building, at the corner of Melville Street.

Between the first row and the more recent one, in the upper middle of the picture, you can see the point where Abinger Street joins Briercliffe Road. Many will associate this street with St Andrew's Cricket and Bowling Club, but those of us of a certain age can remember Cowburn's Bros, the mineral water manufacturers, who moved to a site in the street around 1930 from premises they used to operate in Old Hall Street.

Above the row of bay fronted houses, numbers 285 to 325 Briercliffe Road, you may be able to see the gable end of some smaller properties. These looked like ordinary cottages, which indeed they had been intended to be. They were on the other side of what has since become Fleetwood Road and they were directly opposite the main, but now demolished Briercliffe Road entrance to what became the hospital. You might just be able to see part of what were the impressive entrance buildings in the picture, top left.

Readers will know Burnley General Hospital was built, in the 1870s, as the Burnley Union Workhouse. Counted among its buildings was an infirmary, but readers might not know the cottages, in Briercliffe Road, served as Burnley's first smallpox hospital. It consisted of six separate rooms for 12 urgent cases of smallpox and they were opened during a major outbreak of the disease in 1876.

Another point may be worth mentioning. You will have noticed the workhouse and smallpox hospital occupied buildings which were close to each other in Briercliffe Road. There was no accident in this. Smallpox is contagious and it was feared, in the days when the workhouse was built, many of the inmates were suffering from other contagious diseases. Both of these institutions were built where it was believed prevailing winds would carry dangerous diseases away from Burnley. It mattered little they might be blown in the direction of Briercliffe or Marsden!

Now let us look at the row of houses, right, in the picture. If you visit Briercliffe Road these days you would be forgiven for thinking the cottages have not changed. In fact there have been quite a number of changes and, when I take classes of children to sites like the one shown in the picture a lot of very fruitful historical detective work can be undertaken.

Show young children a picture like this and ask them what is different today. The first thing they will spot is the garden railings have gone. The more astute will point out all the properties were built as houses but now at least one of them is a shop. When on site others will see another house has the remains of a large shop window at the front. This is number 273 and, in the 1920s and 1930s, the building was run as a butchers by Herbert Ambler. Later, in the 1940s and 1950s Harry Haworth took over.

I remember, when I was a boy, there was a very good confectioners in this row. It was different when compared to many similar shops in that there was very limited space in which to display the bread, cakes and pies made in the building. Looking through the Commercial Directories, it must have been number 271 which, for many years was, occupied by Harold Shaw as a bakers.

Over the years a considerable number of small businesses have been operated in this terrace. We have already mentioned a confectioner (there were others) and a butcher, but additional businesses include an umbrella maker, a boot maker, grocers, a herbalist, a draper, hairdressers, a clogger and a chiropodist. Now only one shop survives, a dry cleaners, and with all these small firms supplying the needs of the locals and those who worked in the businesses around here (the immense Coronation Mill was in Abinger Street) a way of life has gone forever. We all shop at supermarkets these days and the profits they make, locally, disappear to a distant head office miles away. In the past these funds remained in town and many more of us benefited.