It seems to be almost certain the house you see before you was demolished in 1875. According to the information printed on the bottom of the postcard, from which the image is taken, the house was in Colne Road. However, looking at the picture, it is not clear where, on that long road, the house might have been and it does not appear there are any clues as to where the property once stood.

A word or two ought to be said about the image itself. It is clearly not a photo but, according to the Burnley Express, of February 13th, 1909, we have it that a Mr Abraham Hartley, a painter and paper hanger of Hebrew Road, made a drawing of it from the memory of an old oil painting.

There is mention of an Abraham Hartley, who was described as a shopkeeper of Peel Street, Burnley Lane, in the 1872 Commercial Directory and, nine years later, the same name appears as a painter and grocer at 76 Hebrew Road. This could be our man but I would have to admit that Peel Street, Burnley Lane, is new to me. Hebrew Road, still with us at least in part, is in Burnley Lane which, in addition to being an area of the town, is one of the old names for Colne Road.
Confusingly, Hebrew Road was, at one time, known as Th' Owd Lane (The Old Lane) which, in local dialect, is rendered T'owd Lane (corrupted to Toad Lane).

Those of you who know the present Colne Road will be aware that, though there is a hilly part of the road (near the Cannons), most of it is relatively flat. Unfortunately, this is the case in the picture: we are dealing with one of the flatter parts of Colne Road. There is, though, a clue to the location of the old building in the picture, in the mention I have already made to Hebrew Road. At the lower junction (i.e. the one nearer the canal) between Hebrew Road and Colne Road there were a number of old properties all of which, apart from the chapel, have been demolished.

Not forgetting Bank Hall, which was on the Burnley side of the canal bridge, let us mention a few of these other properties. On the right, going to Colne and also on the Burnley side of the canal bridge, there was the Old Warehouse which dated from c1796.

In the warehouse yard there were three houses, one occupied by a member of the Bridge family early in the 19th Century. On the other side of the road there was Birley's boatyard, known locally as the Dock Yard.

Above the canal bridge, and on the right, there were some houses, with a stone yard in front of them. These properties were on the canal bank and I mentioned them a few weeks ago. The stone yard was used by the surveyor of highways for road mending purposes but its local name was Store Room Yard. Historians, including myself, have previously thought the store room referred to the canal warehouse but this is not the case.

Next, continuing along what is now Colne Road, there was the plantation, which I have mentioned before in this series. The plantation was only small but, at the end of it, and directly opposite Ebenezer (Burnley Lane) Chapel, stood the house which is depicted in front of you.

It is worth pausing here for a moment because we have a description of this area, as it was, more than 160 years ago.

The writer is Mrs Anne Threlfall, of 22 Dane Street, who commented on today's picture in the Burnley Express, in 1909. "Where Hebrew Road is were birds and peacocks. We called it 'the old lane'. There was only the old row of houses, and there were narrow roads for milk carts, with hedges on both sides, until you got to New Hall Farm, at one time (owned by the) Edmondsons."

Mrs Threlfall also mentions the chapel and tells how a room in the building in the picture was used as the first school room for the early Baptists of Burnley Lane. She describes the building itself; in its later years with ivy growing up the side, a foot scraper by the door and shutters to the windows.

If you look closely at the picture, on the left, you will be able to see a horse and cart. This reminds Mrs Threlfall that General Scarlett, coming back from the Crimea, had his horse put into what was then a nearby field. The animal had been injured (part of its nose taken off) and was given the liberty of the field. The General was, also, a frequent visitor to the house because he, and Lady Scarlett, used to use it to view the preliminary work being undertaken to sink the shaft at Bank Hall Colliery. This would have been in the late 1860s.

Lastly, I do not think many of you will know that the field behind today's house was once used for band contests and the playing of cricket! The latter had to be stopped when the ball was hit into the canal! The ball itself was retrieved with the aid of a clothes prop!

So there we have it, a number of problems cleared up in the one article. If anyone knows the whereabouts of the original drawing, I would be pleased to hear from them. Could I thank the staff at Burnley Reference Library for providing me with much of the information in this article!