In the bottom left hand corner of their card they have given the description of the location of the scene as "West Gate, Burnley" when it is clear Westgate is behind the photographer.

The actual view is of Padiham Road with the beginning of Accrington Road to the left and, although we know who the makers of the card were, as the card has not been used, it is not dated. It is also worth noting that I am aware the card is not of the best quality and the makers have had to add definition after the photographer completed his work.

When the picture was taken the photographer would have been standing in the middle of the road. Though not on the picture, Trafalgar Street, with its mills and foundries, was to his left and, similarly out of the picture, was the Barracks railway station and the industrial premises of the Whittlefield area.

Together these parts of town provided employment for thousands of people making Padiham Road one of the busiest shopping areas in Burnley.
The building on the left of the picture, though it superficially appears to be in Padiham Road is actually number 1 Accrington Road and it was occupied by the once famous firm of Barlows, the chemists.

At first glance at the picture I was not sure Joseph Alexander Barlow's firm was in occupation of the building but the layout of the ground floor window and an advert for a remedy for an ailment involving teeth confirms it is.

Barlow's occupied this site for about a century and, in that time, their window display of carboys (large glass jars originally protected by a wicker casing) containing coloured liquids was admired by everyone who passed this way. The firm still occupied this site when I worked, as a student, at an educational booksellers, in Accrington Road.

I understand there is some connection (it might be somewhat tenuous) between Barlow's and a shop currently in Standish Street.

If you look at Padiham Road you will see double tram lines and the columns which supported the overhead cables which gave power to the trams. As I indicated, in a recent article, the presence of the latter tells us that any photo which shows such columns can be dated from 1901 or after.

However, you will notice that, on the photo, there is no indication trams used Accrington Road.

As the Rosegrove extension, which followed Accrington Road, was one of the first to be built (1903) after the main line was finished we can date this card to the very earliest years of the last century.

My information, for much of the remainder of the article, comes from 1914 and, from here, I will refer to the property which you can see on the right of the picture.

It is dominated, as you can see, by a large tower and by a chimney to its right as we see the picture. The tower was part of the Mitre Works which, at one time, had been a timber merchants but most of the buildings in this area had been built, not as commercial premises, but as houses for the workpeople of Trafalgar Street and nearby Whittlefield.

There were exceptions, of course, one of which was a long row of shops, only part of which can be seen, before the larger buildings of Padiham Road are approached. A number of the early buildings were single storey and two of these can be seen on the extreme right. One of these businesses was run by an R. Graham but I am afraid I have no details of this firm. Along Padiham Road, in 1914, there was a tobacconist, a milliner, a house furnisher's, a fruiterer, a newsagent, a branch of the Bank of Liverpool and a draper before Junction Street was reached and the Burnley Barracks Station, which, though much altered, is still with us.

In the background, among images that have been altered by an artist, the picture shows some of the houses which once stood in Padiham Road.
They, of course, succumbed, like a lot of property in this part of town, to the building of the motorway in the 1970s. In its construction a lot was destroyed, so much so that, perhaps sadly, we only have a little left to remind us of this part of Burnley which was, perhaps, the most representative of Victorian development.