Forgotten photographs taken from historic Burnley Express archives can now be viewed online

Burnley Civic Trust has launched a new website showcasing fascinating images of Burnley's past.
Children of Prestige Limited employees gather outside the Cattle Market/bus station on December 30th, 1966, ready for a day trip to Belle Vue Circus.Children of Prestige Limited employees gather outside the Cattle Market/bus station on December 30th, 1966, ready for a day trip to Belle Vue Circus.
Children of Prestige Limited employees gather outside the Cattle Market/bus station on December 30th, 1966, ready for a day trip to Belle Vue Circus.

The ‘Burnley Civic Trust Heritage Image Collection’, which features photographs taken from Burnley Express archives, has been made available online thanks to a National Lottery grant of £32,400.

The grant was awarded in November and since then a group of volunteers have been beavering away digitising negatives and transcribing articles from the 1960s and 70s Burnley Express newspaper films

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The collection can be viewed at www.bcthic.org and people are invited to the Civic Trust's image archive rooms (at the rear of Burnley Town Hall) on Sunday from 1pm to 3pm to see the extent of the archive, try out the website and meet and ask questions of volunteers.

Free parking is available on the Town Hall car park. An exhibition board showing some of the images will also be on display in Burnley Market Hall.

The Burnley Express archive was gifted to the Civic Trust by Johnston Press in 2017 with a bespoke website created and a start made on making the first of thousands of images of Burnley and surrounding districts available to search and view.

The galleries that can now be ‘browsed’ are Buildings, Events, Industry, Local Government, Organisations, People, Sport, and Transport.

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Burnley Civic Trust is encouraging the public to get involved in the project.

This can be done by contacting the archive group via the website with comments, using the Facebook link on the website, contacting the archive group at [email protected] or becoming a volunteer and helping to digitise images and their stories.

Volunteers will discover first hand a wealth of interesting images and stories about life in Burnley and will learn new skills for which training and support will be provided in a friendly atmosphere.

There will also be opportunities to carry out further research into background stories to the images.