GEOFF CRAMBIE: Colne in reign of Queen Victoria

It’s back in time 130 years this week with a wonderful scene of Colne’s Church Street, captured on camera for all time in Queen Victoria’s reign.

The date is 1880 and here in an extremely narrow main road (Church Street was widened all along the Parish Church by nine feet, 10 years on from our photograph), we can see the ancient Fleece Inn of 1665, fronted by a myriad of stalls on a busy market day.

The Fleece Inn, a huge public house, was to survive just 25 years more from the date of our picture, being demolished in 1905 and replaced by a far more grandiose classic Edwardian Fleece Inn, which would sadly remain as an iconic Colne building for a half-century until the wholesale civic vandalism of the south side of Church Street in the mid-1950s.

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Now look to the far right of our street scene of yesteryear; here is the white-fronted building of the legendary White Horse Inn of which only four photographs are known. This venerable structure is first mentioned circa 1680 and had an enormous entrance through which the many horses and carts of the era could drive straight in through to the stables at the rear. This was a truly unique drive-in pub!

The White Horse Inn was sadly knocked to the ground in October, 1886. All that we have of this exceptional Colne Inn remaining today, is just a stone finial of superb quality and a green incised glass bottle.

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