Burnley

“I’ll tell you now and I’ll tell you firmly, I don’t never want to go to Burnley.” In John Cooper Clarke’s parody of Elvis Costello’s (I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea, I trust he is being ironic. He’s a Lancastrian, after all, and this Lancashire town once identified as the powerhouse of Cottonia – as the historian Douglas Farnie dubbed the textile processing and manufacturing region that grew up around Manchester. By the end of the 19th century, Burnley claimed to be the “weaving capital of the world”. At the peak of output just before the first world war, around 100,000 looms (about one for each resident) were clattering in the town producing millions of miles of cloth.

I live 10 miles from Burnley but, with Pendle Hill blocking the way, don’t go as often as I could – and should. On my first trip, the town seemed lost. It was me. I took a wrong turn and found myself amid traffic, failing to find the centre, being blocked from accessing a river gully, and wondering at a large modernist redbrick building that reminded me of crematoriums and, by its art deco straight lines, Liverpool’s old Pools building. Apparently, Prestige Park was built in 1937 as a countermeasure against the decline of the cotton industry, which had shifted to Japan and India in the interwar period. It housed a factory producing pressure cookers and Ewbank carpet sweepers – the futuristic gizmos of another era. The architects, Wallis, Gilbert and Partners, considered jazz age giants, also built the Hoover Factory in Perivale, London, and the Firestone factory in Brentford (demolished in 1980). I had a decent curry and a craft beer at the Bridge Bier Huis, but they weren’t a raison d’être. Burnley seemed to be hiding.

On a second day trip, I found imposing buildings that hinted at the industrious heyday: the town hall, Carnegie library, Mechanics theatre, Newtown Mill. They seemed somewhat stranded, with car parks and wide roads cutting deep into the civic heart. Plaques commemorated 327 men and boys killed working in local coalmines (Garney, James, 12; Eddleston, John Richard, nine … ) and the first meeting of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality in 1971 – Burnley was the birthplace of gay civil rights in the UK. The 60s-style shopping area segued into streets of elegant sandstone buildings; many of the palazzos were by William Waddington, a local architect.

A dark, satanic supermarket greedily overlooks the civic heart. Now it’s food that’s spun, woven, dyed and bleached. A staircase behind took me on to the Leeds-Liverpool canal, which was clogged with weeds but where the embanked towpath along a section called the Straight Mile allowed me to take in a panorama of old wharves, former mill complexes and lots of new-build. The biggest structure is football stadium Turf Moor, which occupies one of the town’s commons, but much of central Burnley is a patchwork of industrial estates. The economy is sustained by aerospace, food processing, door and window design, stairlifts and mobility scooters, recording studio mixing consoles, distribution and logistics, and brewing. Christmas office parties must be wild.

UCLan (University of Central Lancashire), formerly Preston poly, is smartening up several crumbling gritstone buildings. As well as amelioration, there is curated memorialisation, at the cosy Weavers’ Triangle museum, at Oak Mount Mill (with its working steam engine) and, a little way out of town, at Queen Street Mill. But the most evocative piece of heritage is Burnley Wharf, a place of dank silence and cold shadows waiting for the return of the last coal barge that chugged out in 1964, or, as is more probable, for regeneration.

Things to do: Weavers’ Triangle, Towneley Hall (conservation work in progress); Singing Ringing Tree