page_title: Blackburn
section_title: Town Hall
hierarchical_section_title: Blackburn / Landmarks / Town Hall
context_page_description: Blackburn is a large industrial town located in Lancashire, England, north of the West Pennine Moors on the southern edge of the Ribble Valley, 8 miles east of Preston and 20.9 miles NNW of Manchester. Blackburn is bounded to the south by Darwen, with which it forms the unitary authority of Blackburn with Darwen; Blackburn is its administrative centre.
  At the 2001 census, Blackburn had a population of 105,085, whilst the wider borough of Blackburn with Darwen had a population of 148,850. Blackburn had a population of 117,963 in 2011.
  A former mill town, textiles have been produced in Blackburn since the middle of the 13th century, when wool was woven in people's houses in the domestic system. Flemish weavers who settled in the area in the 14th century helped to develop the woollen cottage industry. The most rapid period of growth and development in Blackburn's history coincided with the industrialisation and expansion of textile manufacturing.
  Blackburn's textile sector fell into decline from the mid-20th century and subsequently faced similar challenges to other post-industrial northern towns, including deindustrialisation, economic deprivation and housing problems.
context_section_description: The construction of Blackburn's original, Italian renaissance style Town Hall was completed in 1856 at a cost of £35,000, equivalent to about £1.5 million as at 2008. The architect was James Paterson and the contractors were Richard Hacking and William Stones. It originally housed a police station with 18 cells, a large assembly room, and a council chamber. A tower block extension was constructed in 1969 at a cost of £650,000, equal to about £6.6 million as at 2008. The tower block is not strictly an extension to the earlier building: the two buildings are connected only by an elevated, enclosed footbridge. The tower block was 198 feet (60 m) high and the top was 545 feet (166 m) 9 inches (23 cm) above sea-level when built, although it has since been re-clad and these figures may have altered slightly. The two buildings are known locally as the New Town Hall and Old Town Hall respectively.
caption: The Italianate 19th-century Old Town Hall and its 1960s counterpart—the reclad New Town Hall
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