WE recently featured a photograph in Looking Back of the Beechwood on Livesey Branch Road in Blackburn taken in 1969.
This prompted local historian Barbara Riding to get in touch regarding the original Beechwood House which had stood on the same site and had links to one of the town’s most prestigious families.
Dating back to the 1800s, Beechwood House was built for George Whiteley, whose father together with Joseph Eccles, built and ran Albion Cotton Mill near Ewood.
George Whiteley and his brother Herbert were more interested in politics than cotton. They were both mayors of Blackburn in 1884 and 1894 and Members of Parliament for Stockport and Ashton-under- Lyne.