Boat Horse Lane - a forgotten alleyway, but once the track used by barge horses which left their boats at one end of the Gannow Tunnel and re-joined them at the other.

From an article by Richard Catlow:
Canal fever had come to Britain, and there was talk of a great trans-Pennine canal, linking the burgeoning industrial towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire. In 1768 James Brindley, the man who built the famous Bridgewater Canal, surveyed a route from Liverpool to Leeds, after a preliminary survey by the Halifax engineer, John Longbottom. On December 18th that year at a meeting at the Bull Inn, Burnley - now the offices of the Burnley Express - it was decided to promote a Parliamentary Bill for the building of the canal, and to raise more than £250,000.

In 1770 work began amid brass band fanfares and junketing. But seven years later, with only sections at the Leeds and Liverpool ends completed, work had come to a halt, all the money having been spent. Work began again in 1790, but it was not until 1800 that the first boats arrived. It was another 10 years before the canal was finally complete, at a cost of £1,200,000. It's hard to image, looking at the dark unmoving waters of the canal today, that it was once the scene of frantic activity. Gangs of navvies sweated to dig its bed or excavate tunnels. Later teams of toiling horses pulled barges laden with coal and bales of cotton. The canal has done its work, turning Burnley from a rural hamlet to a thriving industrial town. Now it is left to the pleasure boaters and the birds.

But a surprising number of relics from its golden heyday still survive, often rusting in peace or hidden in a tangle of weeds. It's these little things that help make a walk on the canal today such a pleasure. Iron mooring rings, painted milestones and the hump-backed, white painted bridges, with their individual number plates. Much bigger, but almost unknown, is Gannow House, built in 1797 for Samuel Fletcher, the canal engineer. Many of the bridges still have revolving wooden posts to stop the towing ropes from fraying on the sharp stonework. The one at Finsley Gate has obviously been missing for many years, for grooves have been scored deep into the stones of the bridge. An old crane near Manchester Road, overgrown loading chutes near Yorkshire Street, pieces of ironwork that stem to serve no obvious purpose - they all form part of the fascinating bric-a-brac that give Burnley's forgotten highway much of its charm. There are signs that public interest has been aroused. It seems more a question of when, rather than if, the canal gets a facelift. It would be a pity if some of the little things were to be swept out of the way in some unimaginative improvement scheme. They've been there 200 years. Let's leave them for the future.