A Lancashire writer and walking guide is highlighting parts of northern history he feels are little-known and deserve greater recognition or preservation.
Ribble Valley-based Nick Burton’s leads walks and history tours, and has written books and newspaper articles about people, places and events across Lancashire, Greater Manchester and Cumbria.
This year, he took part in Pennine Way 60th anniversary events with Lancashire walkers. He has also helped develop the Two Toms Trail in east Lancashire, linked to the Pennine Way, and the Pendle Radicals paths network around Pendle and the Ribble Valley.
He also created his own long distance walk, ‘Wainwright’s Way’. It highlights lakeland writer Alfred Wainwright’s life, from Blackburn to Cumbria, and Nick wrote a book about it, published by Cicerone.
Another project was developing the Two Toms Trail linking Whalley, Colne and the Pennine Way near Earby. It celebrates Whalley’s Tom Stephenson, creator of the long-distance Pennine Way, and the Rev Thomas A Leonard, a Victorian churchman in Colne who pioneered affordable outdoor holidays, the Holiday Fellowship. Today it is called HF Holidays.
In other activity, Nick was involved with the Pendle Radicals project, creating a network of history walks and guides around Pendle Hill. This highlights Lancashire non-conformists, visionaries, radical thinkers and people’s movements.
Today, he lives in Clitheroe but he originally grew up in Manchester then Bolton. He studied at Manchester University and now works in outdoor activities including cycling in Blackburn. In the past, he has worked for a national park and various councils.
Pennine Way
This year, 2025, Nick took part in Pennine Way 60th anniversary events including at Malham in the Yorkshire Dales. The anniversary was important but Nick is also aware of changing tastes in outdoor activity and walking, and the reduction of simple, cheap accommodation in some rural areas.
He said: “The Pennine Way, officially launched in 1965, was very popular through the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, but today, less people seem to walk it. And much of the network of simple walkers’ accommodation which supported it has gone. In particular, many youth hostels and basic B&Bs along the route have closed.
“As a boy, I stayed in hostels with my parents. It was cheap accommodation. But there’s now a gap between basic camping and high-end accommodation. In the Lakes, North Wales and Peak District, you can still walk from hostel to hostel. But many have shut elsewhere, like in the Yorkshire Dales and southern Scotland. I walked from Hadrian’s Wall to Edinburgh but there were no hostels. The bunkhouse accommodation there was not aimed at backpacking walkers – it typically cost about £100 a night with hot tubs and flat-screen TVs.
“Here in Lancashire, Slaidburn Hostel has shut. There’s no simple accommodation in the Forest of Bowland, unless you camp, which is tricky. A lot of camp-sites shut around the Covid pandemic never to reopen, and you’re not supposed to unofficially ‘wild camp’.”
Wainwright and Lancashire
Blackburn is the hometown of celebrated lakeland writer Alfred Wainwright. And the importance of Lancashire to Wainwright is one of Nick’s interests.
He said: “Wainwright is associated with the Lakes but never forgot his Lancashire roots. He spent 34 years in Blackburn and east Lancashire shaped his life in many ways. The mill towns and surrounding countryside all influenced him. Blackburn Rovers was another love. He watched matches at Ewood Park regularly and founded the supporters’ club.”
Nick’s Wainwright’s Way book follows a route from Blackburn to Cumbria with old illustrations from Wainwright’s Lancashire sketchbooks.
Northern TV and ‘disappearing Manchester’
Nick’s other projects include guided walks about ‘disappearing Manchester’, northern TV, housing estates, workingmen’s clubs and football.
He said: “My pipe dream is to set up a museum dedicated to this. From the 1960s to the ’80s, northern stories and actors dominated our screens. Actors like Albert Finney, films like Taste of Honey and Saturday Night And Sunday Morning. Writers like Shelagh Delaney, Alan Bennett and Jim Allen. TV’s Play For Today and Tony Warren’s Coronation Street. Companies like Granada TV. I’d like an archive of all the great northern actors.”
Regarding ‘Disappearing Manchester’, he said: “I’ve been devising walks charting the stories and buildings of the post-war city through the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. Many aspects of that era have gone. I need to capture it before it’s gone completely.
“That era was the heyday of regional TV, cabaret clubs, and the Manchester United of the Busby Babes and George Best. In music, there was one week in 1965 when the top-three American chart hits were by Manchester artists – Freddie and The Dreamers, Herman’s Hermits and Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders.
“My dad, Roy Burton, was a steward in various clubs. He used to tell stories about serving The Beatles or when the Kray twins came north. Today, Manchester’s grand Victorian buildings may remain but many post-war buildings like workingmen’s clubs have been swept away.
“I was brought up in workingmen’s clubs including Bolton and Farnworth. My dad worked at the Northern Sporting Club in Harpurhey and later St Gregory’s in Farnworth, where they filmed Peter Kay’s Phoenix Nights. I was in it!”
Aspects of the Manchester United Munich air disaster are the focus of other guided walks. Nick said: “Some Munich victims are less known now, almost forgotten perhaps? People like Willie Sartinoff, who was Matt Busby’s friend, and sports reporter Henry Rose of the Daily Express. There are several graves of Munich victims in Manchester’s Southern Cemetery. Also there are the graves of artist LS Lowry and Tony Wilson of Factory Records and Granada TV.”
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