Blackburn (recorded in the Domesday Book as Blacheburne) is a city in north-west England, in central Lancashire. From a small village settled by Flemish weavers in the 14th century (although a settlement on the site predates the Norman conquest of 1066), Blackburn grew to be the cotton-weaving capital of the world in the 19th century, partly thanks to James Hargreaves, a Blackburn weaver himself, who invented the spinning jenny in 1764 - though his fellow weavers, recognising the threat to their livelihood, smashed the machine and drove Hargreaves from the town.
Blackburn rapidly developed after 1850, the town-hall, exchange, and other buildings being built at the end of the 19th century, and Blackburn was elevated to City status in 1926. It has a free grammar-school, founded by Queen Elizabeth in 1557 and had a free school for girls, founded in 1765.
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