Culture and Community
The Darwen News published a Maudley Medley on 9 March 1878 which still resigns in popularity today:
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- 'Tween two hillsides, both bleak and barren,"
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- Lies lovely little "Dirty Darren"
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In Lancashire dialect, the name Darwen is pronounced Darren, and the locals refer to themselves as Darreners. They are generally resistant to any attempts at submerging the identity of the town within Blackburn. A motorway service area at junction 4 of the M65 motorway lies within the town, and was originally named "Blackburn Services". Following local protests it has been renamed "Blackburn with Darwen Services".
The town is the home of the Darwen Library Theatre (an extension to the library), and the TV show Hetty Wainthropp Investigates. Darwen has a few footnotes in entertainment history: its theatre (now demolished) had appearances by Charlie Chaplin, and it featured in a film by Norman Wisdom. George Formby's wife was from Darwen.
The Beatles played in Darwen on Friday 25 January 1963, at the Co-operative Hall. They headlined the "The Greatest Teenage Dance" which was commissioned by the Darwen Baptist Youth Club. Support acts included The Electones, The Mike Taylor Combo and The Mustangs with Ricky Day.
Read more about this topic: Darwen
Famous quotes containing the words culture and/or community:
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—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“Jesus would recommend you to pass the first day of the week rather otherwise than you pass it now, and to seek some other mode of bettering the morals of the community than by constraining each other to look grave on a Sunday, and to consider yourselves more virtuous in proportion to the idleness in which you pass one day in seven.”
—Frances Wright (1795–1852)