WORKMEN have begun laying thousands of fresh paving stones as work progresses on Blackburn’s new Cathedral Quarter.

These new images show Queen Victoria looking over dozens of crates of soon-to-be-laid stones, which are being forklifted over to the Railway Road to form new pavements and a station approach.

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Contractors have also begun casting retaining walls around the taxi rank and turning circle, and laid a zebra crossing, with the work surrounding the main site expected to last about eight weeks.

Meanwhile, workmen inside the fence are busy concreting the foundations of the 60-bed Premier Inn and 32,000 square foot office block.

Workmen on the site said the work was ‘going well and on schedule’.

The £33million development will include a new Clergy Court and Cloister Garden, including a Covent Garden-style ‘piazza’, surrounded by two office blocks and Blackburn’s first full-scale town centre hotel for generations, complete with a restaurant on the ground floor.

They will be served by a new £5million bus station on the old market site and refurbished rail gateway with a new public transport interchange outside the train hub linking the two.

Hopes are high a flagship retailer will take the top half of the old market site, creating a high-quality shopping complex leading down to The Mall. Graham Pilkington, of Maple Grove Developments, which is leading the project alongside Blackburn with Darwen Council and Blackburn Cathedral, said: “We are very excited with the progress that is now being made on site.”

He said the construction of the steel frame for the office and hotel building should be completed by Christmas, which will give people a ‘real sense of the space that is being created’.

Maureen Bateson, the council’s cabinet member for regeneration, said: “There’s obviously some disruption caused by the work but I think people can now see the beginnings of how the development might look. We are getting some very positive comments.”