Residents said demolition would destroy their close-knit community

Residents won their three-year battle to stop the bulldozers moving in to the Whitefield area of Nelson on Thursday.

They said demolition would destroy their close-knit community and one of the few surviving examples of a Victorian townscape in the UK.

The houses were saved following two public inquiries into Pendle Council's plan to impose a compulsory purchase order on the buildings.

It had said they should be knocked down because one sixth of them were below standard.

Henry Owen John, assistant regional director of English Heritage, said: "Whitefield ward has been spared some of the intrusions of the 1960s in particular and survives as an almost intact Victorian townscape.

"With the Leeds-Liverpool canal, with the mills flanking it, with the workers' housing, schools where the children were educated and places of worship, it's all there.