Chorley and South Ribble History Pages

Half way along Town Lane in Whittle-le-Woods, just by a sharp right-hand bend as you ascend from Waterhouse Green to the canal bridge, is a gate flanked by two pillars made, unusually, from bricks. Not just any kind of bricks, though; these are thin, hard, blue-coloured industrial bricks. Beyond the gate is an overgrown wilderness, with wild flowers, brambles, nettles and trees stretching back to the field at the rear of the plot, but one can just see a ruined stone wall running parallel with the gate. The plot once contained a gentleman’s residence, comfortable but relatively modest - small enough to be managed by one female servant. In the last decades of the nineteenth century it was home to a landowner and businessman whose possessions and achievements were as modest as his house, but whose mark can be seen in Whittle to this day. The mysterious gate on Town Lane, flanked by brick pillars. It was once the entrance to Old Fairleigh, the home of Charles Lowe Swainson and his