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From Linen to Suburbia – A History of Clayton-le-Woods

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Local government is a complicated thing. We have layers of County Councils, Borough Councils and Parish Councils, all with different voting boundaries and electoral cycles. Sometimes the system seems purposely devised to prevent us from keeping track of who is responsible for the bewildering kaleidoscope of wheelie bins, for failing to mend potholes and for avidly fining us when we stray into bus lanes. Life was simpler in olden times. Counties were divided into Hundreds and Hundreds into Townships, whose boundaries had been fixed by the Saxons. The Lord of the Manor held sway, and such local government as existed was carried out by local worthies through the Parish Vestry, the Poor Law Commission and the Magistrates Court. Thus, Clayton-le-Woods was a Township in the Hundred of Leylandshire, in the County of Lancashire. In this article, we will trace the history of this little township from a rural backwater to a traffic-filled dormitory town. Clayton-le-Woods: Facts and Figures ...
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‘Our Little Hamlet Known as Gregson Lane’ (or, Don't Go Out, There's a Boggart About)

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  Our Little Hamlet Known as Gregson Lane (Song) In November 2024, a musical play will be performed in Gregson Lane Community Centre. It has been written by Graham and Bernadette Dixon, who make up the folk duo Trouble At Mill , and for 36 years have run Gregson Lane Folk Club, and also by Veronica Redmond. The play is based around some of Trouble At Mill's songs, which have a local flavour, and tells the history of Gregson Lane. It is a community project; local residents will take on roles and will sing the songs. As a regular at the Folk Club, I have a small part in the play, and to complement the production I have put together my own brief history of the ‘Little Hamlet known as Gregson Lane’. Gregson Lane is situated at the eastern boundary of the former Township of Walton-le-Dale, where it meets the Parish of Brindle. Today it is a village that forms half of the ward of Gregson Lane and Coupe Green, in the sprawling borough of South Ribble, but up until the middle of t...
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Victorian Chorley

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Sometimes, things happen to us without us really noticing. How often have we looked at our house and garden and decided that they are clean and tidy, only to realise a week or so later that our rooms are covered in dust and our flowerbeds full of weeds? Things can happen unnoticed on a global scale as well; consider the rise of information technology and the internet, or the onset of climate change. Both have huge implications for humankind, but have apparently just appeared and grown in significance in an unchecked, unplanned way. Something as far reaching came about in the first half of the nineteenth century, when the industrial revolution transformed first Britain, then the rest of the world. Over the course of fifty years or so, the population of the UK massively increased, and at the same time, the majority of people found themselves living in towns and cities rather than rural areas, and working in factories rather than agriculture. This enormous demographic change occurr...
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