‘Our Little Hamlet Known as Gregson Lane’ (or, Don't Go Out, There's a Boggart About)
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 the nineteenth century, it did not even merit the status of a hamlet. It was simply a road, that left the Blackburn to Walton Cop Turnpike (now the A675) at Higher Walton, and ran roughly parallel to the turnpike through flat, sparsely populated countryside, that was made up of small, thickly hedged fields, country lanes and family-run farms. The only settlement of any size on the road was a little cluster of buildings named Pickering Fold, that included an old dwelling known today as Arrowsmith House, of which more later. The nearest inns were to the north on the turnpike road, and the nearest smithy a mile away in Brindle.
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| Pickering Fold, with Arrowsmith House in the foreground |
Farming, as in much of the upland areas of Lancashire, was mainly pastoral - sheep and cattle. This was neither labour-intensive nor very remunerative, and farming families supplemented their income by textile production. Prior to the mid-eighteenth century they produced linens and fustians (a mix of linen and cotton). Both spinning and weaving were done at home, with the whole family involved. This tradition was a key factor in South Lancashire, including the Gregson Lane area, becoming the centre of the cotton industry in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Treachery at the Blue Anchor – The Martyrdom of Edmund Arrowsmith
Life along Gregson Lane carried on unchanged for centuries. People worked on the farms, went to church and visited the inns. But the area had a significant proportion of Catholics. In the seventeenth century, Catholicism was a forbidden religion. The Act of Supremacy, passed in 1559, the first year of the reign of Elizabeth I, made the monarch the ‘Supreme Governor’ of the Church of England, while the Act of Uniformity revised the Book of Common Prayer in an attempt to make it more acceptable to Catholics, and to encourage them to join the Anglican Church. At the same time, the Recusancy Laws were brought in. A recusant was an individual who refused to attend Church of England services, and recusancy was punishable by a fine. Also, attempts to reintroduce Catholicism from abroad were regarded as treasonable acts, punishable by death. The bulk of the population of England accepted the compromise between Protestantism and Catholicism that Elizabeth’s laws and the Book of Common Prayer represented. Many Catholics became ‘Church Papists’, attending C of E services while privately maintaining their beliefs. But Catholicism did not disappear entirely. Recusancy prevailed in parts of the country throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and was particularly strong in South and West Lancashire – including the area around Gregson Lane.
Recusants secretly attended Mass administered by ‘seminary priests’ who were trained and ordained in Europe and made clandestine returns to England. These priests were sustained and concealed by English supporters and ministered to their flocks in the face of capture and execution if discovered by the authorities. One such was Brian Arrowsmith, who was born in Haydock in 1585, the son of a yeoman farmer who had come up against the local authorities as a recusant. Brian studied for the priesthood at the English College at Douai, in France, with a view to returning to England as a seminary priest, and adopted his confirmation name of Edmund. He will have been well aware that between 1577 and 1605, the year he entered the college, no fewer than 125 English priests trained at Douai had been martyred. Edmund was ordained in 1612, and returned to England in 1613, settling in Brindle.
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| Edmund Arrowsmith, 1585-1628 |
Catholic priests, like secret agents, lived double lives. Edmund took false names (Rigby and Bradshaw, among others), and an occupation that allowed him to merge into the local community (it has been suggested that he acted as a country doctor). We do not know exactly where he lived, but he employed a relative as a servant and assistant.
There were few Catholic gentry in the Brindle area, so Edmund ministered to the common people, travelling around holding clandestine Masses in recusants’ houses, often at night. Among other places, he is believed to have offered Mass at Salmesbury, Withnell, Wheelton, Clayton Green – and at the house on Gregson Lane that now bears his name. He also reputedly carried out baptisms at St Helen’s Well, near Whittle-le-Woods. He was not the only priest in the area, and would meet with others at the Blue Anchor Inn (which once stood on the future A675 near Hoghton), whose owners, the Holden family, were Catholics.
Edmund was arrested in 1622, and sent to Chester for interrogation. However, at the time, King James I was trying to negotiate the marriage of his son, the future Charles I, to the Catholic Princess Maria Anna of Spain, hoping to form a political alliance. The persecution of Catholic priests would not have helped the negotiations, and Edmund and others were quietly released. He returned to his ministry, but a few years later, the political climate changed.
Edmund’s second arrest in 1628 came about, ironically, through a dispute with the Holden family of the Blue Anchor Inn. The son of the innkeeper wanted to marry a Protestant cousin, who sought to become a Catholic. Edmund agreed to the marriage, but required the couple to wait for a dispensation from Rome. Angered by this, the son – and his mother – decided to reveal Edmund to the authorities, and wrote to the local Justice of the Peace, Captain Rawsthorn, informing him that a priest frequented the inn, giving details of when he would be there. Rawsthorn, though a Puritan, was a friend of Holden the landlord of the Blue Anchor and warned him that he would be coming after Edmund – if Edmund was caught at the inn, Holden would have been charged with harbouring a priest, a possibility which his wife and son had apparently not considered.
The story has it that Edmund had been officiating Mass at Arrowsmith House on Gregson Lane. He arrived at the Blue Anchor to be told that the pursuivants (priest hunters) were coming for him. He rode off with his servant and possessions, possibly heading for Wickenhouse farm near Blackburn, an isolated safe house (and not St Helen’s well, as in Graham and Bernadette’s song). Crossing Brindle Moss (south of Hoghton) with the pursuivants in sight, Edmund’s horse refused to jump a ditch. At this point, his servant deserted him and Edmund was arrested and in due course, was sent to Lancaster castle.
The judge who presided over Edmund’s trial was Sir Henry Yelverton. There was little doubt that Edmund would be found guilty and condemned to death. On 28th August 1628, Edmund was hung, drawn and quartered at a public execution outside Lancaster castle (I will spare readers the details of what that entailed).
Edmund thus became one of the fifteen Lancaster Martyrs who were tried and executed at Lancaster Castle between 1584 and 1646. In 1970, he was one of forty English and Welsh martyrs canonised by Pope Paul VI. Arrowsmith house in Gregson Lane where Edmund was reputed to have held Mass, has a plaque over its entrance commemorating its connection with this unhappy period in England’s religious life. And off Gregson Lane, in Chapel Fold, Brindle, is St Joseph’s Catholic church - the centre of one of the oldest Catholic parishes in England.
Trouble At Mill – The Cotton Industry in Gregson Lane
The invention of spinning machines in the second half of the 18th Century revolutionised textile production. They massively increased productivity, led to the dominance of factories over home working and because they produced a stronger thread than hand spinning, they enabled cloth to be made from cotton alone. Spinning mills were established across southern Lancashire from the late 18th century.
The mechanisation of weaving took longer to achieve. Although there were powered weaving looms from the late eighteenth century, they were unreliable and most textile weaving was still done by hand, in weavers’ own homes. The huge increase in cotton yarn produced by the new spinning mills led to a consequent increase in demand for handloom weaving. By the early nineteenth century, some 125,000 people earned their living in Britain as handloom weavers, mostly in South Lancashire. The 1841 census lists many handloom weavers on Gregson Lane, working in converted outbuildings on the local farms, or in cottages newly built for the purpose. Whole families could be involved, either taking turns at the loom or, if space allowed, working more than one loom. Production was controlled by locally-based ‘manufacturers’, who gave the weavers their orders, supplied the yarn and bought the resulting cloth, which was taken to Manchester for sale. This shared enterprise must have increased the sense of community along Gregson Lane, as well as the population.
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| In the early 19th century, this row of houses off Alma Row was known as Cookes Cottages. Now much altered, they were probably initially built for handloom weavers |
By the 1840s, however, factory-based power looms were becoming viable, and there was a spate of mill-building as weaving factories joined spinning mills, sometimes on the same site. And in the 1850s, Gregson Lane acquired not one but two cotton mills, finally turning it from a road into a village (as also happened in other local rural areas, such as Withnell, Abbey Village and Wheelton).
Both new mills carried out spinning and weaving. Gregson Lane mill was sited on the lane itself, opposite Pickerings Fold, while Brindle mill was next to the Preston to Blackburn railway, which had opened in 1846, spearing through the country lanes at level crossings. There was no station for Gregson Lane until the late 19th century, but Brindle mill had its own sidings. Gregson Lane mill had 31,000 spindles and 216 looms, while Brindle mill had 30,000 spindles and 332 looms, meaning that they were both relatively small compared to factories in the surrounding towns and villages.
Gregson Lane mill employed around 200 people and Brindle mill some 320. While some of the workforce came from the local area, including redundant handloom weavers, labour had to be attracted from outside, and accommodation provided. An austere but functional terrace of two-up, two-down houses was built on a new road from Gregson Lane to Brindle mill (now named Bourne’s Row, after the Bourne family who owned the mill), and quickly filled up with young couples and families from nearby towns and villages. A similar row of houses, Alma Place (now Alma Row), served Gregson Lane mill (the name dates the row to 1855, as it commemorates the victorious battle of Alma in the Crimean war that took place the previous year). And so, Gregson Lane became a mill village. With the increased population came local amenities, in particular two pubs, the Black Horse and the Castle Inn; also shops and a Co-op. Then, after appeals from local residents and businessmen in the 1880s, the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway company grudgingly built a station next to Brindle mill (though only a request halt). The first school in the village was open by 1890.
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| Bourne's Row, with the remaining buildings of Brindle mill in the background |
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| The Black Horse, one of two inns built on Gregson Lane for thirsty mill workers |
While the two mills were apparently similar enterprises, they had rather different fortunes. Brindle mill, founded by Joseph Bourne, who lived at Crabtree House, Brindle, remained in the Bourne family until the 1920s, and continued to operate until 1964, by which time the whole Lancashire cotton industry was becoming overwhelmed by cheap imports. The mill was rarely in the news, surviving the ups and downs of the cotton trade, including occasional strikes and a major closure in 1913 for upgrading equipment. It also had a successful football team.
Gregson Lane mill, by contrast, had a chequered history. Founded by James Sharrock, it was destroyed by fire in 1866. It was rebuilt, but Sharrock was declared bankrupt in 1869, and the mill came under the ownership of the firm of Simpson and Jackson. Then in 1875, it burnt down again - to be destroyed by fire once is unfortunate, for it to happen twice sounds rather like carelessness. An employee named Robert Newton died when a floor collapsed while he was attempting to douse the blaze with an extinguisher. After two years it reopened and continued until 1894, when the firm, now Simpson and Russell, again went bust. One of the owners, William Russell, was subsequently convicted of attempting to conceal some valuable paintings from the bankruptcy assessors.
After another period of closure, the mill somehow gained new owners, despite being described as being in poor condition. Its rural setting and the difficulty of attracting good workers to a relatively isolated area were bemoaned, but Brindle mill doesn't seem to have suffered from such problems. More bankruptcies followed, and Gregson Lane mill closed for good as a cotton factory in 1926. By the 1930s, it had suffered the indignity of being converted into a mushroom farm, and for a time after WWII it became a corn mill.
Brindle Village Pound – Crime and Punishment in Gregson Lane
When Graham and Bernadette sing of local miscreants being incarcerated in Brindle village pound, they are administering a heavy dose of artistic license. There was a village pound in Brindle, but it was for stray animals, rather than people. Wrongdoers were dealt with through more conventional channels, mostly fines or spells in ordinary prisons.
In truth, Gregson Lane has never been a hotbed of crime. Magistrates have processed various petty offences, but serious crime has been rare. Just a couple of incidents may be noted. The first wasn’t even a crime, but a civil offence. In 1895, 65-year-old Edmund Ratcliffe, the landlord of the Black Horse Inn, was sued for breach of promise of marriage by Mary Trainor, aged 30, who sought £750 in recompense. Ratcliffe was a widower, and had employed Mary as a housekeeper, but while in his employment he “began to make love to her”, and she claimed he asked her to marry him and bought her an engagement ring. However, a child was born, leading, she claimed, to Ratcliffe changing his mind. For his part, Ratcliffe strongly denied promising marriage. The jury at Liverpool assizes awarded Mary damages – but just £35, rather than the £750 that she had sought.
The second case was also a crime of passion, but with much more tragic consequences; worthy of a broadside ballad or folk song. In 1868, Charles Hamer, a 20-year-old from Brindle, formed an attachment with 18-year-old Elizabeth Brindle, who was the daughter of the farmer of Higher Shuttling Fields farm, off Gregson Lane. Both worked at a cotton mill in Walton-le-Dale. The relationship had continued for some three years, but some time before the incident they had quarreled, Elizabeth apparently objecting to Charles’s excessive smoking and ‘chewing’, and telling him that if he did not give up she would end their relationship. They did not speak to each other for two weeks, then Charles wrote Elizabeth a letter asking her to meet him at Martin’s field, some 200 yards from the farm where she lived. She went there alone at the allotted time.
Shortly afterwards, a passer-by named James Yates saw Charles covered with blood, and carrying a knife and a rope, which he had cut from a neighbouring washing line. Going into the field, he found Elizabeth lying on the ground with her throat cut, but still alive. She was able to tell him that Charles had attacked her with the knife. She was taken to her home, but was soon dead.
Charles ran down Gregson Lane, where he saw his brother, and gave him a note. He then ran off towards Mintholme level crossing and disappeared. The note told his brother of Charles’s intention to kill Elizabeth, and then himself. By now, news had got around and crowds of people flocked to the scene of the crime and “the utmost consternation prevailed”. A huge search was made for Charles, who was assumed to be hiding nearby, but he was eventually found in an isolated wood near Mintholme farm, hanging from a tree by the rope he had been carrying.
The Black Brook Boggart, or the Perils of Drunkenness
No other crime in the Gregson Lane area has been as serious as the murder-suicide of Elizabeth and Charles. However, from time to time, Drink has become a problem. In 1897, John Jackson, of Walton-le-Dale, was spotted by P.C. Taylor driving his horse and cart erratically along Gregson Lane, swaying about as he did so. Jackson was sent to the petty sessions and fined 2 shillings and sixpence, with costs. Then in 1926, Robert Naylor of Alma Row, along with George Parker of Bamber Bridge, were convicted of assaulting a policeman in Clayton-le-Woods whilst drunk and disorderly. “Drink”, said the magistrate crisply, “is no excuse for hitting a policeman”, and he fined them both 30 shillings.
But does being drunk make one more likely to encounter a boggart, as in Graham and Bernadette’s song? Boggarts, malevolent spirits that sometimes live in houses and sometimes in the countryside, are common in Lancashire and other parts of the North. Dr. Simon Young has compiled a census of boggart reports and sightings. Boggarts have been reported as living in Baggenley Hall, Chorley, Hennel Lane in Walton-le-Dale, in a garden in Hoghton and at Brinscall, on the disused railway line between Chorley and Blackburn. A related spirit is Ginny Greenteeth, who lurks by the canal at Wheelton. And a dead boggart was once found in the attic of a house in Brindle.
But there is no mention in Dr. Young’s work of a Black Brook boggart. Perhaps Graham and Bernadette should contact him to get it added to the census?
A V1 Merry Christmas – The Gregson Lane Doodlebug
Gregson Lane remained a quiet village during WWII, though young men went off to war. But at 5.28 a.m. on Christmas Eve 1944, the village was startled awake by a massive explosion, that blew in doors and shattered windows. A stray German V1 doodlebug missile had crashed and exploded in a field south of the road by Hewn Gate farm.
The doodlebug, an early form of cruise missile, had been launched from a converted Heinkel 111 bomber somewhere over the North Sea and was one of 45 aimed at Manchester in one of the last, and most northerly, V1 raids of the war. It was by no means the only one that missed its target; others landed as far away as North Yorkshire and Shropshire. Only seven fell in the Greater Manchester area, and in total 42 people were killed.
Miraculously, the Gregson Lane doodlebug did not cause any fatalities, but there were lucky escapes. Two cottages opposite Hewn Gate farm bore the brunt of the blast; their roofs fell in but the occupants were fortunately downstairs, and though trapped, they survived. The cottages had to be demolished. The explosion shattered 500 windows at Brindle mill, and blew in the windows of the adjacent railway signalbox, but the signalman escaped injury as just before the blast he had gone outside to answer a call of nature. The only human casualty of the explosion was a man who rode his bike up Gregson Lane to see if his parents were safe, and fell off and was knocked unconscious when his bike hit a door that had been blown into the road. But the doodlebug scored a direct hit on a hen house, vaporising the poor hens, who are today commemorated by the blue plaque that Graham and Bernadette set up to mark the site of the explosion.
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| The blue plaque commemorating the event |
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| This shed was built on the site of the cottages destroyed by the doodlebug, miraculously without loss of life |
Our Little Hamlet known as Gregson Lane (Reprise)
The damaged buildings of Gregson Lane were rebuilt and its quiet existence resumed. Not much changed until the 1960s, when Brindle mill finally closed (along with the railway station), becoming an industrial estate. Around the same time, new housing estates were built off Bank Head Lane and Daub Hall Lane. New schools met the needs of the extra children. The former Gregson Lane mill was taken down, and Many Brook Care Home now occupies the site. Gregson Lane Folk Club first met in the Castle Inn in 1988, and when that closed and was demolished for housing, it moved to the Social Club now called Nets Bar.
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| Many Brook House, the care home built on the site of the hapless Gregson Lane mill. (Many Brook supplied the water for the mill) |
Today, despite the increase in population, Gregson Lane remains a village, surrounded by farmland, with a cricket team, a cafe and a community centre, recently rebuilt. And with predictable regularity, walkers and drivers still get stopped by the gates at Mintholme level crossing.
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| Gregson Lane's new Community Centre |
And...you still have to watch out for the Black Brook Boggart!
Sources Used
Historic Maps available at National Library of Scotland
Newspaper articles available at the British Newspaper Archive
Census Returns available at The Genealogist
Hogan S (2016) . Edmund Arrowsmith. Catholic Truth Society
