Celts, Britons, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and the Normans - all these people and more have helped to shape and strengthen Lancashire over the course of its long, turbulent and fascinating history.
Plenty of evidence of Stone Age life has been found across the county, and the fertile Ribble Valley in particular has signs of inhabitation going back at least ten thousand years. Early hunters and gatherers would have found the area densely forested and wild, but swathes of it were cut down to make way for agriculture after the Celts arrived in Iron Age Lancashire in the shape of two related tribes: the Brigantes, who tended to settle in the north, and the Carvelli, who gathered along the coast.
The Romans arrived in Britain in AD 43, but did not establish themselves in Lancashire until the 70s, when they built their first fort at Ribchester. More settlements followed at or near what are now Manchester, Lancaster, Kirkham, Warrington and Wigan, and the roads they built between these places formed the basis for the county’s transport infrastructure.
The Celtic people who settled again across the county after the departure of the Romans in the early 5th century now developed distinct settlements, the names of which evolved into many modern-day Lancashire towns and cities. Next came the Anglo-Saxons, and by the 7th century Lancashire was part of both the Kingdom of Northumbria and, from south of the River Ribble, the Kingdom of Mercia. The Saxons soon converted to Christianity, and traces of their religion including distinctive crosses can be seen on a handful of church sites today.
The period of calm and security that followed was ended by the arrival of the Vikings, who imposed themselves on the area either by force or alliance with the now-subjugated local rulers. But having settled in, they also advanced agriculture and trade in the region and, like the Anglo-Saxons, added their influence to its place names and institutions. By the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066, Lancashire was roughly divided into a handful of regions, parcelled up by King William for his barons. The new ruler chose Lancaster as his headquarters, and by the middle of the 12th century the area was becoming known as the county of Lancashire. A century later, Lancashire became an earldom and then, in 1351, a dukedom. It was now a county palatine, meaning that it had royal powers and could develop its own ruling and legal structures with some independence from the King.
Once tensions between the Normans and Anglo-Saxons had eased, the county began to develop something like its modern character, with markets helping towns to grow in size and land enclosures delineating the countryside. Stability in the region was again interrupted by the Wars of the Roses from around 1455 onwards. Mostly because of its geographical position, Lancashire was somewhat isolated from the rest of England over the next few hundred years, and its sense of separation grew during the Reformation, when large parts remained defiantly Catholic despite the adoption of Protestantism elsewhere. Divisions in the county grew wider with the English Civil Wars, and Lancashire was host to several major battles between Royalists and Parliamentarians through the 1640s.
Afterwards, Lancashire developed further as a largely rural county until the Industrial Revolution brought explosive change from the late 18th century onwards. Towns sprawled to accommodate new manufacturing and mining industries, ports grew as trade flourished, and new rail links brought previously remote areas of the county much closer together. While a handful of Lancastrians made fortunes, millions more suffered in dreadful conditions at work and home. These slowly improved over the 19th century, and the increased money and leisure time fuelled the growth of seaside resorts like Blackpool.
The subsequent decline of its adopted industries, plus the loss of life and upheaval from two world wars, threatened to bring Lancashire to its knees. But new industries and the effect of post-war immigration have created yet another Lancashire - a county that juxtaposes dramatic rural beauty and vibrant urban life like few others in England. Its boundaries have been endlessly tweaked by reorganisations of local government, not least in 1974 when the modern administrative county was substantially reduced in size. But most Lancastrians aware of their history identify with the county palatine as it was at its creation - and their sense of loyalty and love of Lancashire is as powerful as it has ever been.
No meal is more evocative of Lancashire than the traditional, hearty and satisfying Hot Pot.
At its simplest, Hot Pot is a cheap, easily prepared stew of lamb or mutton and onions, topped by slices of potato. Its exact origins are unknown, but it probably has its roots among the mill and factory workers of the region who might assemble it in the morning and put it on to cook slowly all day, giving them a steaming hot meal ready for their return at the end of their shift. Cooked Hot Pots - the name refers to the heavy dish in which it was cooked - would also be kept warm in blankets for a picnic later in the day, perhaps at work in factories, mines or fields, or on days out at the races.
Perhaps because of its humble origins and cheap ingredients, Lancashire Hot Pot has sometimes been looked down on as a dish, but the rising interest in local food has brought it firmly back into fashion, and it can now be found on plenty of pub and restaurant menus in Lancashire and beyond. Because it is so easy to prepare in advance, it is also a convenient supper with little washing up for anyone who - like the mill workers of the past - is too busy or tired to prepare anything from scratch at the end of a long day.
Like all cherished local dishes the precise recipe for Lancashire Hot Pot is the subject of intense debate, and there are as many variations on the basic formula as there are cooks in the county. Lambs’ kidneys, slices of black pudding or oysters are sometimes added to the meat, vegetables like carrots, turnips or leeks may be used to pad out the stew, and herbs or red wine added to enhance the gravy. This version is fairly true to the traditional Hot Pot.
A recipe for Lancashire Hot Pot
(serves four to six, depending on hunger levels)
1 kg neck of lamb
1.5 kg potatoes (floury ones like Maris Piper work best)
400 g onions
600 ml stock (hot water will do)
50 g butter
2 tsp thyme leaves
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
First, assemble all your ingredients. Trim the lamb of excess fat, and cut it into rough chunks. Peel and slice the potatoes into rounds roughly quarter of an inch (0.5 cm) thick. Roughly slice the onions. Pick and chop the thyme.
Now you’re ready to prepare the Hot Pot. Butter the base and sides of a deep, heavy casserole dish (an 8 pint / 4.5 litre one is ideal). Now arrange a layer of potato slices on the bottom, overlapping slightly. Scatter in half the lamb, onions and thyme, and season generously with salt and pepper. Level and top this mixture with another layer of potato slices. Scatter in the remaining lamb, onions and thyme, and season generously again. Finish with a neat layer of potato slices. Pour the stock over the Hot Pot, and dot the top with butter.
Clamp the casserole lid on tight, and bake in a low oven (160°C / 325°F / gas mark 3) for at least two hours, or longer on an even lower heat if you like. Half an hour before you’re ready to eat, take the lid off the Hot Pot and turn the heat up (to 220°C / 425°F / gas mark 7) to crisp up the top layer of potatoes. Serve with the classic Lancashire Hot Pot accompaniment of pickled red cabbage.
England has 50 places that, by virtue of a royal charter, can call themselves cities. Lancashire - taken here to mean the ancient and traditional county rather than the modern administrative area - has five of them. In order of the year of their official incorporation, the five cities of Lancashire are:
Lancaster (pre-dates historical records)
Manchester (1853)
Liverpool (1880)
Salford (1926)
Preston (2002)
Of these five, the largest in terms of population are Liverpool, with around 470,000 people living within its city boundaries at the 2001 Census; and Manchester, with 394,000. Populations for the wider urban areas around both cities are much higher.
Instantly recognisable to Lancastrians everywhere, the red rose is a powerful and cherished symbol of the county.
The exact origins of its association with Lancashire are the subject of some debate, but it was probably first put to symbolic use by Edmund, the first Earl of Lancaster, in the 13th century. Officially called rosa gallica officilanis, it may have been the first ever cultivated rose, used by the Romans and Greeks for medicinal and fragrancy purposes, and possibly first brought to England by Edmund when he returned home with his French second wife. When Edmund died, his tomb in Westminster Abbey was engraved with roses and painted red.
The symbolism of the red rose increased with his successors, but it was the Wars of the Roses in the second half of the 15th century that forever entwined it with the county. The battles were not known as such until much later, and it is unlikely that those fighting actually did so under the emblems of the roses - red for the men of Lancaster and white for those of York. Nevertheless, their symbolic importance was acknowledged by the Lancastrian Henry VII who, in a gesture of unity after emerging from the wars on top, combined the red and white roses of Lancaster and York into what is now known as the Tudor rose. It is not lost on either Lancastrians or Yorkshiremen, however, that the large red petals of the Tudor rose entirely surround the smaller white ones.
Although the House of Lancaster actually had little to do with the county of Lancashire - in fact, the Duchy’s land was, and still is, spread far across England - the red rose continued to be associated with the area after the wars. Men fighting in subsequent battles adopted it as a heraldic device, most prominently and poignantly in the First World War. The Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment still carries it at the heart of its cap badge.
The rose has since become shorthand for all things Lancastrian, used to enhance any concept that requires association with the county. It is incorporated into coats of arms for various councils, proudly displayed by local societies and businesses, added to the designs of shopping centres and worn by sports teams including Lancashire County Cricket Club. Any cricket match with Yorkshire - and indeed just about any sporting fixture between clubs from either side of the Pennines - is still inevitably billed as the latest installment of the ongoing war of the roses, proof of the enduring power of the symbol.
The red rose also adorns Lancashire’s official flag, and is worn particularly proudly on Lancashire Day each year. The exact designs of the rose now vary somewhat, but it essentially comprises five large outer petals, separated by green leaves and with a small centre of white or yellow stamens. The original real-life variety is available to buy from garden centres and nurseries across the county.
Centuries before it was carved up into its current jumble of administrative counties, Lancashire was, like many other parts of the country, divided into hundreds.
The beginnings of the system of hundreds are unclear, though they may have been introduced by the Saxons and, in a rough early form, pre-date the creation of Lancashire itself. Hundred status was conferred on an area either because it had more than a hundred households or because its land was sufficient to sustain that number of people. As areas grew, the hundreds were further sub-divided, though they all came to be brought under the umbrella of their shire county.
Each hundred had some control over its administration and justice systems, and their network of courts survived well into the 19th century. Although most other traces of the English hundreds have now disappeared, the names of some of them survive in local government districts. Lancashire’s six hundreds and their rough boundaries were:
Amounderness - from north of Lancaster to south of Preston and out west to the Fylde coast. It included the modern-day districts of Fylde, Wyre, Preston and Ribble Valley
Blackburn - from east of Preston to the border with Yorkshire
Leyland - the ‘heart’ of Lancashire, from south of Preston to Standish
Lonsdale - the Furness Peninsula and into the southern Lake District; and the northern part of the county from Lancaster upwards. Probably the largest of the six, Lonsdale may once have been divided into north and south regions
Salford - roughly where Greater Manchester now stands
West Derby - most of southwest Lancashire including modern-day Merseyside
Lancashire’s history of conflict has left it with dozens of castles, towers and other fortified buildings. Here are ten of the most interesting, some largely intact and others now ruins, but all accessible or at least visible to the public.
Clitheroe Castle. Built on limestone above the town towards the end of the 12th century, the castle has a long and fascinating history, not least during the English Civil War. Parts of the castle are open to the public, as is a newly restored museum.
Dalton Castle. Small town-centre peel tower, built in the 14th century to help defend Furness Abbey. Now owned by the National Trust.
Gleaston Castle, near Barrow-in-Furness. The crumbling ruins of the towers are all that is left of this castle, built in the 14th century but already in disrepair by the 16th. Access is restricted, but the ruins can be seen from the adjacent road.
Greenhalgh Castle, near Garstang. Built by the first Earl of Derby in 1490 and largely wrecked during a Civil War siege, much of its stone taken for other nearby buildings. A single crumbling tower remains.
Hoghton Tower, near Preston. Somewhere between a manor house and a castle, this spectacular fortified hilltop building originally dates to 1109. It was badly damaged in the Civil War but restored in the 16th century. Famous guests have included several kings and queens.
Hornby Castle, near Lancaster. Much of the castle dates from a 19th-century rebuilding in the Gothic style, though the original dates back to at least the 13th century. It is now privately owned but opens on a few weekends each year.
Lancaster Castle. On a hilltop in the centre of the city, the castle has a keep, tower and gatehouse dating to the 12th, 14th and 15th centuries respectively, and boasts a long and frequently grisly history as a court and prison. While it is still used as such, large parts of the building are open to the public.
Lever Castle, Rivington. Never actually a working castle at all, this was built in the 1910s by the Lancastrian philanthropist William Lever as a replica of Liverpool Castle, which had been destroyed two centuries earlier. Work on it was never finished after Lever’s death, leaving it - perhaps intentionally - as an atmospheric ruin.
Piel Castle, near Barrow-in-Furness. Fortification on Piel Island built to guard Barrow against pirates and raiders. Looked after by English Heritage and accessible via a ferry service from the mainland.
Turton Tower. The 15th-century peel tower here was extended into a fortified manor house in the Tudor period. It was another of the many Lancashire residences to see action during the Civil War.
Lancashire has more than its fair share of unusual place names, many of them amusing to visitors if not always to the people who live there. Here are ten such places, all featured on Ordnance Survey maps.
Bare (near Morecambe)
Bedlam (near Oswaldtwistle)
Butt Hill (near Garstang)
Buttock (near Clitheroe)
Chew Moor (near Bolton)
Hey (near Colne)
Little Tongues (Fleetwood)
Nob End (near Bolton)
Ramsbottom (near Bury)
Whalley (near Clitheroe)
For all true Lancastrians, 27 November is the day to celebrate the heritage of their home county. Chosen to commemorate the date in 1295 on which the first elected representatives from Lancashire travelled south to Westminster to join King Edward I’s fledgling model parliament, it is now widely known as Lancashire Day.
The event was the idea of the Friends of Real Lancashire, a group set up to protect and promote what it regards as the traditional borders of the county. Lancashire’s boundaries have been the subject of much confusion following changes in England’s administrative counties, most notably in 1974 when local government was overhauled. The Friends of Real Lancashire invite people to ignore these new borders, and instead regard their county as stretching as far north as Coniston in the Lake District, as far south as Manchester and as far west as Liverpool - all places that, since the borders were rejigged, are now placed outside of Lancashire on some maps. Lancashire Day is a useful occasion to promote the Friends’ cause and remind people of the history and scope of the ‘true’ Lancashire. Though few might care to admit it, the day was also launched partly in order to catch up with the county’s great rival across the Pennines, which has staged a Yorkshire Day every year since 1975.
Since it was observed for the first time in the 1990s, Lancashire Day has been celebrated in cities, towns and villages across the county, and has won support from local councils, businesses and MPs. Red roses are worn, and at 9 p. m. GMT Lancashire residents and ex-pats across the world are invited to raise a toast to ‘the Queen, Duke of Lancaster’. People are also invited to recite the Lancashire Day Proclamation, as bellowed by town criers, as follows:
‘To the people of the City and County Palatine of Lancaster, greetings!
Know ye that this day, November 27 in the year of our Lord two thousand and [year], in the reign of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Duke of Lancaster, is Lancashire Day.
Know ye also, and rejoice, that by virtue of Her Majesty’s County Palatine of Lancaster, the citizens of the Hundreds of Lonsdale, North and South of the Sands, Amounderness, Leyland, Blackburn, Salford and West Derby are forever entitled to style themselves Lancastrians.
Throughout the County Palatine, from the Furness Fells to the River Mersey, from the Irish Sea to the Pennines, this day shall ever mark the peoples’ pleasure in that excellent distinction - true Lancastrians, proud of the Red Rose and loyal to our Sovereign Duke.
God bless Lancashire and God save the Queen, Duke of Lancaster!’
Depending on how they look at it, walkers can claim any one of three fell tops as the highest point in Lancashire. In the modern - dayadministrative county, the honour usually falls to Green Hill, which reaches 2,060 feet (628 m). A few miles east of Kirkby Lonsdale, it is situated on a slim finger of Lancashire right on the border with Yorkshire. Close by - but a few hundred yards inside the red rose county and so rivaling it for the highest point - is Gragareth, marked on some maps as Leck Fell, and a fraction lower at 2,057 feet (627 m). The summit is marked by an Ordnance Survey trig point, and not far away are a trio of cairns known as the Three Men of Gragareth.
Not far east of both tops is Whernside, which at 2,415 feet (736 m) is Yorkshire’s second highest point and one of its Three Peaks. Yorkshire has dozens more peaks higher than Green Hill and Gragareth, and by the standards of its neighbours Lancashire is not a mountainous county. But measured by its historic boundaries, Lancashire’s highest point is nearly 600 feet (183 m) higher than Green Hill and nearly 230 feet (70 m) higher than Whernside. At 2,634 feet (803 m), The Old Man of Coniston is now more usually bracketed with the Lake District or Cumbria, but until the reorganisation of county boundaries it was officially part of Lancashire’s territory. Despite the changes to the boundaries, and along with other fells in the Furness range, true Lancastrians still firmly consider it to be one of their own.
Measured by its modern-day county council borders only - and therefore excluding large swathes of ‘true’ Lancashire, including large cities like Manchester and Liverpool - the red rose county is home to about 1.1 million people. The 2001 Census and subsequent surveys break down Lancashire’s population as follows:
1,134,976 |
number of people |
|
51.5 |
percentage of population who are female |
|
25.6 |
percentage aged 0 to 19 |
|
7.1 |
percentage aged 75 and over |
|
1,048 |
people living per square mile (2.6 sq km) in Lancashire |
|
10,540 |
people living per square mile (2.6 sq km) in Blackpool, the most densely populated area of the county |
|
260 |
people living per square mile (2.6 sq km) in the Ribble Valley, the least densely populated area of the county |
|
17.9 |
percentage increase in population since 1961 |
|
1,364,100 |
projected population in 2031 |
|
8 |
percentage of population not born in England |
|
7.3 |
percentage from black, Asian, Chinese, mixed or other ethnic groups |
|
78.3 |
percentage describing their religion as Christian |
|
52.7 |
percentage of adults who are married or re-married |
|
20 |
percentage of adults who are separated, divorced or widowed |
|
27.3 |
percentage of adults who are single |
|
people living in medical, care or other supported establishments |
||
1,050 |
members of the armed forces stationed in Lancashire |
|
75.2 |
percentage of working age population in employment |
|
30.1 |
percentage leaving education with no qualifications |
|
20.2 |
percentage with limiting long-term illness |
|
23,480 |
median gross annual pay in pounds among all full-time employees |
|
491,466 |
household spaces |
|
2.4 |
average number of people per household |
|
12 |
percentage of households without central heating |
|
29.6 |
percentage of households with two or more cars or vans |
|
25.1 |
percentage of households with no car or van |
Liverpool isn’t part of the modern administrative territory of Lancashire, but it is, with Manchester, one of the two major cities of the traditional county. And it produced what is undoubtedly Lancashire’s most successful and widely known cultural export - The Beatles.
Although founding members Pete Best and Stuart Sutcliffe were born elsewhere, the four main Beatles - John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr - were all born in Liverpool between 1940 and 1943. The band grew out of The Quarrymen, the group in which Lennon and McCartney both played after they met in the incongruous setting of a parish fete in the Liverpool suburb of Woolton in 1957. The Beatles’ sound developed in venues across the city, most notably at the Cavern and Casbah Coffee clubs; and in Hamburg, Germany, where they played several residencies in the early 1960s.
Although their first releases met with only minor success, from 1963 until their last proper concert in 1966, Beatlemania swept out of Liverpool and across the UK. Their heyday as a performing band was short but furiously intense, the gruelling touring schedule interrupted only by frequent studio albums and spin-off films, and they dominated the music charts like no band before or since. Starting with ‘From Me To You’ in 1963 and ending with ‘The Ballad of John and Yoko’ six years later, The Beatles had 17 UK number one singles, as well as 15 number one albums. In the US, where the group first toured in 1964, they had 20 number one singles, and at one point that year occupied the top five positions on the chart and 12 of the top 100.
From 1967 until their split in 1970, The Beatles withdrew from the pressures of touring and performing live to concentrate on their recorded music, their sound evolving all the time despite tensions within the band and a series of controversies. By this time the group had of course grown well beyond their Lancashire roots, but they had returned to Liverpool to play often, and namechecked two city locations in their 1967 double A-side single ‘Penny Lane’ and ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’. Any hopes of a reunion of the band ended with the murder of Lennon in New York in 1980, but there have been endless Beatles re-releases, compilations, merchandise, video games and other spin-offs ever since, as well as various solo projects. Sales of the band’s music remain enormous today.
Liverpool is packed with places paying tribute to The Beatles, and it is hard to escape their influence on the city. The main place of pilgrimage for fans is The Beatles Story (tel 0151 709 1963 or visit www.beatlesstory.com), and the city also has a bus tour of locations significant to the band, inevitably billed as the Magical Mystery Tour. The childhood homes of Lennon and McCartney, owned by the National Trust, are both open to the public, as are the Casbah and Cavern clubs. For an overnight visit, Beatles addicts can try the four-star Hard Day’s Night Hotel near the Cavern.
Lancashire isn’t the home of the railway, but it did do more than any other county to fuel the extraordinary growth of the British network over the 19th century.
From the start of the century onwards, small lines had been built across Britain, most notably George Stephenson’s Stockton and Darlington Railway in the northeast. But it was the 1830 opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway - the first timetabled and steam-driven inter-city service anywhere in the world - that really got the rail movement going. It was funded by rich merchants in both cities and built to serve Lancashire’s burgeoning industries, taking raw materials from the port of Liverpool in the west to the mill towns in the east. With miles of boggy valley to navigate, dozens of bridges and viaducts and a tunnel at the Liverpool end, its construction was an incredible feat of engineering for the time.
The line was an instant success, its convenience, cheap fares and novelty value making it popular among passengers as well as the merchants and mill owners. And having proved its viability here, the railway network now grew at a furious rate, with lines shooting out across the country. The 1840s was the decade of ‘railway mania’ - a frenzy of track-laying as investors poured money into hundreds of new train companies, backed by a sympathetic government and an excited public. Lancashire’s combination of industry and a large population was particularly attractive, bringing it endless branch lines to connect even the smallest towns and villages.
Like stock market bubbles since, much of the speculation was hopelessly optimistic, and businessmen and ordinary family investors lost fortunes in companies that never got off the ground and lines that were never built. More than 6,000 miles (9,650 km) of new lines were laid in just three years in the mid-1840s, and while some of them were quickly profitable, it was clear that others would struggle to pay their way.
And almost as quickly as they rose in Lancashire, the steam railways fell. For a century after the years of railway mania, the network had consolidated, first into a handful of large operators and then under government ownership. But the decline of industry and the rise of the car sent freight journeys and passenger numbers tumbling, and many of the county’s small branch lines were quietly wound down. Of those that battled on, many could not survive the government’s rail rationalisation programme before and after the Beeching Report of 1963, which closed swathes of Lancashire’s network. In the early 1950s, Britain had around 21,000 miles (33,800 km) of tracks and 6,000 stations; by 1975 it had 12,000 miles (19,315 km) of rails and 2,000 stations.
As diesel succeeded coal as the preferred fuel, Lancashire’s once proud stock of steam engines fell too: from nearly 1,900 locomotives in 1950 to just 800 in 1965. Then, in August 1968, it hosted the last ever steam-powered passenger services on the British timetables, when two engines departed Preston for Blackpool and Liverpool. Lancashire retains a substantial network of lines, of course, and several of the abandoned tracks and locomotives have since been revived by steam enthusiasts - but its long lists of closed stations and lines are proof that the railway’s glory days are now long gone.
One of the best places to find out more about the Liverpool and Manchester Railway and Lancashire’s rail history in general is the Museum of Science and Industry, housed on the site of Manchester’s original rail terminus at Liverpool Road (tel 0161 832 2244 or visit www.mosi.org.uk). Many of the stations along the Railway have closed, but it remains in use as a link between the cities.
Flown proudly by loyal residents, Lancashire’s flag bears its famous red rose set on a yellow background. Why yellow? Because by the time the Friends of Real Lancashire got round to registering a design with the Flag Institute, the agency responsible for giving flags official status, it found that a red rose on white back ground had already been re gistered - by the town of Montrose on the east coast of Scotland. Looking for an alternative, the Friends group borrowed the tone of gold from Lancashire’s official coat of arms. Since it registered the flag in 2008, the group has campaigned for it to be prominently displayed across the county.
Even if its centres of power officially lie elsewhere, Lancashire has good reason to consider itself the home of English football. Measured by its traditional, ceremonial borders, the county has no fewer than 15 of the 92 teams in the four divisions of England’s football league - more than any other area of the country including London. In order of their official formation, Lancashire’s 15 football clubs are:
Bolton Wanderers (1874)
Blackburn Rovers (1875)
Blackpool (1877)
Everton (1878)
Manchester United (1878)
Manchester City (1880)
Preston North End (1881)
Burnley (1882)
Bury (1885)
Accrington Stanley (1891, reformed 1968)
Liverpool (1892)
Oldham Athletic (1895)
Rochdale (1907)
Morecambe (1920)
Wigan Athletic (1932)
Lancashirehas a long and rich literary tradition and has produced dozens of famous novelists, poets, playwrights and non-fiction specialists. Here are 30 of the best known, together with their places of birth.
William Ainsworth (Manchester)
Beryl Bainbridge (Liverpool)
Laurence Binyon (Lancaster)
Alan Bleasdale (Liverpool)
Ben Brierley (Failsworth)
Anthony Burgess (Manchester)
Frances Hodgson Burnett (Manchester)
Neville Cardus (Rusholme)
Richmal Crompton (Bury)
Shelagh Delaney (Salford)
J. G. Farrell (Liverpool)
Walter Greenwood (Salford)
Trevor Griffiths (Manchester)
Felicia Hemans (Liverpool)
James Hilton (Leigh)
Anna Jacobs (Rochdale)
Howard Jacobson (Manchester)
Roger McGough (Liverpool)
Jimmy McGovern (Liverpool)
Brian Patten (Liverpool)
Lynda la Plante (Liverpool)
Thomas de Quincey (Manchester)
Willy Russell (Whiston)
Dodie Smith (Whitefield)
A.J.P. Taylor (Southport)
Francis Thompson (Preston)
Salley Vickers (Liverpool)
Alfred Wainwright (Blackburn)
Edwin Waugh (Rochdale)
Jeanette Winterson (Manchester)
Drawing on influences from across the county and down the centuries, Lancashire’s dialect is one of the richest and most interesting in England. It is a way of speaking that is generally inherited rather than learned - occasionally baffling to the outsider and virtually impossible to assimilate. It also varies considerably from region to region and even town to town, those in the north of the county borrowing heavily from Cumbrian words and phrases, for instance, while accents in the south are distinctively Mancunian or Liverpudlian. Scouse, indeed, has a lexicon all of its own.
What all parts of Lancashire have in common, though, is that their inflections and vocabularies have remained intact, while those in many other counties have faded away into standard English. Some popular words of the past are falling out of use, but other colloquialisms and phrases remain widely spoken - not all of them unique to Lancashire, of course, but each helping to make the language and culture here distinct and special. Here is a list of some of the more commonly heard words, together with their translations.
aam to mock
abide suffer, tolerate
aboon above
addle to earn
afore before
agate going
alreet all right
anent against
any road anyway
‘appen perhaps, maybe
‘appy ‘arry a miserable person
art are you
awce to begin
aye yes
babby baby
back end autumn and winter of a year
badly ill (worse than simply poorly)
baggin’ meal, usually the main one of the day
band string
bangle to waste time
bant to beat
bantlin’ baby or toddler
barmpot a daft person
beawt without
bedfast laid up in bed
bellin’ to cry out, bellow
benny tantrum
best better
bing to sour or spoil
bit a little while, soon
blather to talk nonsense or at length
bo’ ball
bobby dazzler an attractive person
bog-eyed weary
boggart ghost or evil spirit
bonny beautiful
born days lifetime
bransen uncomfortably full from food
brass money
brast to burst
breet bright
brew used as a noun, a cup of tea
buckle to to set to something
bucko fighting man
bullock to cheat or bully
bump bankrupt
bunce to share
butty sandwich or buttered bread
cack-handed clumsy
cakehole mouth
chaff to tease
champion very good or great
cheer chair
childer children
chimbly chimney
chuck chicken;a term of endearment
chunner to mutter
clarty sticky, filthy
cleek to snatch
clemmed very hungry
clooas clothes
cluttermuck a very clumsy person
cob strange, different
collop slice
comer a newcomer from outside the region
cop catch
cowd cold
cow slavver cow dung
crack talk, conversation
cracky a daft person
cratchy very irritable
dateless stupid
deawldy miserable
dee to die
deet to dirty
dig duck
do a social occasion or party
dollop a quantity
drop cork-legged to be very surprised
drucken drunk
dule devil
eawl-leet owl-light; dusk
een eyes
enoo enough
ettin eaten
Whether remembered with fondness or dread, the Great British seaside holiday has a special place in the country’s heritage - and nowhere is it more deeply ingrained than in Lancashire.
The beach holiday here grew largely out of the tradition of wakes weeks - time set aside each summer for people to enjoy the sunshine and some hard-earned leisure time. The weeks may have had some religious connotations when they started, perhaps coinciding with festivals or church anniversaries, and they proved remarkably resilient through tumultuous eras like the Industrial Revolution, during which many Lancastrians found their work changing from rural, cottage industries to vast cotton mills in the towns. Perhaps because of the long hours and unpleasant conditions they now faced, the prospect of a week’s holiday became ever more precious. The wakes week was also a link with the past - a cherished tradition at a time when so many other aspects of life were changing.
A handful of places along Lancashire’s Fylde coast had already become popular among the well-to-do by the end of the 18th century, with small guesthouses and hotels serving those who wanted to take the bracing sea air. But it was another consequence of the Industrial Revolution - the mushrooming of the rail network - that brought Lancashire’s seaside firmly within reach of the masses. Towns like Morecambe, Lytham and St Annes grew into bustling resorts, but the capital of the Lancashire coast was undoubtedly Blackpool, where three piers, a promenade, gardens, tower, tram system and the famous street lights were all put up within 30 years in the late 19th century.
For a week at a time, Lancashire’s mill towns would successively empty, often almost entirely, while their residents joyfully decamped to the guesthouses, beaches and promenades of the coast. Donkey rides, Punch and Judy shows, music halls and seaside food like fish and chips, ice cream and candyfloss all became ingredients of the British seaside holiday as workers enjoyed a week-long glimpse of a more relaxed, prosperous and happy life.
Given the notorious demands placed on workers by Lancashire’s mill owners, the tradition of the wakes week must have had an extremely strong pull to survive. It endured well beyond the era of the mills, too, with factories and schools juggling their holiday schedules to accommodate the weeks. Some continued to do so even into the 21st century, and while it may no longer be widely known as such, the tradition of communities taking the same wakes week’s holiday is still in evidence in some towns.
Just as rail travel brought holidaymakers to the coast, so air travel took them away again, to warmer and more exotic climes. Towns like Blackpool and Morecambe are in some ways now shadows of their former selves, with a melancholy air and reminders of their more glamorous days all around. But they remain a popular destination for many, and some resorts are reporting steadily rising visitor numbers, thanks perhaps to surging nostalgia and an awareness that home-grown holidays offer a cheaper, greener alternative to the Med. Blackpool has also tried to stir up nostalgia for wakes weeks by staging special steam train journies to the coast, and putting on special events and exhibitions for visitors when they get there.
Lancashire has produced four of the 52 Prime Ministers of Britain since Sir Robert Walpole became the first to hold the role in a recognisable form in 1721. Two Conservatives and two Liberals, they include some significant leaders and notable reformers. Lancashire’s four PMs are:
Sir Robert Peel (1788–1850), born in Ramsbottom, near Bury. Tory Prime Minister from 1834 to 1835, and again from 1841 to 1846.
The son of a rich Lancastrian mill owner, Peel is credited with substantial social reform. As Home Secretary, he launched the first recognisable force of police, still known as ‘bobbies’ in his honour.
Edward Smith-Stanley, Earl of Derby (1799–1869), born at Knowsley Hall, Prescot, near Liverpool. Conservative Prime Minister in 1852, again from 1858 to 1859, and again from 1866 to 1868.
One of only three Prime Ministers to have served on three separate occasions, though his total time in charge was less than four years. Still the longest serving leader of the Conservative Party.
William Gladstone (1809–98), born in Liverpool. Liberal Prime Minister from 1868 to 1874, again from 1880 to 1885, again in 1886 and again from 1892 to 1894.
The only Prime Minister to serve four separate stints, Gladstone was in charge for 12 years in total and was an MP for 62; only Churchill served as one for longer. He was a significant campaigner on various issues of reform, including Home Rule for Ireland.
David Lloyd George (1863–1945), born in Chorlton-upon-Medlock, Manchester. Liberal Prime Minister from 1916 to 1922.
Although he was born in Lancashire, Lloyd George was, by family and upbringing, more properly a Welshman - and still the only one to serve as Prime Minister. Elected as an MP at 27, he became known as a radical politician for his times, introducing state pensions as Chancellor. He became PM mid-way through the First World War.
Blackpool, and in particular its Winter Gardens complex of theatres, ballrooms and opera houses, has hosted hundreds of famous singers, entertainers, actors and comedians over the years. Here are 30 of the best known.
Arthur Askey
Richard Attenborough
Shirley Bassey
The Beatles
Sarah Bernhardt
Charlie Chaplin
Noel Coward
Bette Davis
Marlene Dietrich
Ken Dodd
Gracie Fields
George Formby
Judy Garland
John Gielgud
Alec Guinness
Jimi Hendrix
Bob Hope
Sid James
Tom Jones
Lillie Langtree
Laurel and Hardy
Vivien Leigh
Vera Lynn
Morecambe and Wise
John Mills
Paul Robeson
Frank Sinatra
Tommy Steele
Kenneth Williams
Norman Wisdom
The vast conference facilities at the complex also make it popular with the leading political parties. The Winter Gardens claims that every British Prime Minister since the Second World War has addressed audiences there at least once.
There are historic houses across Lancashire; here are ten of the most interesting that are open to the public.
Astley Hall, Chorley. Magnificent Elizabethan house, much added to and altered over the centuries and with particularly good ceilings. Owned by Chorley Council since the 1920s and now used as the town’s museum and art gallery. Tel 01257 515928 or visit www.chorley.gov.uk.
Brantwood, Coniston. Beautiful house perched above Coniston Water, developed and filled by writer and thinker John Ruskin. Tel 015394 41396 or visit www.brantwood.org.uk.
Gawthorpe Hall, Padiham. One of Lancashire’s best Elizabethan houses, built in 1600 for the Shuttleworth family and full of period features. There is a large textiles collection plus important paintings, some showing the hall’s connection with the Civil War. Tel 01282 771004 or visit www.nationaltrust.org.uk.
Heaton Hall, near Manchester. Originally built in the 17th century and remodeled in the neo-classical style in the 1770s. The house was given to Manchester’s City Council along with its vast park in 1902, and recently underwent restoration. Tel 0161 773 1085 or visit www.heatonpark.org.uk.
Leighton Hall, near Carnforth. Gothic pile that is home to the furniture making Gillow family, with extensive parkland and woodland. Like many of Lancashire’s great halls, it is frequently host to TV and film shoots. Tel 01524 734474 or visit www.leightonhall.co.uk.
Lytham Hall, near Lytham. Imposing Georgian manor house, largely built in 1765 on top of a 16th-century house that in turn succeeded a Benedictine priory. It is owned by a local heritage trust and opened up for occasional public tours and private events. Tel 01253 736652 or visit www.lythamhall.org.
Rufford Old Hall, Rufford. Very well preserved timber-framed Tudor house with fine furniture, intricate carvings and extensivecollections of tapestry and armour. Tel 01704 821254 or visit www.nationaltrust.org.uk.
Samlesbury Hall, near Preston. Oak timbered medieval house with black and white façade, features including chapel and minstrels’ gallery, and extensive gardens. Tel 01254 812010 or visit www.samlesburyhall.co.uk.
Stonyhurst Hall, near Clitheroe. Built in 1592 as a family home, this was given to the Society of Jesus as a new home for their college two centuries later. It continues in the Jesuit tradition as a boarding and day school, with vast buildings and grounds, and visitors are welcome in the summer holidays. Tel 01254 826345 or visit www.stonyhurst.ac.uk.
Towneley Hall, Burnley. Magnificent sprawling house lived in by the Towneley family until they moved out in 1902, taking most of the contents with them. Now owned by the local council, it is home to a museum and art gallery. Tel 01282 424213 or visit www.burnley.gov.uk/towneley.
Lancashire has 34,787 acres (14,078 ha) of woodland - equivalent to 54 square miles (140 sq km) or 4.6 per cent of the county’s total land area. About half of this woodland is broadleaved, a quarter of it conifer and the rest either mixed, open or felled. Oak and sitka spruce are Lancashire’s most common species of broadleaved and conifer respectively.
Increased planting and better forest management has increased the amount of woodland since 1980, when it accounted for 3.7 per cent of Lancashire’s land area, but it is still well below the national average of around 12 per cent. County-wide there are 1,244 woods greater than 5 acres (2 ha) in size, and outside woodland there are a further 1.6 million live trees - around 200 per square mile. All these figures were compiled as part of the Forestry Commission’s National Inventory of Woodland and Trees, and relate only to the modern administrative county of Lancashire - thus excluding portions of it like mostly urban Merseyside and Greater Manchester and the more rural southern Cumbria.
The largest wooded area in the traditional county of Lancashire is Grizedale Forest, near Hawkshead and Coniston in the Lake District, while the biggest inside the modern county boundaries is Gisburn Forest, in the Forest of Bowland where Lancashire meets Yorkshire. Both are looked after by the Forestry Commission and have lots of walking and cycling trails for visitors. The Commission’s four other woodlands in Lancashire are Bidston Moss on the Wirral; Horrocks Woods near Winter Hill; Sutton Manor near St Helens; and Viridor Wood between St Helens and Wigan.
To those who enjoy Lancashire’s wild countryside, the county’s mountain rescue teams are the fourth emergency service. Whether injured, lost, exhausted or benighted, the teams provide an essential safety net for those who fall foul of the terrain or weather.
Although farmers, shepherds and others in far-flung areas provided an ad hoc rescue service for those in difficulties over the centuries, organised mountain rescue is a relatively modern development. It wasn’t until the 1930s that formal rescue strategies began to take shape, and the first civilian rescue team did not launch until after the Second World War in 1947 - based in Coniston, in the southern Lake District and the northernmost part of traditional Lancashire. Other regions began to follow its lead, first in the Lake District and then further south. Besides the teams in the Lake District corner of the county, Lancashire now has three separate units: the Rossendale and Pendle, Bolton, and Bowland Pennine teams, founded in 1962, 1968 and 1980 respectively.
Modern mountain rescue teams are infinitely more skilled and coordinated than their early ancestors. When Coniston’s team launched, its kit amounted to a stretcher, some ex-Army blankets, climbing ropes, a lamp and hot water bottles; now, like most teams, it has state of the art medical equipment, offroad vehicles, satellite navigation systems, purpose-built headquarters and training programmes for its members. Because the fells and valleys are much more popular these days, the teams are also busier, between them responding to several hundred call-outs a year across Lancashire - whatever the time of day or night, and whatever the weather. They cover urban as well as rural areas, and are often called on to help trace missing, vulnerable people.
What hasn’t changed, however, is the teams’ entirely voluntary and charitable status. All members give their time and expertise for free, often out of love for the area they serve, and rely on donations from the public to pay for their equipment and facilities. Much of the money comes from walkers they have previously rescued, who have more reason than most to be grateful for the unique skills and dedication of the teams.
From Viking confrontations to civil war skirmishes to Jacobite rebellions, Lancashire has seen plenty of bloody battles. While it is not as rich in battlefields as neighbouring Yorkshire and has few modern-day reminders of the events that took place there, each of the sieges, skirmishes and battles tells a small part of the history of the county and the country. Here are the major encounters on Lancastrian soil over the course of more than a thousand years.
Battle of Whalley, 798. A major battle between the Vikings and Northumberland forces around the River Ribble near Clitheroe in which many, including Alric, were slain.
Siege of Hoghton Tower, 1643. A brief but explosive Civil War siege of this Royalist-held castle between Preston and Blackburn ended with the Parliamentarians accidentally setting off their gunpowder, killing many. The Tower is open to the public for tours and also hosts weddings, film shoots and corporate events.
Siege of Thurland Castle, 1643. A series of minor sieges over four months ended with Parliamentarians flushing out Royalist men. The castle, near Tunstall, has now been developed into luxury apartments. Around the same time there was a similar Siege of Hornby Castle, a few miles south. The castle is now privately owned.
Siege of Lathom House, 1644 - 5. Another siege of a Royalist stronghold, this time by several thousand Parliamentarians. The house near Ormskirk was well fortified and held for months before it was surrendered in late 1645. It was later destroyed, though a new Lathom House took its place.
The Storming of Bolton, 1644. Royalist forces from Lathom House joined this attack by Royalist commander and King Charles I’s nephew Prince Rupert on the town of Bolton, killing at least a thousand. A week later, Rupert’s men went south to overcome brief Parliamentarian resistance at the Siege of Liverpool.
First Battle of Preston, 1648. A key battle in the Second Civil War, in which a Scottish army travelling south in support of King Charles I was defeated by the Parliamentarians on Ribbleton Moor. Preston’s Harris Museum has material on the battle.
Battle of Winwick Pass, 1648. Surviving Royalist and Scottish forces we re finished off soon after Preston in this brutal battle near Warrington. Oliver Crom well’s Parliamentarians claimed a thousand dead and double that number captured.
Second Battle of Preston, 1715. One of the last battles fought on English soil, between the Jacobites and government forces. Savage fighting in the town and around the River Ribble ended in defeat for the Jacobites.
Although not technically a battle, Lancashire’s list is added to by the Peterloo Massacre or the Encounter of St Peter’s Fields. Here, in August 1819, a gathering of around 60,000 people campaigning for universal suffrage and other reforms was brutally broken up by government cavalry, who killed at least 15 and wounded hundreds. It is sometimes called the Battle of Peterloo in ironic reference to the Battle of Waterloo four years earlier. St Peter’s Square in Manchester has a plaque marking the event, though a campaign is ongoing for a more substantial commemoration.
The official coat of arms of the modern administrative county of Lancashire incorporates three emblems of the famous red rose on a gold shield. To either side are lions standing on their hind legs with forepaws on the shield, while above on the crest is another lion on all fours on a golden wreath. Emblazoned underneath is Lancashire’s official motto - In Concilio Consilium. Critics of some of the council’s decisions over the years may consider its loose translation - ‘In Council is Wisdom’ - to be a little immodest.
An alternative Lancashire coat of arms, designed by scurrilous folk over the border in Yorkshire, presents a rather different view of the county. Its design incorporates the common Lancastrian clichés of a pair of clogs and a jug of ale, together with a bug (like Lancastrians, in their view, a nuisance) and an owl (because they are fond of the dark, apparently). The design was a riposte to a similar joke by Lancastrians, who gave their friends across the Pennines a coat of arms that included motifs of a fly (because it, like Yorkshiremen, will drink with anyone) and a magpie (because it talks endlessly).
Lancashire is not the only county claiming rights to the black pudding, but the red rose county does proudly call itself home to the original and best examples of this distinctive food.
Blood sausages like black pudding are thought to date back to Greek or Roman times, when rudimentary versions were eaten for their nutritional value and to make the most of every last bit of slaughtered animals. The sausages as we know them probably spread across England with monks from Europe, where many countries still have their own popular versions of the delicacy. They evolved and remained particularly popular in Lancashire, where competition among specialist producers is now fierce, each convinced that their particular secret recipe is the best. The black pudding’s headquarters is Bury, home to dozens of producers in the late 19th century and still the place to find several, especially at the town’s market.
Specialist producers thrive because making black pudding at home is not easily done - even if you have the stomach for it. Pigs’ blood is difficult to obtain unless you have animals of your own to take to an abattoir, so most people prefer to buy their black pudding in cooked rings, ready to be sliced up and reheated, gently so it doesn’t break up. The pudding is originally cooked with a range of filler ingredients like pork fat, oatmeal, onions and bread, plus seasonings that often include pepper, mace or coriander. Cooked until the point at which it solidifies on cooling, the mixture is then pushed into casings, much as a sausage is prepared, and then boiled up for another ten minutes or so.
Black pudding has long had a reputation as a cheap and rustic food, most commonly eaten as part of a fry-up breakfast. But it is much more versatile than that and is now enjoying something of a renaissance, appearing on the menus of upmarket restaurants across Lancashire, and often paired with pork, lamb or fish.
Blackpudding’s popularity is such that Lancashire even has a sporting event dedicated to the delicacy: the World Black Pudding Throwing Championships. Held each year in Ramsbottom near Manchester, the event’s organisers set up a stack of Yorkshire puddings and invite participants to knock as many of them down as possible with a throw of a black pudding, wrapped up in ladies’ tights to stop it disintegrating. As a sporting discipline it’s probably one of the least prestigious in which to be called a world champion, but as food fights go it’s pretty spectacular - and it certainly reinforces Lancastrians’ feelings of superiority over their Yorkshire counterparts.
A recipe using black pudding
100 g (half a ring) of black pudding
8 scallops
1 red onion, finely sliced
1 tbsp unsalted butter
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Olive oil
Water
Gently fry the sliced red onion in a little olive oil until it is caramelised. Put a heavy frying pan on a low heat and add roughly half the butter. Slice the black pudding into eight even rounds, and once the butter has melted, add them to the pan. Leave for a few minutes on the same gentle heat and turn. When they are warmed through, remove and keep warm.
Turn the heat under the pan up to high, and when it is very hot add the rest of the butter with a drop of olive oil to stop it burning. Season the scallops on both sides with salt and pepper, add them to the pan and sear for a minute and a half on each side, only moving them to flip them over. Remove and place four scallops on top of four slices of black pudding on each of two plates. Now add a couple of tablespoons of water to the caramelised red onion and turn up the heat to quickly boil and reduce slightly. Drizzle this over the scallops and black pudding. Serve with salad leaves for a starter, or mashed potato for a more substantial supper.
Perhaps with William Gladstone and David Lloyd George, Sir Robert Peel is the most significant of all the politicians to have been born in Lancashire. Prime Minister for more than five years over two terms, he was born into immense wealth yet became a committed social reformer - a rare combination in 19th-century British politics.
Peel’s father had made much of his money from Lancashire’s growing textile industry, and lived at Bury when Robert was born in 1788. After he was educated at Harrow and Oxford University, his father’s influence and money bought him a Tory seat in parliament at the age of just 21. He cut his teeth in politics as Under-Secretary for War and the colonies and then Chief Secretary for Ireland, but it was as Home Secretary from 1822 that he first made his mark. Embarking on a major overhaul of criminal law and prisons, he cut the number of crimes that were punishable by death and improved conditions and education for inmates. In 1829 he created the London Metropolitan Police, the first organised police force in the world and an idea that soon spread around UK cities and the world. Peelers and bobbies are both nicknames for policemen that derive from his name.
After several years in opposition when the Tory government fell in 1830, Peel was asked by King William IV to become Prime Minister, though he resigned a year later after being frustrated by his party’s inability to get acts through parliament. Returning again in 1841, he now embarked on his second great phase of reform. First came the Mines Act, which put an end to women and children working underground, and then the Factory Act, which limited the hours they could work in factories and raised safety standards. His reforms had a particular impact in his home county, where women and very young children had previously toiled in virtual slavery in the mills, weaving sheds and factories. At a time when many in Britain were out of work, Peel also took steps to improve international trade and economic recovery.
In 1845 Peel turned to repealing the Corn Laws, which had been brought in to protect British agriculture but which led to huge suffering when harvests failed, especially in Ireland. Despite opposition from landowners and fellow Tories, Peel insisted that foreign grain be allowed in to ease the famine, and after months of debate he eventually gathered enough support to force his repeal through. Later the same day, his party split over the issue and weakened, Peel was defeated on another bill and soon resigned. He never held office again, and died four years later, after falling from his horse in London.
It is easy to over-estimate the scale of Peel’s reform - conditions for many workers remained dreadful, and some historians argue that his changes we re politically rather than socially motivated. But it is a measure of his commitment to social justice that on several occasions Peel put his humanitarian principles before his party, aware that his measures would cripple his own leadership. His popularity among the British working and middle classes was confirmed by the large sums of money raised from public subscriptions for a statue in Manchester and a Peel Tower on Holcombe Hill near Bury after his death. Here, as in several other British towns, there is also a pub named in his honour, and Bury’s football club remains almost certainly the only one in England to have a mascot inspired by a politician - Robbie the Bobbie.
Although Lancashire’s reputation for an unwelcoming climate is largely undeserved, it has probably had more than its fair share of extreme weather over the years. Here are some of the more noteworthy meteorological happenings over the last four centuries.
1616 |
The legendary ‘Lambard’s Flood’ decimates much of Manchester |
|
1662 |
Hailstones ‘as big as ordinary apples’fall on Ormskirk, according to the diary of a local vicar. ‘All except the ignorant were much terrified, thinking it had been the Day of Judgment.’ |
|
1776 |
Vibrations from an earthquake in Manchester are so strong that church bells are set ringing around the town |
|
Gale force winds snuff out gas lamps in the larger towns and topple masonry, killing several people |
||
1823 |
The lower slopes of the Pennines are covered in snow in June |
|
1839 |
A hurricane wrecks several Lancashire ports, sinking or driving ashore dozens of ships |
|
1866 |
A flood swamps Manchester and Salford after the River Irwell bursts its banks |
|
1880 |
Old Trafford in Manchester establishes its reputation as cricket’s soggiest ground after a entire Test match is lost to rain for the first time |
|
1893 |
Preston gets 1.25 inches (32 mm) of rain in five minutes in August - still a national record |
|
1903 |
A train on the Furness Railway derails as storms sweep much of Lancashire |
|
1939 |
The coldest Christmas in decades sees parts of the Mersey covered with ice |
|
1940 |
Several days of smog coat Manchester; the effects are so foul that locals suspect German chemical warfare |
|
1946 |
One of the harshest winters on record results in snow lying on the ground in Lancashire virtually continuously from December to March |
|
1963 |
Another fiercely cold winter freezes lakes and canals across the county |
|
1964 |
Hailstones the size of golf balls rain down on several East Lancashire towns |
|
1972 |
A minor earthquake topples chimneys in Accrington, Leyland and Rawtenstall |
|
1976 |
The summer, one of the hottest on record, brings less than 0.4 inches (10 mm) of rain in many towns in August |
|
1982 |
The coldest January for a century freezes parts of the Mersey and the sea at Southport |
Lancastrians like to believe that Britain revolves around their county - and they may be right. The village of Dunsop Bridge in the Forest of Bowland lays claim to being the centre of gravity of the British Isles - the point at which a flat cut-out of the country would balance on a pinhead. The exact spot, calculated by the Ordnance Survey, is on a peat bog on Brennand Farm a few miles north of the village.
But since determining a country’s centre can be done in other ways, like working out the mid-point of its line of longitude, other places rival Dunsop Bridge for Britain’s title. Among these is the town of Haltwhistle in Northumberland, which boasts about its claim on signs and banners around the town. Dunsop Bridge is much more modest, with only a small plaque near a telephone box commemorating the village’s pivotal importance.
Lancashire has long been a popular location for film-makers, and it continues to market itself heavily to UK and US studios as a versatile setting for all sorts of movies. Here are 20 popular films to have been set or filmed at least partly in the county’s cities, towns and countryside.
Brief Encounter (1945). The film’s most famous scenes were shot at Carnforth Station, and fans of the film still visit in their droves.
Hobson’s Choice (1954). Non-studio scenes were filmed in Salford.
The Entertainer (1960). Shot in both Blackpool and Morecambe.
Whistle Down the Wind (1961). Filmed in Downham, near Clitheroe.
A Kind of Loving (1962). Classic Alan Bates movie, shot in Lancashire locations including Bolton, Manchester and Preston.
Yanks (1979). Wartime drama shot in various spots around Manchester.
Chariots of Fire (1981). Scenes set in the British Embassy in Paris were filmed at Liverpool town hall.
Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983). Features scenes shot in Colne.
A Private Function (1984). Scenes shot in Barnoldswick.
The Hunt for Red October (1990). Some scenes filmed in Liverpool.
Richard III (1995). Modern update of Shakespeare’s play, featuring scenes shot in Carnforth.
Whatever Happened to Harold Smith? (1999). Shot on Blackpool Pleasure Beach.
There’s Only One Jimmy Grimble (2000). School scenes shot in Hulme and Ormskirk and stadium scenes at Maine Road in Manchester.
The 51st State (2001). Filmed largely on location in Liverpool and Manchester.
The Parole Officer (2001). Largely shot on location in Lancashire, including Manchester, Liverpool and Blackpool.
24 Hour Party People (2002). Film about Manchester’s music scene, largely shot in the city.
Possession (2002). Scenes shot at Leighton Hall near Carnforth.
Alfie (2004). Liverpool and Manchester both doubled for New York in this remake of the classic film.
Frozen (2005). Drama set around Morecambe Bay and filmed in and around Fleetwood.
Miss Potter (2006). Various southern Lake District locations featured in this biopic of Beatrix Potter, many of them around Coniston Water.
It is a sign of how much Lancashire’s traditional boundaries have been toyed with that none of the most northerly, southerly, easterly or westerly points now lie inside the modern-day administrative borders.
Two of the four extreme points of the ceremonial county are both now part of the administrative county of Cumbria. The village of Hawkshead in the Lake District National Park is the northernmost settlement, lying just above Coniston. And the westernmost point is Barrow-in-Furness or, more precisely, the adjunct area of Vickerstown on the Isle of Walney, built to accommodate workers at Barrow.
About 100 miles (161 km) from Hawkshead, the southern tip of Lancashire lies in the village of Hale, 10 miles (16 km) southeast of the centre of Liverpool and 4 miles (6 km) southwest of Widnes. After the rejigging of county boundaries, it was placed in the far reaches of Cheshire for administrative purposes. The easternmost settlement wholly in Lancashire is Littleborough near Roch dale, now part of Greater Manchester. Another town on roughly the same line of longitude, Todmorden, is divided into Lancashire and Yorkshire by the traditional county boundary, the River Calder, while another, Laneshaw Bridge near Colne, lies almost as far east and remains wholly part of Lancashire.
Lancashire has two of England’s 35 Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty - landscapes that are so distinctive and important that they deserve special measures to safeguard them. They are:
Arnside and Silverside
Limestone hills, ancient woodlands and the shores of Morecambe Bay characterise this small, 29 square mile (75 sq km) site along the border of Lancashire and Cumbria. It’s a popular spot for walkers and wildlife lovers in particular.
Forest of Bowland
Forest here refers to the area’s past as a royal hunting ground rather than its trees, and much of this 312 square mile (808 sq km) site is a wilderness of heather moorland, bogs and green valleys, dotted with farms and small villages. Fells in the area include Pendle Hill, famous for its associations with witchcraft and the birth of the Quaker movement.
Despite its large expanses of natural beauty, Lancashire’s modern boundaries contain none of Britain’s 15 National Parks. Measured by its traditional borders, however, its northernmost section takes in the southwest corner of the Lake District National Park.
Designated in 1951, the park covers 885 square miles (2,292 sq km), of which perhaps a quarter falls into traditional Lancashire. That portion includes the popular tourist towns of Hawkshead and Coniston, and two of the Lake District’s 18 lakes, Coniston Water and Windermere. Here are some more figures about the Lake District National Park:
41,831 |
permanent residents |
|
17,937 |
household spaces |
|
5,724 |
miles (9,212 km) of watercourses |
|
2,225 |
miles (3,580 km) of public footpaths and bridleways |
|
3,210 |
height in feet (978 m) of the highest mountain, Scafell Pike |
|
1,740 |
listed buildings |
|
275 |
scheduled monuments |
|
132 |
sites of special scientific interest |
|
80 |
parishes |
|
47 |
residents per square mile |
|
40 |
miles (64 km) length from north to south |
|
33 |
miles (53 km) width from east to west |
|
23 |
square miles (60 sq km) of still water in the lakes |
|
21 |
conservation areas |
|
10.5 |
length in miles (17 km) of the longest lake, Windermere |
|
9 |
registered parks and gardens of historic interest |
|
8 |
national nature reserves |
|
3 |
settlements with a population of more than 3,000 (Windermere / Bowness, Keswick and Ambleside) |
No item of clothing has identified Lancastrian men or their Yorkshire counterparts quite so readily over the centuries as the flat cap - and although it is more rarely seen these days, it remains a powerful emblem of the working class north.
The classic flat cap is usually made from tweed or wool, with a little brim at the front and a higher peak at the back. Its use may date back as far as the 15th century, but it undoubtedly had its heyday in the industrial England of the 19th and early 20th centuries, when it was hugely popular among workers in Lancashire’s mills, mines and factories. Photos of workplaces and leisure activities of the period invariably depict a sea of caps on the heads of just about every man and boy.
The flat cap was never the sole preserve of either the north or the working class - it was worn across Britain, and sported by the landed gentry at play, too - but along with symbols like clogs, whippets and racing pigeons the association has stuck, and it has become something of a stereotype of the county. The dozens of hat manufacturers that once served the Lancashire market are now long gone, replaced by cheaper manufacturing centres in far-flung corners of the developing world, but the cap has enjoyed something of a renaissance in the last few years. Sported by celebrities and featured in famous designers’ collections, it has become popular among young urban types in particular. To many rural Lancastrians like farmers, however, its no-nonsense coverage and warmth never went out of fashion.
Although it is more usually associated with the Lake District these days, the shores of Windermere actually form part of the northern boundary of what is often called ‘proper’ Lancashire. The lake is also home to the county’s most popular tourist attraction - Windermere Lake Cruises. Hosting nearly 1.2 million customers in 2008, the lake’s ferries are also the fourth most popular paid-for attraction in England. Two more Lancashire attractions, Liverpool’s Tate Gallery and Maritime Museum, also attracted more than 1 million visitors in 2008, and like many of the museums and galleries on this list, their numbers have swelled in recent years by virtue of their free admission. Liverpool, in fact, is home to six of the ten leading attractions.
This list of top tourist attractions is based on research by the VisitEngland agency. Some caution is required, as not all attractions are willing or able to supply visitor numbers, and the list is therefore missing obviously popular attractions like Blackpool Pleasure Beach. With that caveat, VisitEngland’s top ten attractions in Lancashire are:
Attraction |
Visitors in 2008 |
|
1 Windermere Lake Cruises, Bowness |
1,199,216 |
|
2 Tate Liverpool |
1,088,504 |
|
3 Merseyside Maritime Museum |
1,020,712 |
|
4 Liverpool Museum |
787,767 |
|
5 Manchester Art Gallery |
462,166 |
|
6 International Slavery Museum, Liverpool |
414,480 |
|
7 Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool |
396,356 |
|
8 Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, Liverpool |
364,347 |
|
9 Blackpool Zoo |
337,000 |
|
10 Cuerden Valley Park |
275,000 |
Like most counties of England, Lancashire is steeped in customs, festivals and celebrations that are observed year in, year out. Here are nine of the most interesting and popular annual traditions, some of them dating back centuries.
Pace Egging and Plays, Easter
Once popular across England, pace egging endures most strongly in Lancashire and Yorkshire. Derived from the Latin pasch meaning Easter, pace eggs are eggs decorated especially for the occasion, then either eaten or given to pace eggers, who would walk in procession through towns and villages. Pace egg plays celebrate the arrival of spring and consequent rebirth, dramatised by an actor dressed as St George slaying various villains symbolising winter. The tradition thrives in Bury and surrounding towns and villages, where pace eggers perform on the weekend before Easter, as well as in several towns and villages on the Furness peninsula. Pace egg rolling meanwhile takes place on hills in Bury, Preston and Ulverston on Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Easter Monday respectively.
Bacup Coconutters Dance, Easter Saturday
An odd annual event in which the Britannia Coconut Dancers blacken their faces and don an eccentric ensemble of dark jumper, white sash, black clogs and red, white and blue kilt to dance around the old mill town, accompanied by a marching band. They have round pieces of wood - the ‘coconuts’ - on their hands, waist and knees to make a rhythmic sound as they go, and are marshalled by a ‘whipper-in’. The origins of the event are uncertain - some see unsettling connotations with the custom of blackface minstrelsy, but others link the dancers’ appearance to a tradition of disguising oneself from evil spirits, or even local coal mining.
The Black Knight of Ashton, Easter Monday
Another eccentric tradition whereby an effigy of a black knight - sometimes called the black lad - was carried around the town of Ashton-under-Lyne on a horse and jeered at by crowds before being taken down and pelted with mud and stones. The knight is supposed to represent a tyrannical 15th-century lord of the manor, though there is little historical evidence for this. After degenerating into a rather violent and drunken occasion, the tradition was first suspended and then refined into a more civilised general pageant. It died out again in the 1950s but has recently been revived as a festival for the town.
Whit Walks, Whit Friday or Sunday
The tradition of the Whit Walks - church - organised processions through local towns, accompanied by bands and followed by great merriment - was once popular across Lancashire and Yorkshire. It involved Sunday School children in particular, dressed up in new clothes and led by a May or Rose queen and her attendants. Although the walks have declined in popularity, they are still followed in plenty of places, including Manchester, Ashton-under-Lyne and Mossley.
Brass Band Contests, Whit Friday
An annual celebration of brass music, in which dozens of bands play at various spots between Oldham in Lancashire and Saddleworth in Yorkshire. Assessed by judges, they then move on to the next contest before an overall winner is decided. The location on the border between the red and white rose counties encourages fierce cross-Pennine competition in particular, though bands now come from far afield. The event grew out of the annual Whit Walk here.
Warrington Walking Day, early July
A Whit Walk-style parade that sees churches, Scouts and other local organisations march through the town with banners, accompanied by bands. The day was first organised by a local vicar as a more wholesome form of entertainment than rival attractions such as horse racing, and was first held in the 1830s, though it wasn’t until nearly a century later that various Christian denominations agreed to march together on the same route. It is held on the Friday nearest to 1 July and still attracts thousands of participants.
Preston Guild, late August and early September
Staged every 20 years, the Preston Guild is a major event in the city. It dates back to the 12th century, when a charter was granted to Preston’s guild - a group of merchants who met occasionally to admit new members and celebrate their achievements with banquets and entertainments. The guild has long since lost its powers and responsibilities, but the tradition of a city-wide party continues. The first guild of the 21st century falls in 2012. The phrase ‘once every Preston Guild’ is sometimes used in Lancashire to describe something that doesn’t happen very often.
Urswick Rushbearing, late September
Rushbearing dates from the times when churches had mud floors covered with rushes that were changed once a year amid great ceremony and celebration. The tradition died out in many places when floors became paved, but it continues to be marked in several places including Urswick on the Furness peninsula of Lancashire. Local children carry the rushes through the town to St Mary and St Michael’s Church, accompanied by a band and clergy and led by a rushbearing queen. It takes place on the Sunday nearest to St Michael’s Day, 29 September.
Mischief Night, 31 October or 4 November
This tradition has died out in most places, but it perseveres in some Lancashire towns. It began as a day on which children could play tricks on their elders without fear of punishment, but has lately become more of an excuse for a night of vandalism that keeps police on their toes.
Coal mining in Britain has always been more a way of life than a job. In Lancashire, it dominated large sections of the county for decades, the mines providing work for generations of families and shaping their nearby towns and villages. Now, for better or worse, the industry has gone - but it remains a part of a history of which many Lancastrians are fiercely proud.
From the 16th century until the Industrial Revolution, mining here had been small-scale, a few shallow pits first turning out enough coal for local people’s needs, then producing extra for transport further afield. As the country industrialised, however, it expanded into a vast enterprise, the soaring demand opening up new pits and sending miners deeper and deeper underground in search of more coal. Lancashire’s cotton mills were particularly thirsty for fuel, and at one time the county’s coalfield was the most prolific in Britain, stretching some 500 square miles (1,295 sq km) from Burnley in the north to the fringes of Manchester in the southeast and Ormskirk in the west. The three hundred or so collieries were mostly small, but they employed tens of thousands of men and boys between them.
After the First World War, recovery of coal by hand was gradually succeeded by machine mining, and pit ponies by mechanical haulage. It made the miners’ work slightly easier, but it remained a backbreaking job, carried out over long shifts in cramped, filthy conditions and extremes of hot and cold.
The work was fearsomely dangerous, too. Many thousands of people died in Lancashire’s mines, from underground fires, floods, accidents and, most common of all, explosions. The worst of them occurred at a pit at the Hulton Colliery at Westhoughton between Wigan and Bolton, known locally as the Pretoria Pit, in 1910. A build-up of gas was ignited by a faulty lamp and led to an explosion that killed 344 people, including many men and boys from the same families. Major disasters continued until the 1960s, when safety regulations and techniques finally helped to reduce the dreadful risk.
By this time the industry had been nationalised and Lancashire’s mines had fallen to around 40, the rest having been exhausted of their coal or proved uneconomical. When the government tried to merge or close many of the remaining pits in 1984, it prompted protests that led to Lancashire’s several thousand miners going out on strike. The area was moderate compared to the northeast, where clashes between the miners and police turned more violent, but the strike nevertheless caused enormous hardship for those who joined it, and tension for those who eventually broke it by going back to work. After the strike was finally wound down the next year, Lancashire’s remaining mines did not last long. The last of the county’s pits to close was Parkside Colliery at Newton-le-Willows in 1993, and although coal reserves remain, there is now no deep mining anywhere in the county.
The jolt of closures was not as great in Lancashire as it was in counties like Yorkshire and Durham, where there were many more pits, but the end of mining has undoubtedly left a scar on the coalfield region. Some of the towns that turned out generations of miners have built other industries to replace coal, but the sense of anger over the decline of the industry is still keenly felt elsewhere.
The best place to learn more about Lancashire’s mining heritage is the Astley Green Colliery Museum in a village just east of Leigh. The only colliery in the area to have survived demolition, it was preserved after is closure in 1970 by the council and a group of enthusiasts. It now opens on a few afternoons a week to display its collection of mining equipment and memorabilia (tel 01942 828121 or visit www.agcm.org.uk for times). Another poignant reminder of the coal era is the male voice choir at Parkside, still going strong long after the end of the mine that brought its members together.
The complicated and controversial reorganisation of county boundaries in 1974, plus subsequent government rejigging, has left the modern administrative county of Lancashire with 14 districts. Together with their administrative headquarters, they are:
Blackburn with Darwen (Blackburn)
Blackpool (Blackpool)
Burnley (Burnley)
Chorley (Chorley)
Fylde (Lytham St Annes)
Hyndburn (Accrington)
Lancaster (Lancaster)
Pendle (Nelson)
Preston (Preston)
Ribble Valley (Clitheroe)
Rossendale (Rawtenstall)
South Ribble (Leyland)
West Lancashire (Ormskirk)
Wyre (Poulton-le-Fylde)
Lancashire has been home to plenty of the country’s great inventors over the years, most notably during the Industrial Revolution. From the pioneering to the peculiar, here are a dozen of the county’s most interesting inventions.
James Bullough of Accrington was, with William Kenworthy, the inventor of the Lancashire loom, a power loom that helped make the county England’s weaving centre. He worked for some time in Blackburn, but was driven out by workers who thought - correctly as it turned out - that his design would put them out of a job.
As the chief designer for aircraft manufacturer Avro between the two world wars, Roy Chadwick, born in Farnworth, designed more than two hundred planes including the famous Lancaster Bomber. He died in one of his planes that had been wrongly serviced.
Bolton-born Samuel Crompton built on the work of other Industrial R evolution pioneers to create a new machine that further revolutionised cotton in Lancashire: the spinning mule, named because it was a hybrid of Richard Arkwright’s spinning frame and the spinning jenny (see below).
Thomas Edmondson, a Lancaster-born station master, designed the Edmondson Railway Ticket - the small piece of cardboard carrying details of passengers’ journeys that became the standard ticket across the growing rail network from the 1840s.
By picking up the ball and running with it when he should have been kicking it, Salford-born William Webb Ellis is widely credited with inventing the sport of rugby, though the story may be apocryphal.
By day George Garrett was a clergyman in his home city of Manchester, but in his spare time he designed the world’s first mechanically driven submarine. Like many inventions it was somewhat flawed, and his early subs were both unstable and unbearably hot inside.
Born at Stanhill and living in Blackburn, James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny in 1764. The device made it much easier for workers to produce yarn, making Hargreaves, with Arkwright, chief among the pioneers of the Industrial Revolution.
Eric Laithwaite, born in Atherton, designed the world’s first ever magnetically levitating train - the MagLev. After initial interest the government pulled out of a project in the UK, but Laithwaite’s invention was adopted elsewhere.
John Mercer was a Great Harwood-born textile chemist who invented a process to give materials like cotton a lustrous, silky finish by treating it with a caustic solution. It was refined after his death and given the name of mercerisation in his honour.
Among many other achievements in paleontology, Lancaster-born Richard Owen coined the word dinosaur, from the Greek words deinos (terrible and powerful) and sauros (lizard). He was also one of the founders of the Natural History Museum in London.
James Sumner was born in Leyland and went on to found the motor firm that took the town’s name. Fascinated by motorised transport, he designed a mechanised tricycle before inventing the slightly more practical steam-powered lawnmower.
Thomas Wilkinson, born in Ormskirk and a vicar at Kirkby in Liverpool, invented the gold balances, weighing scales for gold. Kirkby has a pub called the Gold Balance named after him.
Although he was born in Yorkshire and lived for much of his life in Cheshire, there are few better chroniclers of life in 19th-century industrial Lancashire than Samuel Laycock. Born in 1826, he worked in a cotton mill from the age of just nine, and started writing poems in the 1850s. He became known as a people’s poet, his work full of everyday working class experiences that were told without artifice in authentic Lancashire dialect and intended to be sung as well as read. Suffering from ill health, he later moved to the Lancashire coast, where he died in 1897.
‘Bowton’s Yard’, one of his most famous poems, is about a courtyard of grim workers’ houses in Stalybridge on the Lancashire-Cheshire border. The yard was pulled down in the 1960s, leaving the poem as a memorial to a vanished way of life in the old cotton towns. Full of close observation, humour and affection, it has been credited by Tony Warren, the creator of Coronation Street, as one of the inspirations for his famous soap.
At number one i’ Bowton’s yard, mi gronny keeps a skoo,
But hasn’t mony scholars yet, hoo’s only one or two;
They sen th’ owd woman’s rather cross - well, well, it may be so;
Aw know hoo box’d me rarely once, an’ pood mi ears an’ o.
At number two lives widow Burns, hoo weshes clooas for folk,
Their Billy, that’s her son, gets jobs at wheelin’ coke;
They sen hoo coarts wi’ Sam-o’-Neds, ‘at lives at number three;
It may be so, aw conno tell, it matters nowt to me.
At number three, reet facin’ th’ pump, Ned Grimshaw keeps a shop;
He’s Eccles Cakes, an’ gingerbread, an’ treacle beer, an’ pop;
He sells oat-cakes an’ o, does Ned, he has boath soft an’ hard,
An’ everybody buys off him ‘at lives i’ Bowton’s yard.
At number four Jack Blunderick lives; he goes to th’ mill an’ weayves;
An’ then, at th’ week-end, when he’s time, he pows a bit an’ shaves;
He’s badly off, is Jack, poor lad; he’s rayther lawm, they sen,
An’ his childer keep him deawn a bit - aw think they’n nine or ten.
At number five aw live mysel’, wi’ owd Susannah Grimes,
But dunno loike so very weel - hoo turns me eawt sometimes;
An’ when awm in there’s ne’er no leet, aw have to ceawer i’ th’ dark;
Aw conno pay mi lodgin’ brass, because awm eawt o’ wark.
At number six, next dur to us, an’ close o’ th’ side o’ th’ speawt,
Owd Susie Collins sells mo’ drink, but hoo’s welly allus abeawt;
But heaw it is that is the case awm sure aw conno tell,
Hoo happen maks it very sweet, an’ sups it o hersel!
At number seven there’s nob’dy lives, they left it yesterday,
Th’ bum-baylis coom an’ mark’d their things, and took ‘em o away;
They took ‘em in a donkey-cart - aw know newt wheer they went –
Aw reckon they’n bin ta’en and sowd because they owed some rent.
At number eight - they’re Yawshur folk - there’s only th’ mon an’ woife,
Aw think aw ne’er seed nicer folk nor these i’ o mi life;
Yo’ll never yer ‘em foin’ eawt, loike lots o’ married folk,
They allus seem good-tempered like, an’ ready wi’ a joke.
At number nine th’ owd cobbler lives - th’ owd chap ‘at mends my shoon,
He’s getting very weak an’ done, he’ll ha’ to leov us soon;
He reads his Bible every day, an’ sings just loike a lark,
He says he’s practisin’ for heaven - he’s welly done his wark.
At number ten James Bowton lives - he’s th’ noicest heawse i’ th’ row;
He’s allus plenty o’ sum’at t’ eat, an lots o’ brass an’ o;
An’ when he rides an’ walks abeawt he’s dress’d up very fine,
But he isn’t hawve as near to heaven as him at number nine.
At number ‘leven mi uncle lives - aw co him uncle Tum,
He goes to concerts, up an’ deawn, an’ plays a kettle-drurn;
I’ bands o’ music, an’ sich things, he seems to tak’ a pride,
An’ allus maks as big a noise as o i’ th’ place beside.
At number twelve, an’ th’ end o’ th’ row, Joe Stiggins deals i’ ale;
He’s sixpenny, an’ fourpenny, dark-coloured, an’ he’s pale;
But aw ne’er touch it, for aw know it’s ruined mony a bard –
Awm th’ only chap as doesn’t drink ‘at lives i’ Bowton’s yard.
An’ neaw awve dune aw’ll say good-bye, an’ leave yo’ for awhile;
Aw know aw haven’t towd mi tale i’ sich a first-rate style;
But iv yo’re pleased awm satisfied, an’ ax for no reward
For tellin’ who mi nayburs are ‘at live i’ Bowton’s Yard.
Glossary: gronny (line 1) means granny; skoo (1) means school; hoo (2) means she; pood (4) means pulled; o (4) means all; wheelin’ coke (6) means transporting coal; sen (7) means say; pows (14) means pours or drinks; lawm (15) means lame; ceawer (19) means shower; speawt (21) means spout; bum-baylis (26) means bum-bailiffs; Yawshur (29) means Yorkshire; foin’ eawt (31) means falling out; shoon (33) means shoes; welly done his wark (36) means really done his work.
Lancashire has produced many fine writers over the years, and it may well have helped to shape the most famous one of all: William Shakespeare.
Very little is known of Shakespeare’s life before his late twenties, and efforts to piece together his ‘lost’ years are fraught with difficulty. But a case has been growing among scholars that from his late teens until his arrival in London in his late twenties, he may have spent several years in Lancashire at two of its famous ancestral houses.
Shakespeare’s journey here would certainly make sense if, as is now commonly claimed, Shakespeare was a Catholic. At a time of widespread suspicion of the religion, Lancashire was a stronghold for Catholicism and a relatively safe haven for its followers. Whether Shakespeare left his home town of Stratford because of the threat of persecution or simply to secure work will probably never be known, but what is now fairly clear is that he stayed for some time at Hoghton Tower near Preston. The Hoghtons were known to have taken in other Catholics, and Shakespeare may well have been given shelter here in return for duties like teaching at the house. He would have been able to soak up knowledge and writing influences from books in the house’s library, perhaps joining in the performances of theatrical or musical works in the banqueting hall too.
One of the few undisputed facts in the story is that Alexander Hoghton’s will made provision for a ‘William Shakeshafte’, who - in an age when surnames were flexible and often disguised, in this case to avoid detection as a Catholic - could well have been Shakespeare. On his death, he was to be looked after by Hoghton’s friend Thomas Hesketh, than at Rufford Old Hall, 15 miles (24 km) southwest of Hoghton. Hoghton also bequeathed to Hesketh his ‘instruments and play clothes’, so it is likely that Shakespeare continued his performing in Rufford’s great hall, and possibly further afield with local groups. Some scholars detect aspects of the countryside around Hoghton Tower and Rufford Old Hall in some of Shakespeare’s plays, though separating these from other influences on his work is very difficult. More likely is that Shakespeare arrived in London with one of the theatrical troupes with which he performed in Lancashire, thus starting his career as a playwright as well as an actor.
A second literary claim to fame for Hoghton Tower is that it was visited nearly three centuries after Shakespeare by Charles Dickens, while on a tour of the region to research, among other things, his novel Hard Times. The house was very run-down at the time of his visit in 1854, and his stay there inspired Dickens to write a melancholy short story, George Silverman’s Explanation. Hoghton was largely restored soon afterwards, and it is now open to day visitors from July to September and on Bank Holiday weekends. Rufford Old Hall is owned by the National Trust and opened to the public between March and October. Both places occasionally host performances of plays by Shakespeare and others.
As well as being recognised by English Heritage as the best preserved of all of England’s old cotton towns, Bacup in Rossendale can lay claim to the smallest street in England. Measuring about 17 feet (5 m) from end to end, Elgin Street is home to just one building entrance and dates back to the early 19th century. It also held the record for the world’s shortest street until 2006 when, to much local disappointment, the town of Wick in Scotland claimed the honour from Guinness World Records for Ebenezer Place, which measures less than 7 feet (2 m) and has also housed a single building since it was created in 1887.
Lancashire has dozens of wonderful gardens, some of them part of grand country estates but a surprising number to be found in city or town centres. Here are ten of the county’s best, all open to the public at least some of the time.
Avenham Park, Preston. Classic Victorian public park next to the River Ribble, featuring fountains, a Japanese garden and trails. Preston’s Miller Park is also excellent. Visit www.avenhampark.com.
Cobble Hey, near Garstang. Peaceful and pretty country garden on a working farm, featuring woodland, ponds, orchards and rockeries and views over the Forest of Bowland.
Tel 01995 602643 or visit www.cobblehey.co.uk.
Cuerden Valley Park, near Bamber Bridge. Woodland, meadows, lakes, rivers and landscaped gardens all feature in this 650-acre (263 ha) park. There’s also a visitor centre, walking and cycle trails and remnants of the area’s industrial past.
Tel 01772 324436 or visit www.cuerdenvalleypark.org.uk.
Gresgarth Hall, Caton. Leading landscape designer Arabella Lennox-Boyd has developed the gardens of her country home here over the last 30 years, reviving terraced, themed, vegetable and water gardens. Usually open for one Sunday a month in the summer. Visit www.arabellalennoxboyd.com/gresgarth.
Leighton Hall Garden, near Carnforth. The extensive parkland of the Gothic Leighton Hall features herb and walled gardens, herbaceous borders and trails through woodland. There are great views north to the Lake District.
Tel 01524 734474 or visit www.leightonhall.co.uk.
Myerscough College Gardens, Bilsbarrow. At what was once the Lancashire College of Agriculture, the varied gardens are still maintained by students. There’s also a glasshouse of exotic plants and a tea room.
Tel 01995 642264 or visit www.myerscough.ac.uk.
Pendle Heritage Centre Garden, Barrowford. Neatly restored 18th-century walled garden, with an interesting little garden museum in an old potting shed.
Tel 01282 677152 or visit www.htnw.co.uk.
Rufford Old Hall Garden, near Ormskirk. The garden of this Tudor hall has been restored to its 19th-century state by the National Trust, and has lawns, topiary displays and garden trails.
Tel 01704 821254 or visit www.nationaltrust.org.uk.
Stanley Park, Blackpool. Several hundred acres of municipal parkland, landscaped for the town in the 1920s and featuring Italian, rose and remembrance gardens, water fountains and statues. There’s room for a visitor centre, golf course, bowling greens, boating lake and cricket pitch too.
Tel 01253 478478 or visit www.friendsofstanleypark.org.uk.
Williamson Park, Lancaster. 50-acre (20 ha) city-centre park landscaped by James Williamson in the 1870s on a quarry from which much of the stone for Lancaster’s buildings was mined. It features a large folly, the Ashton Memorial, added by Williamson’s son.
Tel 01524 33318 or visit www.williamsonpark.com.
Of all the thousands of parishes across England from which men set out to fight in the First World War, only a handful could claim to be ‘Thankful Villages’ - places to which all the men from there returned afterwards. The list was first drawn up by Arthur Mee in his King’s England guide to the counties of England in the 1930s, though subsequent research has added a dozen more parishes.
Of these, Lancashire has just two: Arkholme and Nether Kellet. Between them, they shared around 80 men who left for the war and came home again, and remarkably they are located within 5 miles (8 km) of each other, near Carnforth in the far north of the county.
The mascots of each of the 15 football league clubs in Lancashire and, where there is one, the story of his, her or its connection with the side.
Accrington Stanley - Winstanley
Blackburn Rovers - Roar the Lion
Blackpool - Bloomfield Bear, named after the club’s ground, Bloomfield Road
Bolton Wanderers - Lofty the Lion, named after one of the club’s most famous former players, Nat Lofthouse
Burnley - Bertie the Bee
Bury - Robbie the Bobbie, named after Sir Robert Peel,
Prime Minister and founder of the Metropolitan Police Force and born nearby
Everton - Changy the Elephant, named after the club’s sponsor, Chang; and Mr Toffee, inspired by the club’s nickname, the Toffees or Toffeemen. Toffee was once a speciality of Everton
Liverpool - Little Liver, named after the mythical bird that is the symbol of the city
Manchester City - Moonchester, named after Blue Moon, a popular song among the club’s fans
Manchester United - Fred the Red, a devil in honour of the club’s nickname, the Red Devils
Morecambe - Christie the Cat, named after the club’s old ground, Christie Park
Oldham Athletic - Chaddy the Owl in honour of the owl on Oldham’s town crest
Preston North End - Deepdale Duck, named after the club’s ground, Deepdale
Rochdale - Desmond the Dragon
Wigan Athletic - Stripey the Laticat, in honour of the club’s nickname, the Latics
There are strong rivalries over various foods in Lancashire - like cheese and black pudding to name just two - but the battle for supremacy between Chorley cakes and Eccles cakes is particularly fierce.
Both are small pastries stuffed with dried fruit - technically in fact not cakes at all - that are revered by the inhabitants of their respective towns and far and wide beyond. In Eccles, once a town in its own right but now part of Manchester’s sprawl, the cakes are thought to have first been launched on a commercial basis in the late 18th century, when James Birch’s shop on Vicarage Road started selling them. Recipes producing similar results date back even further, and there is evidence they were baked especially for religious festivals.
The reputation of Eccles cakes spread, first locally and then, as people of the town moved further afield, across the north. Sweet, buttery, filling and relatively cheap and easy to produce, they have endured while other local delicacies have disappeared. The leading manufacturer now is Lancashire Eccles Cakes, whose 70 staff turn out by hand more than half a million cakes a week for supermarkets and other outlets in the UK, as well as Lancashire ex-pats around the world. To many, the currant content means that Eccles cakes are known - with or without affection, depending on your taste - as ‘dead fly pies’ or ‘squashed fly cakes’.
20 miles (32 km) northwest, the town of Chorley has probably been enjoying its own cakes for just as long as Eccles, and now celebrates its most famous food with an annual Chorley Cake Street Fair, originally staged to see who could bake the biggest. To the untrained eye the two varieties of cake might seem very similar, but woe betide anyone in either town who argues that there are no differences. While Eccles recipes generally use flaky puff pastry, Chorley ones use shortcrust, making for a flatter and more substantial cake. Eccles cakes are much the sweeter of the two, with sugar usually dusted on top, while Chorley’s are more commonly eaten with a spread of butter, and perhaps some crumbly Lancashire cheese on the side.
Recipes for Eccles and Chorley cakes are closely guarded by their owners, each claiming a secret ingredient or technique that sets their finished cakes apart. Their popularity has also raised the question of whether any cakes baked commercially outside of the two towns can properly be called Eccles or Chorley cakes. Occasional moves have been made to have their production restricted - like champagne or parmesan - to their original homes, but so far they have come to little. And there is nothing, of course, to stop Lancastrians and others savouring their own versions.
A recipe for Eccles cakes
500 g flaky puff pastry
200 g currants
100 g soft brown sugar
50 g mixed candied peel
25 g butter
Half a teaspoon of nutmeg and / or allspice, to taste Plain flour
Milk or egg whites for glazing
Caster sugar for dusting
Gently melt the butter in a saucepan and stir in the sugar. Take it off the heat, and stir in the currants, candied peel and nutmeg or allspice. Dust a working surface with flour, and roll out the pastry on top until it is about quarter of an inch (0.5 cm) thick. Cut it into rounds of about 4 inches (10 cm) across - you should get about twelve cakes with these quantities.
Now place a heaped teaspoonful of your fruit mixture into the centre of each round. Lightly brush half the circumference with water. Draw the edges of the pastry together over the fruit mixture and seal. Flip it over and pat down with your palm until it’s flat again. Make a couple of slashes on the top of each. Brush lightly with milk or egg, and dust with caster sugar. Arrange on a greased baking tray, and bake in a hot oven (220°C / 425°F / gas mark 7) for about fifteen minutes, until slightly puffed up and browned at the edges. Cool on a wire rack.
For a rough approximation of this recipe for Chorley cakes, simply substitute the puff pastry for shortcrust and reduce the amount of sugar to a few tablespoons, with none scattered on top.
National Nature Reserves are areas of the country looked after by Natural England because of their special significance. They might have particularly rare or abundant wildlife, unusual and well preserved terrain or geology of particular interest, and all benefit from the extra care and protection that Reserve status confers. Just about all are at least partially open to the public, though it is worth checking restrictions before paying a special visit.
Of England’s 222 National Nature Reserves Lancashire has 11, though several of these are to be found in the corners of the county now known, to the ire of many Lancastrians, as Cumbria and Merseyside. They are:
Ainsdale Sand Dunes. Extensive network of dunes on the coast between Liverpool and Southport, home to dozens of plant species as well as rare lizards, newts and toads.
Blelham Bog. Small 5-acre (2 ha) site of bogs and wet woodland, home to rare insects. More usually part of the Lake District, but just inside Lancashire’s traditional borders.
Cabin Hill. Varied coastal terrain taking in sand flats, dunes, pasture and woodland and supporting a vast array of wildlife including natterjack toads.
Duddon Mosses. One of the best examples of raised mires in the country, home to marshy plants and birds including nightjar and curlew, at the head of the Duddon Estuary on Morecambe Bay.
Gait Barrows. Around 247 acres (100 ha) of limestone pavement plus associated bird and insect life and flora, close to the north end of Morecambe Bay.
North Fen. Small peatland reserve between Esthwaite Water and the Priest Pot near Hawkshead.
North Walney. Large slice of coastal terrain at the mouth of the Duddon Estuary, taking in dunes, slacks, salt marshes, heaths and grassland, and hosting rare birds and invertebrates.
Ribble Estuary. Several thousand acres of mud and sand flats and one of the biggest saltmarsh areas in the country, this is an important home for wintering waders and other birds.
Roudsea Wood and Mosses. Another richly varied reserve just off Morecambe Bay, taking in salt marshes, acid and limestone woodland and raised mires. Home to more than 500 plant and 250 fungi species.
Rusland Moss. 49 acres (20 ha) of unspoiled peatland in the Furness fells west of Windermere, surrounded by mosses and woodland.
Sandscale Haws. Lovely system of sand dunes, salt marshes, shingle and grassland on the Duddon Estuary, immediately adjacent to the North Walney reserve. An important sanctuary for natterjack toads in particular.
Rick ASTLEY
Mike ATHERTON
Gordon BANKS
Tony BLACKBURN
Michael BOLTON
Charlotte CHURCH
Bing CROSBY
John ENTWISTLE
Mick FLEETWOOD
George FORMBY
Nick HORNBY
Len HUTTON
Burt LANCASTER
Vivien LEIGH
David MELLOR
Eric MORECAMBE
Horatio NELSON
Paula RADCLIFFE
Alexei SALE
Kate THORNTON
Despite what some visitors may think - no, it doesn’t. But it is true that Lancashire gets a little more rain and a little less sunshine than most other parts of the UK.
As the 2008 figures below show, the northwest - a region defined by the Met Office as including Cumbria and Cheshire as well as Lancashire - gets around 50 per cent more rain than England’s average. Just over half of the days of the year bring some rain in the northwest, compared to two days in five across England. And on average through the year, the northwest gets about 20 minutes less sunshine a day than England as a whole.
Lancashire also holds two of the UK’s all-time rainfall records: for the most rain in five minutes - 1.25 inches (32 mm) in Preston in 1893 - and for the most in 90 minutes - 4.6 inches (117 mm) in Dunsop Bridge in 1967. Looking on the bright side, Lancashire would not be nearly so lush and green if it weren’t for the rain. And while it is by some distance the wettest region of England, it still gets about a tenth less rain and a tenth more sunshine than Scotland.
Not many Lancastrian entertainers have been so widely known and enjoyed as Eric Morecambe - and even fewer have honoured the county by naming themselves after their home towns.
John Eric Bartholomew was born in the seaside resort in 1926. His mother encouraged his performing ambitions with singing, dancing and music lessons, and it was at a talent contest in Hoylake on the Wirral in 1939 that he first met Ernest Wiseman who, like Bartholomew, was soon to adopt a new stage name. Both were inspired in their decision by music hall star George Formby, whose family name was changed from Booth after the town on the Lancashire coast.
Morecambe left school at 14 and began his double act with Wise in comedy revues, but the pair’s fledgling career was soon interrupted by the Second World War. Towards the end of the war, Morecambe served for a year as one of Britain’s thousands of ‘Bevin Boys’ - young men who worked in the coal mines, in his case at Accrington. Reunited by chance after the war, Morecambe and Wise picked up their stage partnership before graduating to radio and developing their own series on the BBC’s Northern Home Service. Their success prompted the BBC to offer the pair a TV series in 1954, though the result, Running Wild, was a disaster, slated by the critics and denting their confidence. They spent the next few years working hard to improve their act, in revues, variety performances and summer shows at Lancashire resorts like Blackpool and Morecambe.
Their rehabilitation was complete when they won a series with ITV in 1961. Two of a Kind struggled at first, but its blend of sketches, catchphrases and recurring jokes and the on-screen chemistry of the pair - Wise generally the straight man to Morecambe’s daft comic - soon struck a chord with the public, many of whom were discovering television for the first time. Morecambe, a heavy smoker and drinker and his health possibly damaged by his year in the coal mines, suffered a heart attack in 1968, but after several months of rest returned to TV. By now on the BBC, the double act developed with the help of new scriptwriters and frequent celebrity guests, and ratings continued to soar, especially for their annual Christmas shows. At their peak, in 1977, the Christmas Day edition drew 28 million viewers - half the population at the time. No British entertainment broadcast before or since has come close to that figure.
Morecambe and Wise switched back to ITV the next year, and while the show remained popular, the double act started to lose some of its spark. The stress of performing had contributed to Morecambe’s second heart attack in 1979, and he died after a third in 1984, shortly after coming off stage in Gloucestershire. Tributes to him - and to Wise, who died in 1999, also from a heart attack - were numerous and sincere, and the pair’s performances remain hugely popular and influential to other comedians.
The town of Morecambe paid tribute to its most famous son with a statue of him on the promenade in classic comic pose, unveiled by the Queen in 1999 and inscribed with some of his catchphrases and the names of 103 celebrities he performed with. There is also a plaque on the house where he was born on Buxton Street in the town. Not far away at the Leighton Moss reserve near Carnforth, a bird hide and pool are both named in honour of Morecambe, a keen birdwatcher.
Firmly rooted in the red rose county and one of Britain’s most successful TV shows over five decades, Coronation Street is a Lancashire institution.
When the show’s creator, Tony Warren, devised his fictional town of Weatherfield, he based it and its characters on both his hometown of Swinton and nearby Salford, where the programme was filmed. These days the show is largely shot at studios in central Manchester, but the street’s cobbled roads, rows of terraced houses, gossipy corner shop and no-nonsense pub all mean Weatherfield has more in common with small-town or suburban life than with prosperous city centres. Either way, it’s unmistakeably Lancastrian.
Warren’s Coronation Street first aired on 9 December 1960, and at first only 12 episodes were commissioned for the Granada region. The response from the mostly southern-based critics was mixed, one concluding that ‘The programme is doomed from the outset with its dreary signature tune and grim scene of terraced houses and smoking chimneys.’ Viewers, though, and those in the north in particular, quickly warmed to its characters, and by 1964 the show was regularly drawing 15 to 20 million viewers.
Its popularity has fluctuated over the years as actors come and go, and viewing numbers are now nearer 10 million, but its blend of distinctive characters, dramatic storylines and northern humour means its future has never been seriously threatened. Coronation Street has notched up more than 7,000 episodes since that début in 1960, making it the longest running soap on British TV, and despite the decline in terrestrial TV viewing and advertising, its appeal is still strong. The show is exported around the world too, and is a nostalgic taste of home for many Lancashire ex-pats far from home.
It is a mark of Coronation Street’s popularity and realism that Manchester taxi drivers are often asked to take new arrivals in the city to Weatherfield. Although they have never been able to oblige, they did in the past direct devotees to Granada’s set, where they could walk the show’s cobbled streets or drink in the Rover’s Return. Those tours ended in 2000, though they may return as the show enters its second half-century.
Lancashire County Cricket Club has a long and proud history dating back to its formation in 1864. Here are some of the club’s most important team, batting, bowling and fielding records since then, drawn from all first-class cricket up to the start of the 2010 season.
863 |
highest team score, v Surrey in 1990 |
|
707 for 9 |
highest opposition score, by Surrey in 1990 |
|
25 |
lowest team score, v Derbyshire in 1871 |
|
22 |
lowest opposition score, by Glamorgan in 1924 |
|
1,650 |
most runs in a single match, v Surrey in 1990 |
|
221 |
fewest runs in a single match, v Surrey in 1888 |
|
Innings and 445 runs |
largest margin of victory, v Hampshire in 1911 |
|
Innings and 220 runs |
largest margin of defeat, v West Indies in 1950 |
|
1 run |
narrowest margin of victory, v Leicestershire in 1906 and v Hampshire in 1920; and narrowest margin of defeat, v Surrey in 1948 |
|
highest innings score, by Archie MacLaren, v Somerset in 1895 |
||
315 not out |
highest innings score against, by Thomas Hayward for Surrey in 1898 |
|
2,633 |
most runs in a season, by Johnny Tyldesley in 1901 |
|
11 |
most centuries in a season, by Charles Hallows in 1928 |
|
13 |
most ducks in a season, by Keith Goodwin in 1965 |
|
34,222 |
most career runs, by Ernest Tyldesley, 1909–36 |
|
90 |
most career centuries, by Ernest Tyldesley, 1909–36 |
|
89 |
most career ducks, by Brian Statham, 1950–68 |
|
371 |
highest partnership for any wicket, by Frank Watson and Ernest Tyldesely for the second wicket, v Surrey in 1928 |
|
10 for 46 |
best innings bowling figures, by William Hickton v Hampshire in 1870 |
|
17 for 91 |
best match bowling figures, by Harry Dean v Yorkshire in 1913 |
|
10 for 40 |
best innings bowling figures against, by Gubby Allen for Middlesex in 1929 |
|
16 for 65 |
best match bowling figures against, by George Giffen for the Australians in 1886 |
|
198 |
most wickets in a season, by Ted McDonald in 1925 |
|
1,816 |
most career wickets, by Brian Statham, 1950–68 |
|
7 |
most wicket-keeping victims in an innings, by Bill Farrimond v Kent in 1930, Warren Hegg v Derbyshire in 1989 and Luke Sutton v Yorkshire in 2008 |
|
11 |
most wicket-keeping victims in a match, by Warren Hegg v Derbyshire in 1989 |
|
97 |
most wicket-keeping victims in a season, by George Duckworth in 1928 |
|
925 |
most wicket-keeping victims in a career, by George Duckworth, 1923–47 |
|
6 |
most outfield catches in an innings, by Ken Grieves v Sussex in 1951 |
|
8 |
most outfield catches in a match, by Ken Grieves v Sussex in 1951 |
|
63 |
most outfield catches in a season, by Ken Grieves in 1950 |
|
555 |
most outfield catches in a Lancashire career, by Ken Grieves, 1945–64 |
|
573 |
most first-class matches for Lancashire, by Ernest Tyldesley, 1909–36 |
With its twin capitals of Manchester and Liverpool, Lancashire’s music scene has long been the richest of any region of the country, with the possible exception of London. Here are 40 of the county’s best known singers, songwriters, bands and composers, together with their places of birth or formation.
10cc (Manchester)
Rick Astley (Newton-le-Willows)
Badly Drawn Boy (Bolton)
The Beatles (Liverpool)
Harrington Birtwistle (Accrington)
Elkie Brooks (Salford)
The Buzzcocks (Manchester)
The Charlatans (Manchester)
Elvis Costello (Liverpool)
Peter Maxwell Davies (Salford)
Doves (Manchester)
Elbow (Bury)
The Fall (Manchester)
Kathleen Ferrier (Higher Walton)
Gracie Fields (Rochdale)
Wayne Fontana (Manchester)
George Formby (Wigan)
Billy Fury (Liverpool)
Freddie Garrity (Manchester)
David Gray (Manchester)
The Happy Mondays (Salford)
Roy Harper (Manchester)
Herman’s Hermits (Manchester)
The Hollies (Manchester)
John Ireland (Manchester)
Davy Jones (Manchester)
Joy Division (Manchester)
Graham Nash (Blackpool)
Oasis (Manchester)
Mark Owen (Oldham)
Simply Red (Manchester)
The Smiths (Manchester)
Lisa Stansfield (Heywood)
Ronald Stevenson (Blackburn)
The Stone Roses (Manchester)
Eva Turner (Oldham)
Frankie Vaughan (Liverpool)
The Verve (Wigan)
William Walton (Oldham)
Russell Watson (Salford)
Lancashire’s hundreds of pubs include plenty of common names: Red Lions, Royal Oaks, White Harts, Crowns and so on. But it also has a handful with some weird and wonderful names, many of them dating back a century or more. Here are 15 of the most unusual.
Help Me Through Inn, Bury
Peveril of the Peak, Manchester
Same Yet, Prestwich
The Ape and Apple, Manchester
The Clog and Billycock, Pleasington
The Duck and Puddle, Blackburn
The Fly in the Loaf, Liverpool
The Hand and Dagger, Kirkham
The Happy Man, Wythenshawe
The Pig on the Wall, Droylesden
The Smut Inn, Oldham
The Spanking Roger, Manchester
The Swan with Two Necks, Pendleton
The Weighing Machine, Liverpool
The town of Stalybridge on the Lancashire-Cheshire border meanwhile boasts the pubs with both the longest and the shortest names in the UK: the Old Thirteenth Cheshire Astley Volunteer Rifleman Corps Inn on Astley Street, understandably better known locally as the Rifleman; and Q, half a mile away on Market Street.
Was Lancashire the inspiration for The Lord of the Rings? It might be stretching things a little to say that, but J R R Tolkien’s associations with the county are certainly strong.
They began during the Second World War when Tolkien’s son, John, moved to St Mary’s Hall at Stonyhurst College in the Ribble Valley near Clitheroe to study for the priesthood, having been evacuated from his seminary in Rome. As frequent entries in the college’s visitors’ book prove, Tolkien often came to stay nearby, and he was soon captivated by the wooded countryside and brooding hills around Stonyhurst and in the Forest of Bowland.
Throughout the 1940s, Tolkien was composing his epic The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and aspects of the Lancashire countryside can be detected in the books’ Middle Earth landscape. Some of the area’s place names are very similar to those Tolkien created - like the book’s River Shirebourn, inspired by the Ribble and named after the Shireburn family who built Stonyhurst. Tolkien may well also have been intrigued by nearby Pendle Hill and its association with witches, sorcery and mysterious goings-on in the 17th century, and a likeness can be detected in the books’ mountain ranges.
Other claimed links, like Hurst Green being the inspiration for Frodo Baggins’ home of Hobbiton, may be more tenuous. But Tolkien is certainly known to have written parts of The Lord of the Rings in Lancashire, working in both a classroom at Stonyhurst and the guest-house in its grounds where he stayed. And he continued his association with Stonyhurst after John had moved on, since another of his sons taught there in the 1970s, and he came back often. St Mary’s Hall, now a preparatory school for the Catholic Stonyhurst College, has named its Tolkien Library in the author’s honour.
Since a trilogy of film adaptations caused interest in Tolkien to surge, Ribble Valley’s council has tried to capitalise on its associations by creating a 5-mile (8 km) Tolkien Trail, starting and finishing at Hurst Green. St Mary’s Hall and Stonyhurst are also both open to the public during the summer holidays.
Stonyhurst boasts a second major literary association - with Arthur Conan Doyle, a student there in the 1860s. The college is thought to have inspired some of the scenes in his books, especially The Hound of the Baskervilles, and its records show that boys named Sherlock and Moriarty - Holmes’ arch-enemy - were contemporaries of Doyle.
The town of Worsley near Salford was, after the construction of the Bridgewater Canal, an important centre for industrialising Lancashire. It is now a conservation area and part of a proposed World Heritage site, with a handful of reminders of its significance to industries like coal, iron and cotton. Less well known is that it is also home to a perhaps the only clock in the world that once a day strikes 13 instead of one. When asked why they were consistently late returning from their lunch break at 1 p. m., workers for the Duke of Bridgewater protested that they had not heard the clock strike one - so the Duke promptly had the mechanism changed to produce 13 peals instead. The clock has since been moved to the town’s church, but it continues its unusual ringing.
What, exactly, is Lancashire? Until 1974, the answer was pretty clear. The ancient red rose county had been established since the 12th century and had endured invasions and social upheaval. It stretched as far north as the Lake District villages of Coniston and Hawkshead, as far south as Liverpool and Warrington, and as far east as Manchester and Oldham.
But in the early 1970s, the government drew up plans to redefine the boundaries of local councils, changing the borders of Britain’s 86 historic counties at a few strokes of a civil servant’s pen. Out went ancient county names with which local people had identified for centuries, like the three Ridings of Yorkshire, Westmorland and Cumberland, and in came entirely new entities in a tiered system of local government. The act was passed on 1 April 1974, the irony of the date not passing unnoticed.
In Lancashire, the northernmost tranche of the historic county was sliced off overnight and transferred to Cumbria. Liverpool and much of the area around it was chipped off to become Merseyside, and Manchester and its satellite towns became Greater Manchester. A small area of southern Lancashire went to Cheshire, while in the northeast of the county it actually expanded, by drawing in a piece of the old West Riding of Yorkshire. The end result was a vastly reduced Lancashire - its area slashed by nearly half and its population plummeting from around 5 million people at its peak to just over 1 million now - and a new jumble of counties on the map of the northwest.
At the time the changes were made, the government insisted that they were purely for administrative purposes, and that the ancient county borders remained intact. That didn’t ease the understandable confusion, however, and ever since 1974 the public and the media have gradually identified more closely with the new counties. Many of those living in Furness, for instance, would now call Cumbria home, despite their area having been part of Lancashire for centuries and retaining a Lancashire postcode. Liverpudlians, meanwhile, are under the umbrellas of both their city’s council and the Merseyside metropolitan county, inevitably diluting their allegiance to Lancashire. Subsequent tinkering to local government boundaries, especially in Merseyside and Greater Manchester, has only added to the uncertainty.
The changes infuriated loyal Lancastrians when they were introduced, and many have studiously ignored them ever since. Lancashire is still widely used for identification in the ‘lost’ parts of the county - on people’s addresses, for instance, and by clubs and societies. The Friends of Real Lancashire campaigns for the old boundaries to be preserved for ceremonial and cultural purposes, and promotes in particular the association of cities like Liverpool and Manchester with the county rather than with Merseyside and Greater Manchester. Other activists like County Watch have gone further, removing ‘ Welcome to Lancashire’ road signs from locations they consider wrong and replanting them on the county’s ancient borders.
As well as the famous Lancashire-born companies profiled elsewhere in this book, like Tate & Lyle, the Co-op and Unilever, the county has produced dozens more successful businesses. Here are ten of the best known exports.
Beechams. Thomas Beecham started his pharmaceutical business with a shop in Wigan in 1847, before opening a factory in St Helens 12 years later. Beechams is now part of the GlaxoSmithKline empire, but the name lives on in some products.
Booths. Little known outside of the northwest, Booths is a chain of supermarkets that was started by Bury-born Edwin Booth in 1847 with a modest shop in Blackpool. Despite rumours of approaches from other supermarkets, the business remains in the Booth family.
The Guardian. The newspaper was founded in Manchester in 1821 by the noted Lancashire-based reformer John Edward Taylor, and was known as the Manchester Guardian until 1959. It retains offices in Manchester today.
H Samuel. The modern jewellery business grew out of a Manchester shop opened by Harriet (H) Samuel, part of the well-known clock and watch making family in the 18th and 19th centuries. It remained a family business until 1986.
Pilkington. Created in St Helens in the 1820s by the Pilkington family, the glass maker employed some 10,000 people at its peak. It continues to be based in the town, though it now has Japanese owners.
Shearings. The coach company was founded by Herbert Shearing after he moved to Oldham in the 1920s. The firm has changed hands plenty of times since but the Shearings name has endured and its headquarters are now in Wigan.
Timpsons. This chain of several hundred repair, key cutting and dry cleaning shops was founded by William Timpson in Manchester in 1865 and is now run by his great-grandson.
Uncle Joe’s Mint Balls. This hugely popular Lancashire sweet was first made by William and Ellen Santus in Wigan in the late 1890s, and is still manufactured in the town in much the same way. Uncle Joe was probably a fictional character.
Vimto. The purple concoction of fruit juices, herbs and flavourings was created by Noel Nichols in Manchester in 1908, and was soon popular in herbalist shops and temperance bars in particular. There is a statue of a bottle of Vimto on the spot in Manchester where it was first made.
Warburtons. The bread-making business grew out of a grocer’s shop opened in Bolton by Thomas and George Warburton in the 1870s, and was developed by George’s son Henry. The business continues to be run by the Warburton family from Lancashire, and still owns the site of the first shop in Bolton.
Lancashire’s population of around 1.1 million people means it has a larger population than Fiji but a smaller one than Swaziland. As this table shows, if Lancashire were a country it would rank in the same league as some far-flung and glamorous states. The figure of 1.1 million is the total for the modern administrative county, and there fore excludes large areas that are part of ceremonial Lancashire but are now classified elsewhere. Population estimates for countries are from The CIA World Factbook for 2009.
Country |
Population |
|
Trinidad and Tobago |
1,229,953 |
|
Timor-Leste |
1,131,612 |
|
Swaziland |
1,123,913 |
|
Lancashire |
1,134,976 |
|
Fiji |
944,720 |
|
Qatar |
833,285 |
|
Cyprus |
796,740 |
Area-wise, Lancashire is larger than Samoa and Luxemburg and smaller than the remote British territory of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands in the Atlantic.
Country |
Area in sq miles (sq km) |
|
French Polynesia |
1,609 (4,167) |
|
Cape Verde |
1,557 (4,033) |
|
South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands |
1,507 (3,903) |
|
Lancashire |
1,121 (2,903) |
|
Samoa |
1,093 (2,831) |
|
Luxemburg |
998 (2,586) |
|
Comoros |
477 (1,235) |
Bamber Bridge near Preston has the cheapest property in Lancashire, while Lancaster Castle is the most expensive place to rent. That, at least, is the verdict of the Lancashire Monopoly board in a special localised version of the classic family game.
The edition replaces each of the famous original London properties from Old Kent Road to Mayfair with various Lancashire locations. They take in some well-known streets in Bolton, Preston and Blackburn among other towns and cities, plus several football grounds and tourist spots like Blackpool’s Pleasure Beach and Tower. The game caused something of a fuss when it was released, with people living in streets or towns that were placed in the lower price brackets regarding it as something of an insult. In ascending order of value, Lancashire’s 22 Monopoly properties are:
Bamber Bridge
Great Eccleston
Ribble Valley
Blackpool Pleasure Beach
Deepdale Stadium, Preston
Elwood Park, Blackburn
Reebok Stadium, Bolton
JJB Stadium, Wigan
St James Street, Burnley
Avroe Crescent, Blackpool
Whalley
Mallison Street, Bolton
Fleetwood
Baxenden
Bromley Cross, Bolton
Gracie Fields Theatre, Rochdale
Market Square, Preston
Lord Street, Southport
South King Street, Blackpool
Richmond Terrace, Blackburn
Blackpool Tower and Circus
Lancaster Castle
The four station properties on the board are Blackpool Airport, Bolton Street Station in Bury, Lancaster Canal and Leyland.
Lancashire’s cheese is among the best in Britain and one of the county’s most popular food exports. Its producers claim the cheese tradition dates back as far as the 13th century, and it has certainly been manufactured for as long as farms have kept cows and had excess milk to use up. But it wasn’t until the late 19th century that Lancashire’s cheese began to develop the taste and reputation that we know today, thanks to concert e d efforts among producers to standardise its method of production. That method involves blending curds from successive days’ milking, and it is still the way much of Lancashire’s cheese gets its distinctive taste.
The cheese is commonly broken down into three styles: crumbly, which is only briefly matured for a mild, milky taste; creamy, aged for longer for a richer, buttery flavour; and tasty, an even more mature version of creamy and a strong, nutty cheese. Crumbly is the most recently developed style and the easiest to produce, since it is made from one rather than multiple milkings. It is this that supermarkets and other large retailers commonly sell, having appropriated the Lancashire name for a cheese that is quickly and cheaply manufactured in vast quantities. The real deal, though, hand made by dedicated specialists and matured for months rather than weeks - and, in the case of tasty Lancashire, for as long as two years - is a far superior cheese, complex and quite unique in flavour.
While once there were hundreds of small farms turning out cheese, now there are perhaps a dozen significant producers. Many of them, though, are now doing very well, and are co-operating on efforts to market Lancashire cheese as a distinctive brand. Some of the best producers are based in and around the Forest of Bowland, often collecting milk from nearby farms and using recipes passed down through several generations.
Lancashire’s cheese is great in every day sandwiches or on toast, but it is also a popular and versatile ingredient in cooking, perhaps crumbled into pasta, risottos or omelettes, integrated into a pie’s filling or topping, or scattered into salads. For the ultimate Lancashire snack, enjoy a slice of the cheese with a buttered Chorley cake and a mug of strong tea.
What do Bacup, Standish, Wrea Green and Great Harwood all have in common? Fleetwood, Knott End-on-Sea, Longridge and Cherry Tree? Among many others, they are all places that were once home to stations on Lancashire’s thriving railway network, and shut in the rationalisation of Britain’s railways that took place in the couple of decades after the Second World War. Here are ten of the many branches that once made up a cobweb of lines around Lancashire but which are now lost.
Bolton to Kenyon Junction
George Stephenson was the chief engineer on this 9-mile (14 km) line, put up to link Bolton with the coalfields to the south. It took passengers for a while too, but was abandoned in the 1960s.
Bury to Bacup
Opened in 1846 to run from Bury to Bacup via Ramsbottom and Rawtenstall. Closed in the 1970s but soon revived by the steam enthusiasts of the East Lancashire Railway and now a thriving heritage line.
Chorley to Cherry Tree
A joint venture between two big railway companies to link Lancashire’s coal and textile centres, the line’s engineers had to cross canals and negotiate challenging gradients.
It was decommissioned in 1968.
Garstang to Knott End
12 miles (19 km) of line running from the Garstang intersection with the Lancaster and Preston Railway to the Wyre Estuary opposite Fleetwood at Knott End-on-Sea. Its owners always struggled to make it pay, and it closed to passengers in 1930, though goods trains occasionally used it until 1965. Some of the route survives as a footpath.
Great Harwood to Rose Grove
A 9-mile (14 km) loop that connected industrial towns to the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, it also helped ferry workers to the coast during the summer. Passenger trains were withdrawn in 1957 and freight ones seven years later.
Lowton St Mary’s to St Helens
This 8-mile (13 km) line was in financial trouble from the start, opening several years late in 1895. It took colliery and goods traffic and occasionally ferried race-goers to its Haydock Park stop, but it was wound down in the 1950s.
Oldham to Guide Bridge
A branch line linking Ashton-under-Lyne with major railways at Oldham. It was yet another to succumb to competition from road transport and rail rationalisation in the 1960s.
Ormskirk to St Helens
This 12-mile (19 km) line was built largely to link the growing number of coal towns, but it struggled for passengers and was closed to them in the 1950s, soon after the railways were nationalised.
Preston to Fleetwood
Sir Peter Hesketh Fleetwood funded the rail link to the town that bears his name in 1840, and it was particularly popular for its onward ferry links to Ireland and the Isle of Man. Passenger numbers fell when ferry routes switched, and the line was mothballed in the 1960s, though there is now a campaign to restore trains to Fleetwood.
Preston to Longridge
Opened in 1839 to carry stone from the Ribble Valley quarries to Preston and on to Liverpool. At its peak there were plans to link the line into Yorkshire, but declining use led to passenger and freight services being pulled in the 1930s and 1960s respectively.
Few Lancashire-born people have had as profound an effect on British social and political history as Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters. And aside from The Beatles, Emmeline is the only Lancastrian on the Time 100, the famous US magazine’s list of the 100 most important people of the 20th century.
Emmeline Goulden was born in 1858 in the Moss Side suburb of Manchester, into a family with a tradition of radical politics. At 21 she married Richard Pankhurst, a reformist lawyer and ardent supporter of the women’s suffrage movement, and in 1889 she became involved in the Women’s Franchise League, which campaigned, successfully, to get married women the vote in local elections. Increasingly frustrated by the indifference with which public speaking and peaceful protest were met, in 1903 she founded the more militant Women’s Social and Political Union, which soon became infamous for its passionate protests and no little trouble making. Partly inspired by Emmeline’s reverence for the French Revolution, marches, window smashing, arson and hunger strikes all became part of the tactics. Most famously of all, in 1913 union member Emily Davison was killed when she threw herself in front of the King’s horse at the Derby.
Having sold her Manchester home and moved to London in 1907, Emmeline started traveling more widely to build support for the movement, across the US as well as the UK. Frequently arrested, she was among the many hunger strikers who were brutally force fed, and jailed on a dozen separate occasions in 1912 alone as authorities played a cat and mouse game, releasing strikers from prison only to return them there when they had regained their strength.
Pankhurst was joined in her causes by her daughters, also born in Manchester. Their talents were complementary and formidable - the first, Christabel, a committed and often forceful agitator, and the second, Sylvia, a more contemplative socialist who also fought against other injustices. But disagreements over policy led to some painful splits in the family in later years, not least during the First World War, when Emmeline and Christabel suspended the suffrage campaign to support the country’s effort while Sylvia, a pacifist, protested against it. A third daughter, Adela, emigrated to Australia just before the war and never saw her mother again.
The vote was finally granted to women over 30, with limitations, at the end of the war in 1918. Emmeline died in 1928, just a few weeks after women’s voting rights were brought fully into line with men’s. Some historians think the increasingly aggressive tactics adopted by Emmeline and her supporters did their cause more harm than good, but the Pankhursts are more usually given much of the credit for winning women the vote, along with other rights before and since like equality in pay and divorce and inheritance settlements. They also paved the way for far greater female involvement in British politics.
Decades on it is hard to imagine that women had to fight so hard for such basic rights, but the Pankhursts were well ahead of their own era, and their vocal, violent protests stunned and ruptured Edwardian Britain. ‘She shaped an idea of women for our time,’ said Time magazine in its citation of Emmeline. ‘She shook society into a new pattern from which there could be no going back.’
The Manchester home of Emmeline, Christabel, Sylvia and Adela is now the Pankhurst Centre, containing a small museum and a recreation of the rooms where they planned suffrage campaigns. Opening hours are limited; tel 0161 273 5673 for details. There is also a statue of Emmeline in London’s Victoria Tower Gardens, close to Parliament in Westminster.
Lancashire’s most common bird is the starling, according to the annual Big Garden Birdwatch survey by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. The top ten birds in the county, together with the average number of times they were spotted in a garden by participants on a single day in the 2009 survey, are:
1 Starling |
4.77 |
|
2 House sparrow |
3.50 |
|
3 Blackbird |
2.77 |
|
4 Blue tit |
2.25 |
|
5 Collared dove |
1.60 |
|
6 Chaffinch |
1.57 |
|
7 Long tailed tit |
1.41 |
|
8 Goldfinch |
1.30 |
|
9 Great tit |
1.26 |
|
10 Robin |
1.25 |
It was a Lancastrian - Salford-born William Webb Ellis - who, according to folklore, began the sport of rugby when he picked up the ball and ran with it during a game of football. And here, two centuries on and in one code of the game at least, rugby is as popular and passionately supported as anywhere.
Although the sport’s governing bodies and many of its leading clubs were based in London, Lancashire soon became one of rugby’s heartlands. Its reputation for skilful players and successful clubs grew with the rise of its industry, the mills and mines producing a steady flow of talented and strong sportsmen. But as the sport became more organised, the difficulties of balancing it with work, and of playing a hard game of rugby after long hours in the pits or factories, became apparent. Some clubs started to compensate their leading players for their appearances, paying ‘broken time’ money to make up for the work hours they had sacrificed to train and play, and increasing sums were offered to lure stars away from rival clubs.
Payments were made covertly at first, but as they became more common, north–south and class divides began to open up. Rugby’s southern clubs largely played for pleasure and pride, and they and the game’s rulers were dismayed at the thinly veiled and unseemly professionalism in working class Lancashire and Yorkshire. In the early 1890s several northern clubs were punished with suspensions for making ‘illegal’ payments, cranking up the tension and resentment. Then, in 1895, came rugby’s great schism, when 22 clubs resigned from England’s Rugby Football Union to form a new northern union among themselves. The famous meeting was held in Huddersfield and then, as now, slightly more clubs hailed from Yorkshire, but the 22 founding members included nine from Lancashire: Broughton, Leigh, Oldham, Rochdale, St Helens, Tyldesley, Warrington, Widnes and Wigan. Dozens more followed over the next few years.
For a while, the two rival unions played rugby under the same rules, but after a similar breakaway in Australia a distinctive code began to emerge. Sides were reduced from 15 to 13 players, a new scoring system was introduced, and by 1922, when the Northern Union became known as the Rugby Football League, the sport was much changed from the old rugby.
Although both forms of rugby have since spread, around the world as well as Britain, Lancashire and Yorkshire remain the main enclaves of league. Lancashire clubs like Wigan, St Helens and Warrington are prominent in the top tier of rugby league most years, while in the equivalent division in union, only Sale tends to rival for honours. Mostly amiable hostilities continue in the sport in the north - between league and union over which is the better sport; between Lancashire and Yorkshire over which is the strongest county; and between counties’ own clubs, for all-important local bragging rights.
Lancashire has dozens of excellent museums, and can boast that among them are some of the country’s - if not the world’s - leading authorities on commercial vehicles, fire fighting, hats and lawnmowers. Often the result of someone’s personal passion and staffed by volunteers, these places might seem somewhat limited in their appeal, but they are worth a visit. Here are ten of Lancashire’s quirkiest museums.
The Beatles Story, Liverpool.
Hugely popular exhibition of Liverpool’s most famous musical sons. The childhood homes of Paul McCartney and John Lennon are also both opened to the public by the National Trust.
Tel 0151 709 1963 or visit www.beatlesstory.com.
The British Commercial Vehicle Museum, Leyland.
Everything you ever wanted to know about trucks and buses through the years, in a town that owes much of its history to the commercial vehicle industry.
Tel 01772 451011 or visit www.bcvm.org.uk.
The British in India Museum, Nelson.
The story of colonial rule, with exhibits including tiger skins and the last Union Jack lowered in Lucknow, all somewhat incongruously located in the old mill town of Nelson.
Tel 01282 613129 or visit www.britishinindiamuseum.co.uk.
British Lawnmower Museum, Southport.
Heaven for mower fans, who will find examples of machines through the ages and some lawnmowers of the rich and famous. Museum motto: ‘It’s mower interesting’.
Tel 01704 501336 or visit www.lawnmowerworld.com.
Greater Manchester Fire Service Museum, Manchester.
Exhibits showing fire fighting through the ages, lovingly looked after by the museum’s volunteers.
Tel 01706 901227 or visit www.manchesterfire.gov.uk.
Laurel and Hardy Museum, Ulverston.
Stan Laurel was born in Ulverston, and this museum grew out of one man’s affection for the comic duo.
Tel 01229 582292 or visit www.laurel-and-hardy-museum.co.uk.
Museum of Lancashire, Preston.
The best place to find out more about the heritage of the red rose county.
Tel 01772 534075 or visit www.lancashire.gov.uk.
National Football Museum.
Excellent museum dedicated to English football, initially housed in Preston but relocating to Manchester in 2011. Visit www.nationalfootballmuseum.com.
North West Museum of Road Transport, St Helens.
Great if you love old buses and cars; not so much fun if you don’t.
Tel 01744 451681 or visit www.hallstreetdepot.info.
Queen Street Mill Textile Museum, Burnley.
The world’s only surviving 19th-century steam powered weaving mill, in a town that was once dominated by the textile industry.
Tel 01282 412555 or visit www.lancashire.gov.uk.
Some figures from the 2008 report of the Rossendale and Pendle Mountain Rescue Team, which looks after a 350-square mile (906 sq km) portion of Lancashire from just south of Bury to just north of Clitheroe.
45 |
incidents attended |
|
1,672 |
hours spent by members attending incidents |
|
37 |
average man-hours spent per incident |
|
10.4 |
average number of team members attending each incident |
|
47 |
members of the public involved in incidents |
|
6 |
number of children involved in incidents |
|
0 |
number of animals involved in accidents |
|
12 |
incidents occurring on Saturdays, the most common day for call-outs |
|
2 |
incidents occurring on Wednesdays, the least common day for call-outs |
|
23 |
incidents occurring between 12 p. m. and 6 p. m., the most common time for call-outs |
|
5 |
fatalities in incidents |
Lancashire has hundreds of dialect phrases and sayings. Here are ten of the most expressive.
Ah cud eyt a buttered frog |
I’m very hungry |
|
Ahm spittin’ feathers |
I’m very thirsty |
|
Ah were up at sparrow’s fart |
I had to rise very early |
|
Ee’s fair bowlegged wi’ brass |
He’s very rich |
|
Ah were standin’ theer leyke cheese at fourpence |
I was hanging around with nothing to do |
|
Tha’s no oil in thi lamp |
You are a fool |
|
Tha meks a betta dooar than a winda |
You are blocking my view |
|
Tha’s a face like a line a wet weshin’ |
You are looking rather miserable |
|
Pigs waint follow an empty bucket |
People won’t work for nothing |
|
Put wood i’ th’ oil! |
Close the door! |
Lancashire’s tourist board promotes picnics as a good way to enjoy the county’s countryside, and in 2008 surveyed visitors about their favourite spots. The winner, favoured by almost a third of people, was the Trough of Bowland, the valley dividing the Forest of Bowland and an officially designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Close behind in second was Morecambe Bay, the vast expanse of sand that forms a large chunk of Lancashire’s coast.
Visit Lancashire’s same survey also uncovered the food most commonly associated with the red rose county: Lancashire Hot Pot. The most popular drink, meanwhile, was Lancashire tea, followed by two beers - Lancaster Bomber and Pendle Witches Brew - and sarsaparilla, the herbal soft drink made popular in Lancashire by the temperance movement.
An appropriately no-nonsense and irreverent version of the traditional blessing, recited by Lancastrians at the table before their main meal of the day.
‘Bless o’ on us Lord wi’ this gradely stuff,
An’ nudge me when ah’ve ‘ad enogh.’
The National Trust looks after ten properties in Lancashire, including four in the northernmost part of the county in the southern Lake District and four in Liverpool. The properties are:
Beatrix Potter Gallery, Hawkshead. Potter’s sketches and watercolours are on display in this pretty 17th-century cottage, once the office of Potter’s solicitor husband.
Cartmel Priory Gatehouse, Cartmel. A 14th-century fortified gatehouse to Cartmel’s famous priory with rooms inside occasionally opened to the public.
Dalton Castle, Dalton-in-Furness. A 14th-century tower, built by the Abbot of nearby Furness Abbey. There’s an exhibition of local history inside.
20 Forthlin Road, Allerton. The Liverpool childhood home of Paul McCartney is where The Beatles rehearsed in their early days.
Gawthorpe Hall, Padiham. In the hub of industrial Lancashire, this Elizabethan house is an oasis of calm, with fine gardens and rooms packed with portraits and textile collections.
Mr Hardman’s Photographic Studio, Liverpool. The Georgian terraced house of Edward Chambré Hard man, a renowned photographer of Liverpool people and places, and preserved as it was in his time.
Hill Top, Near Sawrey. The 17th-century farmhouse of Beatrix Potter. She wrote many of her books here, inspired by the surrounding countryside.
Mendips, Woolton. The home in the Liverpool suburbs of John Lennon and his Aunt Mimi - like McCartney’s house an important stop on any Beatles pilgrimage to the city.
Rufford Old Hall, Rufford. Tudor house with fine furniture and tapestry collections. William Shakespeare is thought to have stayed and performed here when he was young.
Speke Hall, Liverpool. Magnificent large Tudor house with a well preserved great hall, kitchen and servants’ quarters, plus good walks in the wooded grounds.
In addition to these properties, the National Trust owns large slices of land around Lancashire. They include the area around Coniston Water, Tarn Hows and the southern end of Windermere in the Lake District; Arnside Knott and Eaves and Waterslack Woods off Morecambe Bay; the Stubbins Estate and Holcombe Moor near Gawthorpe Hall at Padiham; and the sand dunes and woods off the coast at Formby.
Despite its wealth of good food, Lancashire, by its modern-day boundaries, has only one restaurant holding a prestigious star from the Michelin inspectors: Northcote Manor near Langho, a few miles from Blackburn and Burnley (tel 01254 240555 or visit www.northcote.com).
In the Furness area - now part of Cumbria but historically part of Lancashire - are two more Michelin-starred restaurants: L’Enclume in Cartmel (tel 015395 36362 or visit www.lenclume.co.uk) and Holbeck Ghyll Country House near Windermere (tel 015394 32375 or visit www.holbeck-ghyll.co.uk).
Four more places in ‘real’ Lancashire receive a Bib Gourmand from Michelin for ‘good food at moderate prices’. They are The Waggon at Bury, The White Hart at Oldham, The Warehouse Brasserie at Southport and Twelve at Thornton Cleveleys.
A second batch of words from the Lancashire dialect, together with their translations into standard English.
faff to waste time
fain glad
fair very, completely; as in ‘fair hungry’
fash to trouble
fause clever, crafty
favour to resemble
fettle to mend; also condition
fizzog face
flay to frighten
flit to run away
fooak folk, people
fost first
front end spring and summer of a year
fuddled drunk
fun’ found
gobbin a fool
gone west died
good way a long distance
gormless daft, slow on the uptake
gradely proper, great
grondad grandfather
gronny grandmother
ha’porth a fool; literally halfpenny-worth
hissel’ himself
hooam home
hoofed fed up
howsome wholesome
jerry shop ale house
jiggered very tired or broken
jolly robbins fanciful ideas, fiction
keck to tip over
keks trousers
knout cheeky person
lace to hit
lad boy
Lanky Lancashire; also its dialect
lass girl
likely handsome, sharp
limb o’ th’ devil a mischievous person
lip impudence
lish active
lither lazy
little house outdoor toilet
lumber mischief
mam mother
marlock mischief
maunt must not
mawkin dirty
mebbe maybe
mek do make do, manage
met might
mich much
middlin’ OK, neither good bad
misel myself
mitch to truant
mither to confuse, bewilder
mollycoddle to indulge
mun must
nazzy cross
nesh soft,weak or cold
neet night
netty outdoor toilet
nobbut naught but, only
nooan no-one
nowt nothing
o’er over
oon oven
owd old
‘owdo how are you?
owt anything
owtelse anything else
Sheep are an integral part of Lancashire’s landscape, shaping the hills and fields of its countryside and providing a major source of income for the county’s farmers. Here is a guide to a dozen of the most popular breeds.
Beltex. Medium-sized sheep with large hindquarters and narrow shoulders. It was introduced to the UK from the continent in the 1980s.
Blackface. Probably the most common breed of sheep in the country, found in different cross-breed types from region to region. They have black or black-and-white faces and legs, white fleeces and are always horned.
Blue Faced Leicester. One of the longest and largest breeds in the country, and also one of the best for wool, with consequently high prices. They have long, neat ears, no horns and, as the name suggests, heads that appear to have a blue tinge.
Dalesbred. A hardy breed that is native to the Yorkshire Dales, though it has spread far beyond and has become very popular for cross-breeding. They have black faces with distinctive white patches above the nostrils, and round horns.
Herdwick. Most commonly found in the northern slice of Lancashire in the Lake District, the Herdwick is the hardiest breed of sheep in the country, able to withstand ferocious weather on high, exposed fellsides. Herdwicks have white, docile looking faces and plain cream or grey fleeces that are tough and weatherproof.
Lonk. A large breed of sheep, popular on the Pennines and, like the Herdwick, able to withstand harsh weather and poor grazing conditions. Lonks have mostly white faces with black patches around the nose and eyes, and neat, short, white fleeces.
North of England Mule. Medium-sized hornless sheep with clear wool, brown or white face and a pointy nose. Very easy to rear and care for, making it a popular breed.
Rough Fell. Another strong, resilient upland breed that has been farmed across northern England for centuries. These sheep have large bodies, mostly black heads with white noses, thick, long fleeces and white legs. Rough Fells usually make for very good lamb meat.
Swaledale. Another native of Yorkshire to have crossed the Pennines, this breed joins the Herdwick in being able to cope with tough weather and scant food on the high fells and moors. Swaledales are medium sized with white muzzles, white stripes above each eye, curly, wide horns and thick, long tails. Often crossed with other breeds.
Suffolk. Another very common breed across the UK, this one has an all-black head and legs with contrasting white wool.
Texel. A mostly white sheep with occasional black spots, plus a short neck and crinkled wool. It is a hardy breed that produces excellent meat.
Zwartbles. A rarer breed, having only been introduced to the UK from Holland in the 1980s. They are a tame and docile breed, with no horns and a thick dark fleece with a white blaze.
Prosperous periods of industry in Lancashire have usually been overshadowed by the suffering of those whose hard labour enriched a handful of people - but no part of the county’s history is remembered with deeper shame than the era of slave trade.
Organised trading of slaves started in Britain in the 1640s, though it wasn’t until the 1700s that Lancashire became properly involved through Liverpool, an expanding port with an increasing merchant class. As the 18th century went on it established itself as by some distance the most significant slave trade port in the country, launching at least 5,000 sailings to Africa over the course of a century and, in the two decades before abolition, responsible for more than three quarters of all of Europe’s slaving voyages. Further north in the county it was rivalled for a short while by Lancaster, which at its busiest was the fourth largest slaving port behind Liverpool, London and Bristol.
The traders established the ‘slave triangle’, setting off from ports like Liverpool for West Africa, buying people there or exchanging them for goods, and packing them into their ships for the next leg of the journey - the infamous Middle Passage - to the Caribbean and Americas. Here the slaves were sold and put to work on the plantations, ruled over by British owners with a rod of iron and utter absence of compassion. The ships meanwhile returned to their English ports, laden with exports of slave labour like sugar, coffee, tobacco and cotton.
Liverpool in the 18th century was dominated by slavery-related commerce. Nearly all of the city’s merchants and leading citizens had some connection to the trade, and every mayor of the city during the second half of the century was involved in it. But while it was more tightly wound up with the slave trade than anywhere else in Europe, Lancashire was part of the campaign to end it, too. One of the largest petitions against slavery was compiled in Manchester in 1788 and signed by 10,000 people - one in five of the city’s residents at the time. Liverpool also submitted its own smaller petition, and it was here that abolitionists like Thomas Clarkson gathered much of their evidence for the campaign against slavery. The growing Quaker movement, particularly strong in Lancashire, also came out against slavery.
The last slave ship left Liverpool in 1807 after abolitionists like Clarkson and William Wilberforce pushed through a law to abolish slave trading. But the transport of already indentured slaves continued until they were finally freed by a further act in 1833 and even, by some particularly unscrupulous owners, beyond. Liverpool and other cities and towns across Lancashire also went on enjoying the benefits of trade links that were indirectly but significantly linked to slavery - either because the slave ship owners bought and carried their exports down to Africa or because they returned with the raw materials that fuelled industries. The import of raw cotton across the Atlantic, for instance, was crucial to Lancashire’s textile industry long after the slave trading ended.
Reminders of the slave trade can be found all over Lancashire. The wealth that it generated helped the cities, quaysides, individuals and other industries to flourish, and countless homes built with slave money remain, both in Liverpool and further afield, notably in the southern Lake District. Plenty of streets owe their names to the trade, and some Liverpudlians can trace slave ancestors who found themselve s transported back to Britain to work and live.
Helping Liverpool come to terms with its slavery associations is the excellent International Slavery Museum on Albert Dock, a quayside that was built after abolition but which is nevertheless evocative of the trade after a tour of the exhibitions inside. It is open every day except Christmas and free to enter (tel 0151 478 4499 or visit www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ism).
Perhaps the most poignant memorial to the slave trade can be found at Sunderland Point at the mouth of the Lune Estuary near Lancaster. Here, in the 1730s, a captured young slave from West Africa was held for a while and died, perhaps because of an illness sustained on the long journey. He was buried on unconsecrated ground close to the water, to which a memorial plaque was added 60 years later. The spot has been carefully tended and decorated ever since, and has become something of a local focal point for guilt and grief over Lancashire’s associations with slavery.
What do Le Mans in northern France and Zhaoqing in southern China have in common? Or Los Angeles in the US and St Petersburg in Russia? Not much, except they are all twin towns or cities of places in Lancashire - in these cases Bolton and Manchester.
There are all sorts of reasons why towns and cities seek twinning agreements: international friendship, commercial links, exchange programmes for students and perhaps the opportunity for local councilors to jet off to warmer climes for a few days. Most twinning partnerships are struck with locations of a similar size in continental Europe, commonly France or Germany, but some Lancashire towns have looked further afield. Garstang, for instance, is twinned with New Koforidua in Ghana, as a result of its efforts to become the world’s first fair-trade town, while Rochdale’s Pakistan-born population led it to links with Sahiwal in the Punjab province. Chorley is paired with Székesfehérvår in Hungary, a place easier to visit than it is to pronounce.
This list shows some of the county’s interesting twins, including partnerships that are known by other names like sister cities or friendship agreements.
Twin |
||
Ashton-under-Lyme |
Chaumont, France |
|
Blackburn |
Peronne, France |
|
Blackpool |
Bottrop, Germany |
|
Bolton |
Le Mans, France; Paderborn, Germany; Zhaoqing, China |
|
Burnley |
Vitry-sur-Seine, France |
|
Bury |
Angouleme and Tulle, France; Datong, China; Schorndorf, Germany; Woodbury, US |
|
Carnforth |
Sailly-sur-la-Lys, France |
|
Chorley |
Székesfehérvår, Hungary |
|
Clitheroe |
Rivesaltes, France |
|
Dalton-in-Furness |
Dalton, US |
|
Droylsden |
Villemomble, France |
|
Dunkinfield |
Champagnole, France |
|
Fleetwood |
Fleetwood, US |
|
Garstang |
New Koforidua, Ghana; Media, US |
|
Kirkham |
Ancenis, France; Bad Brückenau, Germany |
|
Knowsley |
Moers, Germany |
|
Lancaster |
Perpignan, France; Rendsburg, Germany; Aalborg, Denmark; Lublin, Poland; Växjö, Sweden |
|
Liverpool |
Cologne, Germany; Dublin, Ireland; Shanghai, China |
|
Manchester |
Los Angeles, US; Wuhan, China; St Petersburg, Russia |
|
Oldham |
Geestacht and Landsberg am Lech, Germany; Kranj, Slovenia |
|
Oswaldtwistle |
Falkenberg, Sweden |
|
Preston |
Almelo, Netherlands; Nimes, France; Recklinghausen, Germany; Kalisz, Poland |
|
Rochdale |
Bielefeld, Germany; Lviv, Ukraine; Sahiwal, Pakistan; Tourcoing and Peine, France |
|
Rossendale |
Bocholt, Germany |
|
Salford |
Clermont-Ferrand, Narbonne and Saint-Ouen, France; Lünen, Germany |
|
Sefton |
Fort Lauderdale, US; Gdansk, Poland; Mons, Belgium |
|
St Helens |
Stuttgart, Germany; Chalon-sur-Saône, France |
|
Ulverston |
Albert, France |
|
Warrington |
Hilden, Germany; Lake County, US; Náchod, Czech Republic |
|
Wigan |
Angers, France |
30 of the best known actors born in Lancashire, together with their home towns.
Caroline Aherne (Wythenshawe)
Tom Baker (Liverpool)
Warren Clarke (Chorlton-cum-Hardy)
Bernard Cribbins (Oldham)
Christopher Eccleston (Salford)
Gracie Fields (Rochdale)
Albert Finney (Salford)
Anna Friel (Rochdale)
Rex Harrison (Houghton)
Bernard Hill (Manchester)
Thora Hird (Morecambe)
Jane Horrocks (Rawtenstall)
John Inman (Blackpool)
Glenda Jackson (Liverpool)
Sue Johnston (Warrington)
Burt Kwouk (Manchester)
Sarah Lancashire (Oldham)
Ian McKellen (Burnley)
Ian McShane (Blackburn)
Jonathan Morris (Urmston)
Derek Nimmo (Liverpool)
Maxine Peake (Blackburn)
Pat Phoenix (Manchester)
Pete Postlethwaite (Warrington)
Robert Powell (Salford)
Leonard Rossiter (Liverpool)
Alison Steadman (Liverpool)
John Thaw (Manchester)
John Thomson (Manchester)
Ricky Tomlinson (Blackpool)
Lancashire has always been one of English cricket’s heart lands, and while followers’ attention is usually on the fortunes of the county side, its club leagues are hugely popular too. Aside from the local rivalries between towns and villages, part of the appeal is the system of professionals, whereby each club is allowed to appoint one paid player each season - very often a recognised star and usually the dominant force in their club’s performance that season. The leagues were particularly popular in the county’s old mill and factory towns, where work would end at noon on Saturdays in time for workers to watch an afternoon’s cricket, and where the tradition of the paid pro endures most strongly.
When the system began in the late 19th century it was common to engage English players, their fees raised from paying spectators. Later, as overseas players became more widely known, clubs started to hire big names from abroad - in the 1970s and 1980s often from the world’s best side, the West Indies, and more recently from Australia, South Africa and Asia. From the hundreds of players to have passed through Lancashire’s various leagues, here are 25 of the best, together with the clubs they represented.
Allan Border, Australia (East Lancs)
Chris Cairns, New Zealand (Bacup)
Ian Chappell, Australia (Ramsbottom)
Michael Clarke, Australia (Ramsbottom)
Learie Constantine, West Indies (Nelson)
Kapil Dev, India (Nelson)
Allan Donald, South Africa (Rishton)
Andy Flower, Zimbabwe (Crimble)
Joel Garner, West Indies (Littleborough)
Jason Gillespie, Australia (Rishton)
Wes Hall, West Indies (Accrington)
George Headley, West Indies (Haslingden)
Michael Holding, West Indies (Rishton)
Dennis Lillee, Australia (Haslingden)
Ray Lindwall, Australia (Nelson)
Clive Lloyd, West Indies (Haslingden)
Colin Miller, Australia (Rawtenstall)
Viv Richards, West Indies (Rishton)
Andy Roberts, West Indies (Haslingden)
Garfield Sobers, West Indies (Radcliffe)
Mark Taylor, Australia (Greenmount)
Clyde Walcott, West Indies (Enfield)
Shane Warne, Australia (Accrington)
Steve Waugh, Australia (Nelson)
Everton Weekes, West Indies (Bacup)
Although Yorkshire might have something to say about it, Lancashire likes to consider itself the home of fish and chips.
The county certainly has all the ingredients of a successful chippy - an easy supply of fresh fish via its coastline and ports, plentiful potatoes that are considered locally to be the best in Britain, and a hard-working and hungry population. In fact, a survey by seafood marketing agency Seafish found that Lancashire has more fish and chip shops per capita than any other part of the country - one for every 914 residents. Between them, they sell some 20 million portions of fish and chips a year.
Early versions of the meal were sold from fried fish warehouses, at first usually with baked or boiled potatoes or bread, and Charles Dickens refers to one such place in Oliver Twist. A few years later, someone had the bright idea of serving fish with chips, and the combination stuck. Cheap, filling and quickly obtained, it became particularly popular among Lancashire’s industrial working class, and fish and chip shops sprung up across the county’s mill towns. When workers started to go on holiday, to resorts like Blackpool and Morecambe, more outlets quickly opened to serve them. Fish and chips has been associated with the seaside ever since.
Although it is universally popular, the meal is the subject of considerable trans-Pennine rivalry. While Yorkshire claims the oldest surviving shop - in Yeadon near Leeds - Lancashire boasts the first one to open, in the market at Mossley near Oldham on the eastern fringes of the county in 1863. Both counties naturally consider their versions to be superior, though they do at least agree that servings in the north of England are far superior to those in the south.
Fish and chip culture certainly varies around the country. While the south generally cooks cod and has lately added fancier fish like hake or skate, Lancashire and Yorkshire tend to fry haddock, and while ketchup might be served with chips beneath the Watford Gap, above it they come with gravy. Some things about fish and chips change - it is now served in plastic trays rather than wrapped in old newspapers, for instance - but Lancashire remains hugely loyal to its favourite takeaway.
Ten humorously named fish and chip shops in Lancashire
Chip Ahoy, Blackpool
The Codfather, St Annes
The Contented Sole, Preston
The Frying Squad, Blackpool
The Happy Haddock, Preston
Joyce’s Plaice, Fleetwood
Northern Sole, St Annes
Ocean’s Eleven, Leigh
Oh My Cod, Rawtenstall
Something Fishy, Bacup
There are five main points of the Countryside Code, which was first drawn up by the Commons and Open Spaces Society in the 1930s and revised into its current form by the Countryside Agency - now Natural England - in 2004. It helps members of the public respect, protect and enjoy their natural surroundings in Lancashire and beyond.
Be safe - plan ahead and follow any signs
Leave gates and property as you find them
Protect plants and animals, and take your litter home
Keep dogs under close control
Consider other people
Even the most loyal of admirers would probably admit that Lancashire has produced more technically gifted artists than L. S. Lowry. But few painters have developed so distinctive and instantly recognisable a style - and none chronicled the industrial Lancashire of the first half of the 20th century half so memorably.
Laurence Stephen Lowry was born in 1887 in Manchester. After a fairly unhappy upbringing as an only child, he started work as an office clerk at 16, using some of his wages to take evening art classes. In his late twenties he won places at art schools in Manchester and Salford and, after several years of education and practice, achieved his first exhibitions, sales and commissions in the early 1920s.
Lowry’s family had lived in some of Manchester’s leafier suburbs, but financial problems led them to move in 1909 to Pendlebury, then a town north of Salford that was dominated by mills and collieries. At first he disliked the industrial landscape, but it interested him more and more as he grew older and he stayed in Pendlebury for nearly 40 years. The motifs of his paintings - pallid skies, high-rise factories and tenements, belching chimneys, large crowds of indistinct figures hunched against the cold - were inspired by what he saw, here and in other industrial Lancashire towns.
The scenes, coupled with what is sometimes called a primitive style, make Lowry’s paintings instantly recognisable as his. But while his matchstick men were certainly the result of a simple approach to art, Lowry was a far more considered and knowledgeable artist than he is often given credit for. He was a huge admirer of the pre-Raphaelite, Impressionist and Expressionist movements among others, and painted portraits, still lifes and country scenes too. As Lancashire’s industrial powerhouses started to wane in the 1950s, he moved even further away from the subject that, by now, he was closely associated with. In all, he completed around a thousand paintings and many more drawings - some refined to exhibition standard and others simply sketches on the backs of envelopes or napkins.
Lowry was recognised in his lifetime by art awards, honorary degrees and the freedom of Salford, though he turned down an OBE, CBE and knighthood - making him, so far as is known, the person to have turned down the most official honours in a lifetime. But while he was certainly very popular towards the end of his life he was not, by the standards of most renowned artists, a rich man, and continued in his office job until his sixties. Instead, his reputation soared long after his peak output as an artist, through retrospectives and, perhaps, a nostalgia for the lost industrial north. His work now often changes hands for seven figure sums, and an auction in 2007 sold one of his paintings - of mill workers celebrating a rare holiday - for £3.8 million.
The best place to find out more about Lowry’s life and work is the arts and entertainment centre named after him on Salford Quays. Opened in 2000, it features around 400 of his pieces - the largest number anywhere - and a Lowry Archive, housed among 21,530 square feet (2,000 sq m) of performance spaces, galleries and cafés (tel 0870 787 5780 or visit www.thelowry.com). There is a statue of Lowry, sat on a bench with sketchbook in hand, in Mottram, a village east of Manchester and just outside Lancashire’s borders where he lived for his last 30 years.
What does Lancashire mean to you? When the county’s tourist agency did some research into how it is perceived, it got lots of different answers and some confusion among visitors about its values and strengths. So like all good marketing professionals must, it set to work on building the Lancashire brand. The results included two slogans for promoting Lancashire further afield: ‘The home of the good things in life’ and ‘Where life feels good’.
Beyond that, Visit Lancashire identified five core brand values for the area: ‘closeness’, in physical and emotional terms; ‘realness’, meaning proper food and fun and people without pretension; ‘traditional quality’, with everything done properly; ‘genuine warmth’ and the essence of northerness; and ‘big wows and little wows’, intended to indicate that Lancashire offers lots of small pleasures as well as large-scale attractions. Marketing jargon or an accurate reflection of Lancashire’s appeal? Visitor numbers are steadily increasing, so perhaps the agency’s branding has, along with its other promotional schemes, had a positive effect.
By their definition as the seat of a bishop, Lancashire has three of the Church of England’s 42 cathedrals. They are:
Blackburn Cathedral. There has been a church on this town-centre site for more than a thousand years, but it was only designated a cathedral in 1926 and consecrated at the end of building work in the 1970s.
Liverpool Cathedral. When the position of Bishop of Liverpool was created in 1880, the city didn’t have a cathedral proper. So after a popular architectural competition, Giles Gilbert Scott designed what was to become - more than 70 years later - the world’s fifth largest cathedral, nearly 660 feet (200 m) long and with a tower reaching up 328 feet (100 m).
Manchester Cathedral. Churches have come and gone on the cathedral’s site since Norman and perhaps even Saxon times, but most of the current building dates from the 19th century. It obtained cathedral status in 1847 and received large-scale refurbishment over 20 years after being hit by a German bomb in the Second World War. An IRA bomb caused further damage in 1996.
The Roman Catholic Church has three cathedrals in Lancashire: the Cathedral Church of St John the Evangelist in Salford, consecrated in 1850; St Peter’s Cathedral in Lancaster, consecrated in 1859; and Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, consecrated in 1967.
Of the 41 authors to have won the Booker Prize, the most prestigious award for fiction in the UK and Commonwealth, only one was born in Lancashire. He was J. G. (James Gordon) Farrell, who was born in Liverpool in 1935 and educated at the Rossall private school, near Cleveleys on the Lancashire coast. He became the fifth Booker winner in 1973 for his book The Siege of Krishnapur, part of his ‘Empire’ trilogy that explored the fallout of British colonial rule, and used his acceptance speech to criticise the then sponsors of the prize. Farrell died in 1979 at the age of 44, drowned while out fishing in Ireland.
Lancashire has also produced the author with the most places on the Booker Prize’s shortlists in the four decades since it was launched. Beryl Bainbridge, born in Liverpool and raised a little way up the coast in Formby, has been shortlisted five times, in 1973,1974,1990,1996 and 1998, without ever going on to win the award.
