A flavour of Leigh from ‘Victoria County History: A History of the County of Lancaster: Vol. 3’.
On the road from Bolton-le-Moors to St Helens, Leigh was rich in meadow and pasture land, and
Leigh cheese was noted for its excellence.
Silk weaving (seriously injured by the French Treaty in 1860), nail making, linen weaving and the
manufacture of fustian were staples in the 17th & 18th centuries, later came cotton and machinery
manufacture. The excellent beds of coal have been worked for more than five centuries but mining
escalated at end of the 18th century due after the duke of Bridgewater's canal link to Manchester.
In Bedford and Astley there were lime kilns burning the Sutton lime, producing a hydraulic cement.
The rich loam soil is somewhat stiff but there was also a considerable amount of alluvial land by
Pennington Brook, and moss land at Chat Moss, Black Moss and Tyldesley Mosses, which made
excellent and easily cultivated arable land.
Local entrepreneurs included John Kay, a clockmaker, from Leigh and Richard Arkwright from Bolton.
Pennington, Westleigh and Bedford were merged into Leigh in 1875.
The church of St Mary the Virgin, anciently described as 'the church of Westleigh in Leigh,' was
originally consecrated in honour of St Peter and rebuilt in 1873. The registers began in 1559.
In 1642 the inhabitants distinguished themselves in an action at Chowbent against the forces of the
earl of Derby, the zealous but untrained husbandmen repulsed and drove the royalists beyond
Lowton Common. The nailers of Chowbent busied themselves thereafter making bills and battleaxes, instead of nails.
Chapels were built at Astley in 1631, and at Atherton in 1648. Wesley preached in the district in the
year 1748, at Shakerley and in 1774 at a preaching-house was built at Chowbent.
Westleigh
Cotton factories and iron works, displaced agriculture and destroyed the former natural beauty.
Before the Conquest the manor was one of the thirty four dependent upon the chief manor of
Warrington. In the twelfth century Westleigh became a member of a scattered fee, having its caput
at Bolton le Moors. In 1230 the whole fee between Ribble and Mersey, including this manor, was
sold to the earl of Chester and Lincoln. Subsequently the superior lordship descended with the earl
of Chester.
After 1522 the estate descended in the Halsall family, and was dispersed. About twenty-six acres
were sold to James Sorocold of Highhurst in Knowsley, yeoman, and another portion to Adam Mort,
who held a tenement here at his death in 1631.
Frances Urmston of Westleigh married, first, Richard Shuttleworth of Bedford, gent, who died in
1650, and secondly, George Bradshaw of Greenacre, gent. Richard Shuttleworth of Westleigh, esq,
ultimately inherited the whole estate, with the advowson of the vicarage of Leigh and the ancient
rectory or Kirk Hall estate. He was a recusant and as an adherent of the Pretender took part in the
rebellion of 1715, for which his estates were forfeited.
In 1641 a portion of the estates were sold to John Sorocold of Lowton, gent., for £730, and the year
following, Sorocold was involved in a partition of the manor of Westleigh and Pennington. Excluding
the Old Hall of Westleigh and enclosures containing about 41 acres of land of the large measure,
John Sorocold took the remainder of the premises, including the following field names - The Meare
Leach, the Harr Shoots, Great and Little Terisse Meadows, Little Pingott, and the Boydells Field. The
land lay mostly around Westleigh Mill.
In 1688 the Old Hall of Westleigh and the demesne lands, were sold to the Parrs and eventually and
inevitably circuitously ended up with Richard Nicholas Marsh, esq., to whom the estate was
bequeathed. He died in 1837, leaving issue by a second marriage Richard Marsh, esq, solicitor, of
Leigh, who died in 1895. His son William Edward Marsh, esq, of High Peak, Kenyon, died in 1904,
when he was succeeded by his brother, Mr Richard Thomas Marsh of High Peak, the present owner.
Further property in Westleigh passed to the Sorocolds of Brockhurst in Pennington. A lease made in
1632 between George Sorocold of Ashton in Makerfield, yeoman, and Geoffrey Mather of
Westleigh, yeoman involved a 'muskett peece' with George Sorocold or his heirs commanded to
show a musket for lands sold. The Sorocolds of Barton and Lowton acquired a considerable amount
of property in the parish during the first half of the seventeenth century.
Thomas Sorocold entered his pedigree at the Visitation of 1664–5.
One of the family is mentioned in Roger Lowe's Diary of March, 1672–3, ‘Friday night died Capt. John
Sorrowcold, an old cannibell that hath orethrowne many families, but he hath now arrived at his
owne place, abundance of gold and silver is found under his handes.'
Pennington
Before the Conquest and after, the manor was dependent upon the chief manor of Warrington and
Sir William le Boteler. Both Pennington & Bedford townships were in the possession of the Bedford
family at the start of the thirteenth century, the dawn of documentary records.
Bedford
The original ford was through Pennington Brook where Breaston Bridge is now. The town is
traversed by four considerable streams coming from the north, west, and east and uniting to the
south of Bedford Hall to form the Glazebrook.
The trees surrounding Atherton Hall form the northern boundary are a welcome relief from the
current unbending lines of factories and cottages. The main road from Manchester to Leigh and the
Bridgewater Canal traverse the township from east to west. There is also a branch road leading
southward to Warrington.
Chief employment of late has been in the Bedford collieries, agricultural implement works, brickfields, an iron foundry, brewery and maltings, cotton, silk and corn mills.
Dependent before the Conquest upon the chief manor of Warrington hundred, and afterwards
included in the barony of Warrington. It was not held by knight's service, but by a yearly rent of 10s.,
which suggests a continuity of the pre-Conquest tenure, and possibly to uninterrupted ownership by
Englishmen.
Kighleys and Sales of Hopecarr split the manor in the 14th century and one-sixteenth part of the
Kighley half was held by the Shuttleworths, an ancient messuage known as Shuttleworth House.
In 1589 Katherine Kighley married Thomas Worsley, subsequently of Hovingham, York, esq, son and
heir of Robert Worsley of Booths, esq. Eventually the whole of the Kighley estates in the parish of
Leigh went to Katherine and her husband Thomas Worsley. Thomas and Katherine Worsley
afterwards conveyed the manor, consisting of eighteen messuages and ten cottages with orchards
and gardens, one water-mill, and 640 acres of land, meadow and pasture, and 2,560 acres of moss
and turbary, to trustees appointed to effect a sale or conveyance of the manor and other estates to
Sir Richard Shuttleworth and Sir Richard Brereton, knts., in discharge of a recognizance of debt due
to them by Thomas Worsley.
Bedford Hall is now a farm house but in 1291 it was in the possession of Adam de Sale, as was
Hopecarr, another estate of note. Hopecarr Farm is now the sewage farm belonging to the Leigh and
Atherton Joint Sewage Board!
Atherton
Adre, a watercourse, and tun, a farmstead or village, aptly describes the character of this well
watered township. The town, including Chowbent, part of the town which surrounds the parish
church, stands on the high road from Bolton to Leigh with branches westward to Wigan and
eastward to Tyldesley. A district of collieries, cotton-mills and iron-works, cover the country with
inartistic buildings linked together by unlovely dwellings of the people. The geological formation
consists almost entirely of the coal measures. Silk-weaving was carried on, but owing to foreign
competition has now entirely disappeared. The first cotton mill was erected in 1776. The
manufacture of bolts, nails, spindles and flyers of machinery is also carried on.
Atherton was included in the Warrington fee upon the creation of that barony by Henry I.
Rents and marriages of the Atherton family led to connections not only with Warrington, Chester,
Lancaster & London but also to Vale Royal – Mobberley – Shipbrook – Middleton – Slingsby, Fryton,
& Hovingham, Yorkshire – Langston & Walford, Herefordshire – Stoughton Grange, Leicestershire –
Hornby Castle – Newstead –Newton – Lyme –Winwick – Lilford – Ashton-in-Makerfield –
Down to 1705 Chowbent estate remained in the possession of the Chowe family, but in that year it
passed by mortgage and eventually by sale to Mr. Nathan Mort, son of Robert Mort of Wharton Hall
and cousin of Thomas Mort of Dam House, by whose descendants the estate was divided and sold.
Tyldesley with Shakerley
This township on the north-west of Leigh is bounded on the northern and eastern sides by the
hundred of Salford. The town is on the main road between Manchester, Hindley, and Wigan. With
the exception of a bit of lower red sandstone, near Dam House, the geological consists of the coal.
The meadow and pasture which used to produce Leigh cheeses is now characteristic of an industrial
district whose natural features have been almost entirely swept away to give place to factories, iron
foundries, and collieries. The manor was one of the thirty-four manors dependent upon the chief
manor of Warrington. In these and many other respects the characteristics of Tyldesley were no
different from the other Leigh townships.
Chaddock Hall, The Garret, Cleworth, The Banks, Shakerley & Damhouse were the principal estates.
Astley
An agricultural township of thinly timbered open country on the north side of Chat Moss. The village
is traversed by the main road leading from Leigh to Manchester, and stands three-quarters of a mile
to the north of the Bridgewater Canal from Worsley to Leigh.
The collieries are in the northern part of the township. An important cotton mill was at Astley Green.
Astley Brook traverses the township from the north-east, and meets Black Brook or Moss Brook,
which unites with Bedford and Pennington Brooks, to form the Glazebrook before its confluence
with the River Mersey.
The commons of Astley, including part of Chat Moss, were enclosed in 1765.
At the Conquest Astley was one of the thirty-four manors in the hundred of Warrington. The first
tenant of the manor was Hugh son of Henry de Tyldesley.
In 1606 Sir Thomas Gerard, Baron Gerard of Gerard's Bromley, conveyed the manor to Adam Mort,
gent, who had acquired early in 1595 from James Anderton of Lostock the estate of Dam House in
Tyldesley and about 60 acres of adjoining land in Astley.
The large estates it Astley included the manor of Morley which was originally a parcel of pasture
ground, first mentioned about 1200–20 as the More-Leghe, lying on the north-western border of
Chat Moss. Peel Hall represents an estate granted to Cockersand Abbey between 1190 and 1221 by
Hugh de Tyldesley, whose charter describes the boundary as beginning at the water called the The
Fleet, following this brook northward to the higher part of Limput. Whitehead Hall was a large farmhouse with lands adjoining the townships of Worsley and Tyldesley.
PS Land owners and their titles involved economic rent seeking and tell us nothing of the economic
activities which created the wealth in these communities. The Hindleys were not involved in rent
seeking around Bedford and Astley, they were originally based in Aspull. The first Hindleys in this
area were and offshoot family headed by Adam Hindley, a blacksmith. It was the craftsmen like the
blacksmiths who acquired skills and ’know how’ which turned rocks into swords and ploughshares
and shod the horses for power ... and created the wealth to pay the rents ...