BLACKBURN HUNDRED 



WHALLEY 



Leagram to two or three persons.'' Another small 



sum IS given. 



WHALLEY 



Hwaelleage, H^ve.illxge, A.-S. Chron. 798 ; Wallei, 

 Dom. Bk. ; Wallebi, 1182 (exceptional) ; Wallega, 

 1183 ; Walelega, 121 1 ; Walleye, 124.5 ; Qwalley, 

 1257 ; Walley, Wallay, 1258 ; Whallay, 1298. 



The township of Whalley lies along the Calder as 

 it flows north and west on its way to the Ribble. 

 The parish church, surrounded by the village, stands 

 near the north bank of the river in a central position, 

 and has the ruins of the once great abbey to its west. 

 Moreton lies in the south-east corner of the town- 

 ship, with Portfield a mile to the north and Clerk 

 Hill, on a spur of Pendle, still further north. Nether- 

 town and Shawhouses are hamlets to the north-west 

 of Whalley village. The area of the township is 

 1,603 acres,' and in 1 90 1 there was a population of 

 1,100. 



The principal road is that from Blackburn, which 

 crosses the Calder at the village and then goes north 

 to Clitheroe ; a branch turns off to the north-west to 

 cross the Ribble at Mitton. The Blackburn and 

 Hellifield branch of the Lancashire and Yorkshire 

 Railway crosses the Calder valley by a viaduct and 

 runs north through the township ; there is a station 

 to the west of the village. 



In the main street is a house with a panel inscribed 

 'Thomas and Catharan Pecop 1667' within a scal- 

 loped border. 



The township is governed by a parish council. 

 In the village are assembly rooms and a reading room. 



The agricultural land in Whalley, Wiswell, Pendle- 

 ton, Mitton and Coldcoats is thus occupied : arable, 

 5 acres ; permanent grass, 4,327 ; woods and planta- 

 tions, 472.'" In Whalley proper, apart from consider- 

 able plantations, the land is chiefly in pasture ; the 

 soil is a loam, overlying gravel and clay. An agri- 

 cultural show is held in August, The corn-mill is 

 worked by steam. 



There were formerly some minor industries such as 

 bobbin turning and nail making.^ More recently 

 bricks and tiles have been manufactured. 



Apart from the abbey there is little to relate of 

 the history of the place. The remarkable ancient 

 crosses have already been described.' Another cross, 

 on the bowling green, was destroyed in the first part 

 of the 17th century.* 



One of the monks, William Haydock, was executed 

 at Whalley in l 5 3 7 in a field called Little Imps, for 

 his share in the Pilgrimage of Grace.' 



The county lay of 1624, based on the old fifteenth, 

 required the ch.ipelry to raise ^'3 3/. ■912'. towards 

 each j^ioo levied upon the hundred. The town- 

 ships contributed thus : Whalley, icr. j\d. ; Mitton, 

 &c., 19J. l\d.; Great and Little Pendleton, 14/. 10 Ja'.; 

 Wiswell, 19/. l^d.'^ 



The Civil War was marked by a fight near Whalley 

 on the border of Read on 19 April 1643, when the 

 Earl of Derby marching towards Padiham was defeated 

 by the Parliamentary forces. By the latter, inferior 

 in numbers, an ambush was formed ; the king's 

 troops, attacked unexpectedly at close quarters, fled 

 back to Whalley, where the earl himself made resist- 

 ance for a time. At last, however, horse as well as 

 foot were driven over the Calder and the earl's design 

 was frustrated.' 



The hearth tax return of 1666 quoted below shows 

 that Whalley was then a place of much greater relative 

 importance than in more recent times, though Clitheroe 

 with 198 hearths against 121 surpassed it. Two 

 halfpenny tokens were issued at Whalley in 1667-71. 



Nonconformity found a leader in Thomas Jollie of 

 Wymondhouses, but the case of the Surey Demoniac 

 in 1689-90 did not altogether tend to its credit. A 

 certain Richard Dugdale of Surey near Whalley was 

 long subject to fits, which were attributed to possession 

 by an evil spirit. His parents, poor people, tried 

 various remedies, and one time took him to Henry 

 Crabtree, the curate of Todmorden, described as ' no 

 great scholar, a blunt but an honest man [who] served 

 a poor place for about ^^i 2 a year, which he augmented 

 by venturing to give physic to the country people ' ; 

 he told the Dugdales a cure was possible if they 

 could pay for it. Then the Nonconformists of the 

 district held prayer meetings and exorcised the man 

 for about twelve months, when he was said to be cured. 

 The ministers chiefly concerned in these exercises 

 were Thomas Jollie and John Carrington, and the 

 latter, afterwards stationed at Lancaster, in 1697 

 published an injudicious narrative of the event * 

 tending very much to his own glorification. The 

 slight on the Church of England implied by the 

 alleged success of the Nonconformist ministrations 

 brought out a reply or examination by Zachary 

 Taylor, one of the king's preachers and curate-in- 

 charge of Wigan. This is a specimen of the worst 

 kind of controversy, that in which the writer, with- 

 out any sincere conviction, tries merely to annoy his 

 opponents. Though his title. The Surey Impostor,^ 

 and most of his argument urge that the fits were mere 

 tricks by Dugdale, he yet questions the cure, cites 

 Crabtree's statement that the man might have been 

 cured naturally and prints a certificate from a local 



33 The mansion-house of Lentworth 

 Hall in Over Wyresdale was in 1706 con- 

 veyed to trustees to secure the payment 

 of the ^6 and other charities. In 1841 

 the trustees of Cardinal Weld conveyed 

 the manor of Aighton to the Stonyhurst 

 College trustees, charged with the pay- 

 ment of j^6, thus relieving Lentworth. 



3' Thomas Walbank (see Chipping) in 

 1732 left £z^ for the poor of Leagram 

 attending a sermon at Chipping Church 

 on St. Thomas's Day. This now pro- 

 duces ys. 6d.f given to a poor person, at- 

 tendance at the sermon no longer being 

 required. 



The benefaction of Alice and James 

 Webster (1742) has been lost. 



1 The Census Rep. 1901 gives 1,601 

 acres, including 25 of inland water. 



i> Statistics from Bd. of Agric. (1905). 



2 Baines, Lanes. Dir, I 826. 



3 F.C.H. Lana, i, 286*. 



* Gibson, Ca-valicr's Note-Bk. 171, 

 where it is stated on the authority of 

 Richard Craven of Dinckley that the 

 destruction of the cross, which must have 

 been earlier than 1630, was followed by 

 the death of one of the two who had 

 destroyed it secretly by night. The 

 bowlers next day found it lying on the 

 green and wished it to be removed ; the 

 man on lifting it up fell beneath it and 

 80 was killed, to the terror of his accom- 

 plice. 



5 V.C.H. Lanes, ii, 138. 



^ Gregson, Fragments (ed. Harland), 



23- 



' Cinjil War Tracts (Chet. Soc), 95-8 ; 

 fVar in Lanes. (Chet. Soc), 31-5. The 

 earl had intended to clear the Parliament's 

 men out of Blackburn Hundred and then 

 to attack Manchester. He had with him 

 a ' piece of ordnance ' that was ' dis- 

 charged twice or thrice at the most to- 

 wards the tower, but with no execution 

 that was heard of.' On the importance 

 of this fight see Broxap, Ci'vil War in 

 Lanes. 82-4. 



^ The Surejr Demoniaek (64 pp.). 



' A rude woodcut portrait of Dugdale 

 is prefixed to it. 



381 



