BLACKBURN HUNDRED 



RIBCHESTER 



The last perambulation of the parish took place in 

 1829. 7 



To the county lay of 1624., founded on the old 

 fifteenth, when Blackburn Hundred paid £100, Ro- 

 chester and Dilworth paid £3 14/. \d. and Dutton 

 £1 1 11. 1 o\d., while Alston and Hothersall in Amoun- 

 derness paid £1 3/. ii^d. — a total of £6 10s. l$d. 

 from the whole parish. 8 



The government was formerly in the hands of ' the 

 gentlemen and Twenty-four,' the records going back 

 to 1638. 9 At present Ribchester and Dutton have 

 each a parish council ; Alston and Dilworth form the 

 urban district of Longridge. 



The hearth tax returns of 1666 show that Rib- 

 chester and Dilworth together had 1 24 hearths liable; 

 the largest house was Ellis Cottam's with five hearths, 

 one house had four and three had three. Mr. Richard 

 Townley's house at Dutton had five hearths, another 

 had four, and there was a total of sixty-one in that 

 township. 10 



Thomas Pennant in his journey to Alston Moor 

 in 1773 visited this place to see the antiquities. He 

 says : ' We crossed the New Bridge, an elegant struc- 

 ture of three elliptical arches. A quarter of a mile 

 beyond stands Ribchester, a poor village, formerly a 

 famous Roman station : on its north-east side it is 

 bounded by a little brook, on the south-east by the 

 River Ribble, both which annually make great encroach- 

 ments on the place ; the last especially, which has 

 crossed from the other side of the vale and threatens 

 ruin by undermining the banks on which the village 

 stands : a row of houses and some gardens have already 

 been swept away.' After describing the Roman re- 

 mains, and speculating on the possibility of the tide 

 having once ascended as high as Ribchester, Brock- 

 holes being at that time its limit, he names some of 

 the old halls of the neighbourhood, remarking that 

 'they all stand on the edge of the bank, embosomed 

 once by thick woods of oak, which flourished greatly 

 on the steep slope.' n 



The church of ST. WILFRID stands 

 CHURCH on the south side of the town, about 

 100 yds. from the right bank of the 

 Ribble, which here, taking a big bend, flows south 

 for about half a mile below Ribchester Bridge. The 

 building consists of chancel with small north vestry, 

 nave with south aisle and north chapel, south porch 

 and west tower, and occupies part of the site of the 

 Roman station, the line of the north wall of which 

 passes through the churchyard on the north side. 



The building belongs substantially to the I 3th cen- 

 tury, and has many points of resemblance to the church 

 of Whalley, which was erected about the same time, 

 though the dimensions are smaller and there is no north 

 aisle to the nave. The work would probably be in 

 progress during the middle of the first half of the 

 century, when the building would assume its present 

 shape, with the exception of the north chapel, porch 

 and tower. It probably then terminated with a gable 

 at the west end surmounted by a bell-turret, and so 

 remained till some time in the 14th century, when the 

 chapel and porch were added. Nothing then seems 



to have been done till the end of the 15 th century, 

 when the west tower was built and the plan assumed 

 its present shape. Considerable changes, however, 

 took place in the appearance of the building during 

 the next century, when the old steep roofs of both 

 chancel and nave were taken down, the chancel walls 

 raised and the present roofs erected. The appear- 

 ance of the aisle was entirely altered by the insertion 

 of new square-headed windows and the walls probably 

 raised, and it is even possible that the aisle walls were 

 entirely rebuilt at this time, though the rough character 

 of the masonry makes it difficult to be sure of this. 

 The line of the former steep roof to the nave is still 

 clearly distinguishable on the east face of the tower, 

 and its pitch suggests that the original aisle wall must 

 have been considerably lower than at present or that 

 the nave and aisle were under one roof. There seems 

 never to have been a clearstory, the nave originally 

 having enough light in all probability from the west 

 end as well as from the north. There are records of 

 repairs done to the fabric in the 17th and 1 8 th cen- 

 turies, the two ugly dormer windows on the south 

 side of the nave roof probably belonging to the former 

 period. The chief work of repair was done in 

 1685-6 and in 171 1, when the fabric was twice 

 beautified, 12 and in 1736 the west gallery was erected. 

 After this little seems to have been done to the build- 

 ing till 1830, when it was repaired and new seats put 

 in. Two windows in the south aisle were renewed some 

 thirty years later, but no real restoration took place 

 till 1 88 1, when the chancel was taken in hand. The 

 rest of the building remains in a more or less neg- 

 lected condition, the walls being covered with yellow 

 wash, obscuring much of the mediaeval detail, which 

 in other parts is spoilt by paint and varnish. 



The chancel, in common with the rest of the church, 

 is faced with rubble masonry, and the north wall was 

 partly rebuilt in the restoration of 1 88 1. Its internal 

 dimensions are 40 ft. in length by 2 1 ft. in width, 

 and the floor is 6J in. below that of the nave, the 

 east end of the church thus losing something in 

 dignity when viewed from the west, the sanctuary 

 being raised by only one step, thus bringing it to the 

 general level of the floor of the church. The roof is 

 new with three wood principals, the tie-beam at the 

 east end cutting awkwardly across the top of the 

 window. The east wall is faced on the interior with 

 rough stone, but the other walls are plastered above 

 the string which goes round the chancel at the height 

 of the window sills. The east window is the original 

 13th-century one of three lancet lights 1 ft. 10 in. in 

 width, splaying out on the inside to 5 ft. There are 

 two original lancet lights also in the south wall 1 5 in. 

 wide, splaying to 4 ft. on the inside and with a depth 

 of 2 ft. 3 in., and remains of a third may still be seen 

 from the inside. There have been two similar windows 

 at the east end of the north wall, one of which still 

 remains, opening into the vestry, the door to which 

 is cut in the wall through the lower part of the 

 second, the head of which may be seen above. West 

 of these windows the north chancel wall appears to 

 have been always blank as at present, except for a 



7 T. C. Smith, Ribchester, 73. 



8 Gregson, Fragments (ed. Harland), 

 23. 



9 Smith, op. cit. 160-73. A petition 

 for exemption from serving on the 

 Twenty-four, sent in by John Ward of 



Hothersall in 1639, is printed in Pal. 

 Note Bk. iii, 43. 



10 Lay Subs. Lanes, bdle. 250, no. 9. 



11 Downing to Alston Moor, 92-100. 



12 Churchwardens' accounts quoted by 

 T. C. Smith, Hist, of Ribchester, 92-9. 



37 



'1685. For beautifying the church, 

 £■$ 10s. 1686. P d to y e masons for 

 hewne work and for waiting and getting 

 stones, £3 3*. \od. iju. For beauti- 

 fying the church, £3.' 



