A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



In several of the riverside localities in the township 

 osiers are much grown, this industr)- having been in- 

 troduced in 1803, when a successful attempt was 

 made by a Warrington resident to supply English 

 hasket-makers with willow, when the foreign materials 

 were unobtainable. 



Though the growth of the town has caused the 

 destruction of many of the small two-story houses 

 which were characteristic of its streets, a good num- 

 ber still remain. The oldest are of timber con- 

 struction, such as the old Fox Inn in Buttermarket 

 Street, now a tobacconist's shop, and though much 

 altered retaining sufficient old work to mark its date 

 as belonging to the sixteenth century.' In the 

 seventeenth century Warrington houses seem to have 



Barley Mow Inn, Warrington : Room on First Floor 



been commonly dated by inscriptions over the door- 

 ways, giving not only the year but the day of the 

 month, with the owners' initials. Nearly opposite 

 the Fox Inn is a house with ivn . xxi . 1649 . ak ik ek, 

 and in the Warrington Museum are several beams 

 from destroyed houses with similar inscriptions, all 

 ranging between 1645 and 1658. In Church Street 

 is a good timber house with a projecting upper 

 stor)-, of early sixteenth-century date, but the finest 



' In front of the ' Foi ' is a post on 



which is cut POTTATOES AND ABPLES DOWN- 

 WARD 1704 — being a regulation for the 

 market stalls. Above is a coronet for the 

 earl of Warrington, lord of the manor. 



' Some views of old buildings in the 

 town are given in Tram. Hist. Soc. vi, 

 '35; «vii, 115. A house in Fennel 

 Street had a thirteenth-century room, of 

 which -• ■ . _ _ 



specimen of timber work is the Barley Mow Inn, on the 

 west side of the market place, belonging to the latter 

 part of the sixteenth centur)', with low wood- 

 mullioned lattice windows and quatrefoil panelling 

 of black wood filled in with plaster. The gables 

 toward the market place are now covered with flimsy 

 weather boarding, but otherwise the outside of the 

 house has preserved much of the original work. The 

 interior is naturally less perfect, but on the first floor 

 is a room completely panelled and with a good 

 chimney-piece of Jacobean style, and the staircase has 

 good turned balusters and newels of seventeenth-century 

 date. In the windows are a few quarries of coloured 

 glass, and in one of the ground-floor rooms is a fine 

 carved and panelled chimney-piece, removed from 

 a small room on the first 

 floor.' 



A second type of house 

 which is found in the town 

 is of brick with projecting 

 labels over the windows and 

 simple patterns on the wall 

 surfaces ; such houses appear 

 to be of seventeenth-centur)' 

 date, and an earlier example 

 of the kind occurs at Newton- 

 le-Willows Hall. 



The White Cross, formerly 

 at the west entrance of the 

 town, has disappeared.' 



Before the 

 HUNDRED Conquest ^^y?- 

 RINGTON was 

 the head of a hundred com- 

 prising the parishes of War- 

 rington, Prescot, and Leigh, 

 and the township of Culchcth 

 in Winwick.* Afterwards this 

 was merged in the hundred of 

 West Derby, in which it has 

 since remained. 

 In the time of Henry I a barony or fee 

 B^RONT was formed for Pain de Vilers, Warring- 

 ton being its head and giving it a name. 

 It descended in regular hereditary succession in the 

 Vilers and Pinceina or Boteler family until nearly 

 the end of the sixteenth century, when the Boteler 

 manors and estates were broken up and the Irelands, 

 who purchased the principal share, enfranchised the 

 subordinate manors of the fee.* 



O'M, p, 



■/;. Soc. 



a view IS given in S. O. Addy's 

 Evolution of tkl English House, p. 112. It 

 was pulled down in 1905. 



' Lar.a. and Cbcs. Anti^ 

 213-18. 



* y.C.H. Lanes, i, 2864. 



' Ibid. 337-49. 



An account of the fee of the lord of 

 Warrington in 121 2 is given in Lanes. 

 In^. and Extents (Rec. Soc. Lanes, and 

 Ches.), 5-1 1. The whole included eight 

 knights' fees, of which two formed the 

 reputed barony and one was in Layton 

 in Amounderness; the other five were 



in the counties of Derby, Nottingham and 

 Lincoln. 



The barony proper embraced War- 

 rington with Orford and Little Sankey, 

 Great Sankey and Penketh and Burton- 

 wood ; also Rixton with Glazebrook, 

 Culcheth, Atherton, Bedford, Pennington, 

 Tyldesley, Windle and Bold, all in the pre- 

 Conquest hundred of Warrington ; Ince 

 Blundell, Lydiate with Eggergarth, Hal- 

 sail, half of Barton, and two-thirds of 

 Thornton in the hundred of West Derby ; 

 and Becconsall, Hesketh, Great and' 

 Little Hoole. The usual service for 

 the fee was stated as ' where ten plough- 

 lands make the fee of one knight ' ; 

 but the assessment of the above manors 

 was about thirty-nine plough-lands, or 

 nearly four knights' fees, so that, allowing 

 for demesne and grants in alms, the ser- 

 vice due to the crown was amply secured. 

 How the service for the two fees had 

 been distributed may be seen ibid. 146-7 



Burtonwood, Bold, and possibly others 

 of these manors were of later donation 

 than the formation of the fee or even 

 than 1212 ; thus, in the Survey of 1346 

 (Chet. Soc. 39) the service due from the 

 lord of Warrington for Halsall was 1 lb. 

 of cummin (or i^d.) for suit to the county 

 and wapentake. At this time also the 

 service due from the whole fee was said to 

 be 'two and a half fees and the sixth part 

 of a knight's fee.' For ward of Lancaster 

 Castle 20J. was payable, and 61. id. for 

 sake fee. Suit for the manor of Ince 

 was done by William Blundell. 



Some Boteler inquisitions have been 

 printed by the Chet. Soc. (vols, xcv, icix), 

 as well as a detailed account of the family 

 by W. Beamont (vols. Ixxxvi, Ixxxvii). 



The king leased to Thomas Boteler 

 the view of frankpledge in the manors of 

 Warrington and Layton in 1 504 ; Duchy 

 of Lane. Misc. Books, xxi, A. 59. See 

 also ibid, xxii, 170 (1543). 



