SLAIDBURN - Lancashire County Council

Lancashire Historic Town SurveySlaidburn3. SOURCES3.1 Published worksThere are limited antiquarian sources for Slaidburn, perhaps because of its isolatedposition and its lack of local families of distinction. The most ancient family of the area, theHammertons, had left their ancestral home by 1548 (Whitaker 1878, 41; Greenwood andBolton 1955, 17). The earliest detailed accounts are provided by TD Whitaker in An Historyof the Original Parish of Whalley and Honor of Clitheroe, first published in 1801 (4 th edition1876) , and in The History and Antiquities of the Deanery of Craven in the County of York,first published in 1805 (3 rd edition 1878). Whitaker’s text is mainly concerned with thehistories of the local families and the church, and has little to say about the village itself. Inboth Baines’ History, Gazetteer and Directory of the County of York, 1, West Riding, (1822)and White’s History, Gazetteer and Directory of the West Riding of Yorkshire (1838),Slaidburn is merely described as a village on the River Hodder in the Liberty of Bowland.The Victoria County History for Yorkshire is incomplete, and as of 2002, the volumescovering the West Riding of Yorkshire, which includes Slaidburn had not been started (Kent2002, xiv).The only dedicated history of Slaidburn was published in 1922, entitled A Short History ofthe Parish of Slaidburn (Peel 1922). The work covers all the subsidiary manors of theparish and their families, and therefore there is little on the physical development andhistory of the village itself. R Cunliffe Shaw’s The Royal Forest of Lancaster (1956)contains many references to Slaidburn and its relationship to Bowland generally, as doesGreenwood and Bolton’s Bolland Forest and the Hodder Valley (1955). Greenwood andBolton’s work also incorporates Colonel J Parker’s ‘Bolland’ which was read before theSociety of Genealogists in 1926. More recently, there has been a series of works by Porteron the Forest of Bowland (1974, 1976, 1980, 1994), which provide useful details on thelandscape history of the area, including Slaidburn. The only works which deal specificallywith the centre of the village are short guides, such as MC Higham’s Slaidburn: A Guide forVisitors (1985) and S Barnes’ Slaidburn: A Discovery Trail (1985). There are twopublications on the church; an unpublished typescript ‘History of the parish church of StAndrew, Slaidburn in the West Riding of the County of York’ (Mills nd), and ‘Through all thechanging scenes: an illustrated history of Slaidburn Parish Church (Bradley 1997). There isalso A History of Methodism in Slaidburn and the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel (Spencer2003).Slaidburn’s industrial history is covered in Industrial Heritage: A Guide to the IndustrialArchaeology of the Ribble Valley by Mike Rothwell (1992). This provides a thoroughdescription of the corn mill at Slaidburn and evidence for hand-loom weaving. Moredetailed evidence for the local textile trade can be obtained from the various indexes andtranscripts of wills, parish registers and census information compiled by CJ Spencer(1999a; 1999b). These unpublished typescripts are available at Clitheroe local library andthe Lancashire Record Office in Preston (LRO) as well as at Slaidburn Heritage Centre.Slaidburn’s history is also detailed in a village website (www.slaidburn.org.uk), which looksat the agricultural industry as well as customs, traditions and people.There are two main theses which cover the Forest of Bowland, including Slaidburn. Thefirst is a PhD thesis by J Porter, on ‘The reclamation and settlement of Bowland withspecial reference to the period 1500-1650’ (1973), and the second is an MA thesis by MCHigham, on ‘The Forest of Bowland: a study in continuity (1978).3.2 ManuscriptsAlthough Slaidburn formed part of the Honor of Clitheroe, it had a separate series of courtrolls, because it was the administrative centre of the manor, and was the main centre and© Lancashire County Council 2006 8