SLAIDBURN - Lancashire County Council

Lancashire Historic Town SurveySlaidburn5.5 Spaces, vistas and panoramasSlaidburn lies in attractive countryside, and is part of the Forest of Bowland Area ofOutstanding Natural Beauty, which can be viewed from a number of points within thesettlement. There are no formal open spaces within the settlement, although the roadjunctions created small open areas which were probably the sites of the fairs5.6 Plan formSlaidburn was originally a medieval unplanned, nucleated settlement, focused around theopen space which was probably used for the fair, and which appears to have become amarket place by the early post medieval period. Its current form reflects post medievalexpansion, as ribbon development along The Shay, Church Street and Chapel Street.Much of this new building appears to have taken place in the sixteenth century (Porter1980, 58), when the settlement appears to have extended north of the Croasdale Brook(Saxton 1591), although the surviving fabric is largely of eighteenth to nineteenth centurydate. By the late eighteenth century, the settlement had shrunk on the north side, and didnot extend beyond the Croasdale Brook, whilst it had expanded southwards as far as thechurch on both sides of the road (Jeffrey 1771)5.7 SurvivalAreas of below ground potential within the historic core are constrained by post medievaldevelopment, some of which will be cellared. The relative lack of redevelopment from thenineteenth century indicates a high potential for surviving buried medieval and postmedieval remains, however, especially within the remaining undeveloped back plots. Therelative lack of archaeological investigation in Slaidburn to date, however, makes itimpossible to characterise the nature of any potential below ground remains. Even so,work at Bowgrave Meadow indicates that the potential is there for prehistoric activity(www.slaidburn.org.uk). The biggest threat to below ground remains may lay in thesouthern part of village, around the church, where the earliest settlement may have been(Higham 1985).There is a high potential for surviving above-ground remains, from the seventeenth to earlynineteenth centuries. The stock of historic buildings is relatively high, as shown by thelarge number of listed buildings. There would appear to be little threat to the survival of thehistoric integrity of the settlement, as the village lies within the Forest of Bowland Area ofOutstanding Natural Beauty.© Lancashire County Council 2006 18