HORNBY - Lancashire County Council

Lancashire Historic Town SurveyHornbypopulation of the township grew from 414 to 477, but the population and the growth ratewere both much lower than those of the neighbouring township of Wray, the principalsettlement of which was an industrial hamlet. There, the population increased in the sameperiod from 626 to 808 (Baines 1825, 663). Moreover, of the 477 inhabitants featuring inthe 1821 census returns only about half were considered to reside within the settlement ofHornby (Corry 1825, 20). By 1842 it was described as ‘a small inconsequential place’(Redding and Taylor 1842, 305) and in 1851 as a ‘good village’ but ‘once a market town’(Mannex 1851, 232).Hornby’s heyday appears to have come soon after its foundation as a borough. It was indecline, or at least stagnating, by the later medieval period, and although it clung onto itsmarket into the nineteenth century, it had probably ceased to be recognisably urban in itsphysical fabric by the seventeenth century. It never became an industrial settlement, andhas only grown beyond its medieval limits since the Second World War as a dormitorysettlement for Lancaster.© Lancashire County Council 2006 20