User:Trappedinburnley/Whalley (ancient parish)

Gazette Jan 3 1843 Gazette Sep 3 1845 Gazette Jul 15 1887 Handbook of Whalley

Whalley was an ancient English ecclesiastical parish based in the hundred of Blackburnshire, in Lancashire, but with detached sections extending into areas historically in the West Riding of Yorkshire. At one time it contained 47 townships and extended over 430 square kilometres (105,000 acres). Whalley was the second largest parish in England.

It anciently included also the present parishes of Blackburn, Chipping, Mitton, Ribchester, Rochdale, and Slaidburn, which have been separated from it at different times.

History
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle mentions a battle at Whalley in Northumbria in 798. There are three well-preserved Anglo-Saxon crosses at Church of St Mary and All Saints, Whalley. The Church of St Mary in Wallei is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086. Its endowment of “two carucates of land free of all custom” has been interpreted as the church being one of the wealthiest in what would become Lancashire.

Old chapels

 * 1122 Burnley, Colne, Clitheroe
 * 1296 Altham, Church, Downham, Haslingden
 * 1455 Padiham
 * late 1400s Holme, Marsden (Nelson)
 * Forest - (late 1400s) Whitewell in Bowland, (c. 1512) Newchurch in Rossendale, (c.1544) Newchurch in Pendle (c.1541) Goodshaw in Rossendale (by 1577) Accrington?

A survey in 1296 when the monks from Stanlow Abbey took control of the parish, gives the following details of the chapelries:
 * Whalley included Mitton cum Henthorn, Wiswell, Coldcoats, Great Pendleton, Read, Simonstone, Padiham cum Whitaker, Hapton and Birtwistle
 * Clitheroe included Chatburn, Worston, Great and Little Mearley and Little Pendleton.
 * Downham included Twiston
 * Colne included Alkincoats, Foulridge, Fernside cum Barnside, Marsden and Little Marsden.
 * Burnley included Cliviger, Worsthorne, Extwistle, Briercliffe, Habergham and Ightenhill.
 * Church included Oswaldtwistle, Duckworth and Huncoat.
 * Haslingden.

A report from 1650 shows the parish then had 35 townships with:
 * Padiham chapelry including Hapton, Simonstone and Higham Booth.
 * Clitheroe no longer includes Little Pendleton but adds Heyhouses.
 * Accrington is still extra-parochial.
 * Altham includes part of Clayton and the minister at that time was Thomas Jollie.
 * Haslingden now includes Newhallhey, part of Rawtenstall Booth, Oakenshaw and Constable Lee Booths and part of Wolfenden Booth from Rossendale Forest.
 * Newchurch in Pendle is parochial.
 * Goodshaw is still extra-parochial.
 * Whitewell is still extra-parochial.
 * Newchurch in Rossendale is parochial.

Extra-parochial areas
The chapel of St. Michael at Clitheroe castle is mentioned in charters from 1120, and was ecclesiastically separated from Whalley. Some records call it extra-parochial and it is sometimes described as the parish church of the castle and demesne, with the forest districts of the honour. When Henry de Lacy (c.1251-1311) gave Whalley to the monks of Stanlaw (Whalley Abbey), he withheld the chapel and its district. In 1334, the Abbey entered a legal battle for control over it, finally purchasing the advowson from John of Gaunt in 1365. However they maintained the castle parish as a separate district. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the late 1530s, the benefactions it had received under the monks where transferred to the chapel at Whitewell. The dependent chapelries at Newchurch in Pendle, Newchurch in Rossendale, and Whitewell in Bowland, subsequently joined Whalley. Other parts of the forests joined neighbouring parochial chapelries, such as Trawden with Colne. With the chapel in ruins following the Civil War, in 1660 the allowance for the chaplain was transferred to St Mary Magdalene's Church, Clitheroe.

The following areas are labeled extra-parochial on the first Ordnance Survey map of the area from 1848: Clitheroe Castle, Standen and Standen Hey, and Pendleton Hall (Both now Pendleton), Heyhouses, Ightenhill Park, Reedley Hallows, Filly Close and New Laund Booth, Wheatley Carr Booth, Henheads, and  Dunnockshaw.