England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Accrington St James

The Parish

Accrington is a Chapelry within the wider parish of Whalley in eastern Lancashire. The parish of Whalley covers an extensive area of the Pennine portion of eastern Lancashire, as a consequence of the distances involved and the growing population a number of Chapelries became licensed for marriage following Hardwicke's Act, Accrington St James amongst those. Accrington is perhaps the epitome of industrial Lancashire, a hugely growing town dependent upon the cotton mills and their associated factories. What was a largely rural area became a large city in a short period of the Industrial Revolution. Accrington grew as a result of the water provided by the Hyndburn Brook, clear and fresh for washing wool & cotton and briskly flowing to power mills, prior to the steam age. Accrington lies roughly midway between the towns of Blackburn and Burnley surrounded by modern fast roads, the M65 to the north and the dual-carriageway of the A56 to the east. Accrington's centre sits at about 140 metres above sea level in the valley of Hyndburn Brook but land rises to 300 and 400 metres to the east as the Pennines rise close to the town. The Chapelry consisted of over 3,000 acres and supported a population which had grown from a few hundreds to over 8,000 parishioners during the period of this transcript eventually reaching in excess of 45,000 persons. Accrington like much of the north of England is not mentioned in Domesday Book.

The Church

St James's Church is sited in the heart of Accrington town centre, appropriately in Church Street. The church was built in 1763 to serve the growing population of the town. The tower was added in 1806. There is little to interest Pevsner in the building other than the tracery of the windows which he describes as "playful" otherwise he is content just to factually describe it as "a large church". The church is neatly set in its own square, protected from the roads by rows of bollards and raised in places to create the level building platform. It is a building typical of the town and has been extensively cleaned in recent times to show the stonework without the industrial grime that once predominated.