England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Ainsworth Christ Church

The Parish

The chapelry of Ainsworth, its mother church being Middleton, lies in southeastern Lancashire roughly midway between Bolton & Bury, being about 3 miles east of the former and a similar distance west of the latter. Ainsworth sits about a mile north of the A58 road which links those two industrial towns. Parallel to the A58 runs the B6196 road which forms the spine of Ainsworth most properties either lining that road or in side streets to both north & south. This is an area of the country that saw huge change as a result of the industrial revolution, prior to that it was primarily a pastoral farming district but with the coming of industry towns grew from nothing and the land has become almost covered with urban settlements. Ainsworth had many industries, the typical cotton mills of the area being supplemented by a bleach works and coal mines such that traditional farming occupied only a small percentage of the population. Modern developments have come and gone from Ainsworth, a branch railway line connecting Bolton to Bury passes to the south but has closed and been largely dismantled. Ainsworth is drained by small streams westwards into the nearby River Roch which makes its way by the Irwell to the Mersey and thus to the Irish Sea arriving through the latter's estuary and the port of Liverpool. Ainsworth is sited at around 160 metres above the sea, the area being the fore-hills of the nearby Pennines rises in billowing moors to a local high point of 273 metres above the sea at Affetside to the north. Ainsworth is a detached chapelry, separate from the area of its mother parish, that acreage of around 1,200 acres would have supported a population rapidly rising to around 1,600 parishioners by the end of this transcript period, the population in the 1750s being very small indeed. Ainsworth is not mentioned in Domesday Book which has very light coverage in this area.

The Church

Christ Church sits on the southern side of the B6196, here named simply Church Street, almost centrally within the urban area of the village. A church has been documented here from as early as 1586 when it was described simply as a "wooden capek set round with trees". The trees remain but the church was almost totally rebuilt in 1832. Pevsner's investigations reveal that the church was gradually changed from that small simple chapel into a stone built edifice over the centuries, as fragments from earlier periods remained despite the scale of the rebuild. In spite of this most of the fabric dates from that 1832 build except for the northern transept which carries dating of 1842. The church of today, therefore, would be rather different from that experienced by most of these marriage participants. Church Street has street parking available outside the churchyard where a lychgate at the eastern end grants entry. The trees that were mentioned in 1586 abound within the churchyard making for a major challenge to the photographer to acquire adequate images of this church.