England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Colne St Bartholomew

The Parish

The chapelry of Colne, lying within the greater parish of Whalley, lies in the extreme east of central Lancashire, indeed it forms part of the border with neighbouring Yorkshire. Colne is a large market & industrial town situated about 6 miles northeast of the industrial town of Burnley. Colne sits astride the A56 road which links Burnley with the Yorkshire market town of Skipton and at the eastern end of the modern equivalent, the M65. Colne is reputed to have very early origins, it is believed the site was that of a Roman station and that the present town occupies that site continuously from those times. Whatever the origins, Colne at the time of this transcript was a prosperous industrial mill town surrounded by a largely pastoral farming region. The town occupies the valley of the Colne Water which would have offered power to the industries growing up at that time. The Colne Water drains westwards to join the Calder and thence the Ribble before entering the Irish Sea through Preston. Colne is sited at around 180 metres in height but the town sits at the point where the Lancashire lowlands give way to the Pennine range and land rises steeply to the east of 517 metres on Lad Law which lies to the southeast of the town. The chapelry, in common with many in Lancashire, covered an extensive area of just over 23,000 acres and supported (by the end of this transcript period) a population of just under 21,000 souls. There is, however, no mention of Colne in Domesday Book which was scant in its coverage of Lancashire.

The Church

St Bartholomew's church sits in an urban setting on the northern side of, appropriately enough, Church Street. Church Street was formerly the route of the A56 before it was rerouted away from the town and is to the west of the main shopping centre. The church appears from the external fabric to entirely a Perpendicular building, however Pevsner rightly notes that the interior reveals a number of features that take the age of the building back still further as the northern arcade is dateable to the 13th century and the southern doorway has features of the Decorated style which preceded the Perpendicular. The rest of the church is mostly from the Late Perpendicular which places the building into the late 15th and early 16th centuries. The church site is surrounded by a low stone wall with benches for taking the time of day, a pair of tall metal gates grants access at the eastern end. There are a number of trees which are a little troublesome in restricting the photographic angles.