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

The Parish

The parochial chapelry of Haslingden lies in east central Lancashire within the vast parish of Whalley which forms the greater part of this area of the county. Haslingden is an industrial market town which forms the southwestern portion of Whalley parish. Haslingden is a a valley-side settlement in the Upper Irwell system, one of a string of towns built upon the woollen & cotton milling industries, it sits on the A56 road which connects Bury with Blackburn. Once a small country, upland, market town Haslingden grew within the period of this transcript into a substantial industrial centre, the power of the upland rivers being utilised to drive the looms of the trade, initially woollen processing from the extensive upland sheep, and latterly the cotton trade, the mainstay of eastern Lancashire's industry. Today Haslingden is a trifle postindustrial with the cotton weaving trade largely migrated to overseas location and the mills largely closed, leaving the area somewhat impoverished despite efforts to diversify the employment prospects. Haslingden is squeezed onto a narrow shelf of land between the valley of the Irwell and the moors of Haslingden & Oswaldtwistle Moors, the Irwell drains southwards passing through Bury & Manchester before meeting the Mersey and the Irish Sea through the ports of Liverpool & Birkenhead. Haslingden is sited at between 200 & 250 metres above the sea in an area which forms the western edge of the Pennines, land rises swiftly out of the town reaching 400 metres on Cribden Hill. The parish of Whalley is vast covering 106,400 acres, one of the largest parishes in the country and Haslingden chapelry covers just over 13,300 acres making it large even by parish standards. In common with most of this area of the county Haslingden is not mentioned in Domesday Book.

The Church

St James's church is a relatively recent church built to serve the expanding population of the chapelry in 1780 but a church existed on this site from at least 1280. That early church was rebuilt in Tudor times but fell into a semi-ruinous site whence today's church was erected to replace it, the tower arch being reused from this Tudor incarnation. The church was further enlarged in 1827 to reflect the growing size of the congregation, the skinny western tower was also added at that point. Clearly this 18th century church held little interest for Pevsner whose description is perfunctory in the extreme. The church sits off Church Street surrounded by modern housing and east of the old line of the A56 prior to the construction of Haslingden's bypass. A short spur road leads west from Church Street and has spaces for parking, the churchyard, high on a hill, is open and with no obstructions to photography.