Hindley, Lancashire
Historical Description
Hindley, a town, a township, and two ecclesiastical parishes in Wigan parish, Lancashire. The town stands adjacent to the Wigan and Bolton railway, 2¼ miles ESE of Wigan and 7 from Bolton, is a seat of cotton manufacture, and has a post, money order, and telegraph office under Wigan, four railway stations, two churches, and Particular Baptist, Free, Primitive, and Independent Methodist, Wesleyan, Congregational, Presbyterian, Unitarian, and Roman Catholic chapels, a cemetery of 14 acres formed in 1879, an endowed grammar school founded in 1632 and reopened in 1881 under a scheme of the Endowed School Commissioners, and a fair on the first Thursday of Aug. There are extensive collieries and a large and prosperous co-operative store. There is a good service of trams on the Wigan and District Tramway between Wigan and Hindley. There is also a beautiful public park situated on the south-west side of the town. All Saints Church was built in 1766 on the site of a previous edifice; is a plain brick structure, and contains a font and mural monuments. St Peter's Church was built in 1864; is a handsome edifice in the Decorated style; and consists of nave, aisles, and chancel, with porches and a lofty tower and spire. The township is returned statistically as conterminate with the town, and is governed by a local board; includes the hamlets of Low Green or Platt Bridge and Hindley Green, which have stations on the Wigan and Eccles railway, 1½ and 3½ miles from Wigan, and the hamlet of Hindley Common. Hindley Green has a post, money order, and telegraph office under Wigan. There is also the Leyland Free Library and Museum, erected by Nathaniel Eckersley, Esq., in memory of John Leyland of the-Grange, Hindley, 1887. The building is the largest in the town, and is of the Decorated style. Acreage of the township, 2611; population, 18, 973. The ecclesiastical parishes are All Saints and St Peter's; populations, 12, 203 and 6770 respectively. The livings are vicarages in the diocese of Liverpool; net value of All Saints, £440 with residence. Patron, the Rector of Wigan. Gross value of St Peter's,, £306.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
Ancient County | Lancashire | |
Civil parish | Wigan | |
Hundred | West Derby | |
Poor Law union | Wigan |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Church Records
Ancestry.co.uk, in association with Lancashire Archives, have images of the Parish Registers for Lancashire online.
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Hindley from the following:
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Lancashire is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Hindley are available from a number of sites:
- Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- Google Streetview.
- National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
- OpenStreetMap.
- old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
- Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)
Newspapers and Periodicals
The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Lancashire newspapers online: