Place:Sabden, Lancashire, England

Watchers
NameSabden
Alt namesHeyhousessource: township forerunner of Sabden
TypeParish
Coordinates53.833°N 2.336°W
Located inLancashire, England
See alsoBlackburn Hundred, Lancashire, Englandhundred in which it was located
Whalley, Lancashire, Englandancient parish in which it was located
Burnley Rural, Lancashire, Englandrural district in which it was located 1894-1974
Ribble Valley (borough), Lancashire, Englanddistrict municipality in which it has been located since 1974
source: Family History Library Catalog
source: Family History Library Catalog
the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Sabden (#21 on the map) is a medium-to-large sized village and civil parish in the Ribble Valley, Lancashire. Prior to 1974, the parish was in Burnley Rural District. Sabden is located south of Pendle Hill, in a valley about 3 miles north-west of Padiham. The parish has an area of 2451 acres. It lies in the Forest of Pendle section of the Forest of Bowland Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Sabden became a civil parish in 1904, replacing the former township of Heyhouses (redirected here) (#12 on the map) and adding to it parts of seven other parishes: Goldshaw Booth (#9), Higham with West Close Booth (#13), Northtown (#16) and Read (#18), all in the Burnley Rural District, and other areas transferred from Pendleton (Ribble Valley) and Wiswell in the Clitheroe Rural District. Sabden remained in the Burnley Rural District until the local government reforms of 1974.

In the 2001 census, Sabden had a population of 1,371, and as of 2011 had grown to 1,422 with 614 households.

Image:Burnley Rural and Urban 1900 B.png

For code for numbered places, see the page for Burnley Rural District.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

In 1387 Sapenden Haye (Sabden Hey) was demised by John of Gaunt to Thomas de Radcliffe. A bridge is mentioned near here in 1425.

Both Yates' 1786 and Greenwood's 1818 maps of Lancashire mark two settlements at this site: Hey-houfes and Sabden Bridge. It was known as Sabden Hey and Heyhouses when it developed into a hamlet.

The Starkie family of Huntroyde Hall near Padiham were landowners in Heyhouses from at least 1787. In 1801, Le Gendre Piers Starkie purchased the remaining portion to add to the Huntroyde estate. The family were the patrons of St. Nicholas' church (built in 1841).

The early 19th-century Beauties of England and Wales series describes the "extensive factory and print grounds of Messrs Miller, Burys & Co" here. Leaving the place unnamed, it mentions the remoteness of the site, and that the owners had built a company shop and chapel for the 2,000 employees.

Farming and quarrying were the mainstays from the 16th century with many small farms and several quarries. There is still a good example of a very old vaccary (medieval cattle farm) wall at the roadside near the ancient Stainscomb property east of the village. In the later 18th and the 19th century fabric printing and weaving industries took over.

Strings of Lime gals (Galloway ponies) were a common site from the mid 18th century into the late 19th century; they generally carried slate, lime and coal, making their way through Sabden going between the Burnley coal fields and the Clitheroe / Chatburn lime kilns.

The Weavers Arms was a public house, now long closed; it was on the Top Row.

The Old Black Bull, previously the Printers Arms, (the large house next to the bridge) was a pub until the 1960s.

The water quality in the valley suited the calico printing industry and more printworks developed along Sabden Brook. The industry kept going until 1931. At one stage there were seven mills in the village employing over 2,000 people; this meant many workers travelled to work daily from surrounding towns and villages on foot, many working a twelve hour shift or more.

The presence of the mills meant an increasing demand for transport for people, coal, raw materials and finished goods. This led to the formation of the Clitheroe, Burnley and Sabden Railway Company, who issued shares, but the railway never came. Many of the houses were built for the mill workers by the mill owners.

The location of the village led to difficulties in administration, as it was split between the townships of Pendleton and Read (in differing poor law unions and rural districts). Tax rates differed in the two sides of the village and there were difficulties with water provision, sewerage and road maintenance. When a school board was created in 1894 it required the taxation of six different townships. In 1904, after about six years of negotiations, the civil parish of Sabden was formed.

Wesley Street was known as Long Row (the longest row at the time). Badger Wells Water (a tributary brook) originally ran down Littlemoor and joined Sabden Brook near Bull Bridge, not as it now does, down the rear of Wesley Street. This is confirmed on the 1818 map on the right, where the Pendle Forest border follows the water course directly south to join the main brook near the bridge.

In 1847, there were two bridges at the bottom of Wesley Street, one for Clitheroe Road and one for Whalley Road, both for the Badgers Wells Water. There were no houses on the west side of Padiham Road or south of Whalley road. The garages at the bottom of Wesley Street were once the first ten on the street, one up one down houses, back to back. This explains why the numbers now begin at 12; they were known as Centre Row.

Research Tips

  • See the Wikipedia articles on parishes and civil parishes for descriptions of this lowest rung of local administration. The original parishes (known as ancient parishes) were ecclesiastical, under the jurisdiction of the local priest. A parish covered a specific geographical area and was sometimes equivalent to that of a manor. Sometimes, in the case of very large rural parishes, there were chapelries where a "chapel of ease" allowed parishioners to worship closer to their homes. In the 19th century the term civil parish was adopted to define parishes with a secular form of local government. In WeRelate both civil and ecclesiastical parishes are included in the type of place called a "parish". Smaller places within parishes, such as chapelries and hamlets, have been redirected into the parish in which they are located. The names of these smaller places are italicized within the text.
  • Rural districts were groups of geographically close civil parishes in existence between 1894 and 1974. They were formed as a middle layer of administration between the county and the civil parish. Inspecting the archives of a rural district will not be of much help to the genealogist or family historian, unless there is need to study land records in depth.
  • Civil registration or vital statistics and census records will be found within registration districts. To ascertain the registration district to which a parish belongs, see Registration Districts in Lancashire, part of the UK_BMD website.
  • Lancashire Online Parish Clerks provide free online information from the various parishes, along with other data of value to family and local historians conducting research in the County of Lancashire.
  • FamilySearch Lancashire Research Wiki provides a good overview of the county and also articles on most of the individual parishes (very small or short-lived ones may have been missed).
  • Ancestry (international subscription necessary) has a number of county-wide collections of Church of England baptisms, marriages and burials, some from the 1500s, and some providing microfilm copies of the manuscript entries. There are specific collections for Liverpool (including Catholic baptisms and marriages) and for Manchester. Their databases now include electoral registers 1832-1935. Another pay site is FindMyPast.
  • A map of Lancashire circa 1888 supplied by A Vision of Britain through Time includes the boundaries between the parishes and shows the hamlets within them.
  • A map of Lancashire circa 1954 supplied by A Vision of Britain through Time is a similar map for a later timeframe.
  • GENUKI provides a website covering many sources of genealogical information for Lancashire. The organization is gradually updating the website and the volunteer organizers may not have yet picked up all the changes that have come with improving technology.
  • The Victoria County History for Lancashire, provided by British History Online, covers the whole of the county in six volumes (the seventh available volume [numbered Vol 2] covers religious institutions). The county is separated into its original hundreds and the volumes were first published between 1907 and 1914. Most parishes within each hundred are covered in detail. Maps within the text can contain historical information not available elsewhere.
  • A description of the township of Heyhouses, the predecessor of Sabden, from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1911


This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Sabden. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.