Ormskirk

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ORMSKIRK, a town, a township, a parish, a sub-district, and a district, in Lancashire. The town stands on the East Lancashire railway, at the junction of the branch from St. Helens, 2½ miles S E of the Leeds and Liverpool canal, and 12 N by E of Liverpool. The manor belonged, till the Reformation, to Burscough priory; and belongs now to the Earl of Derby. The town is well-built; contains four chief streets, going rectangularly from a central market-place; is governedby a local board of health, and well supplied with gas and water; is a seat of petty sessions and county-courts, and a polling-place; publishes two weekly newspapers; and has a head post-office, a railway station with telegraph, a banking office, two chief inns, a town hall and corn-market, a sessions-house and magistrates' rooms, a news-room and library, a church, three dis-senting chapels, a free grammar-school, a national school, a dispensary, a workhouse, and charities £354. The dissenting chapels are Independent, Wesleyan, and Unitarian. The free grammar-school was founded in 1614, under the will of Henry Ascroft; is a Tudor structure, in Ruff-lane; and has an endowed income of £139. The national school was erected by voluntary contributions; is a stone building in the Tudor style, in Derby-street; possesses capacity forupwards of 800 scholars; and the Sunday school has an endowed income of £28. The dispensary is a small but ornamental building, in the Doric style, in Burscough-street. The workhouse stands in Wigan-road; was built at a cost of about £4,000; and, at the census of 1861, had 76 inmates. A weekly market is held on Thursday; cattle fairs are held on Whit-Monday, Whit-Tuesday, and 10 Sept.; rope-making and hand-loom silk-weavingare carried on; and there are several breweries, and an iron-foundry. Acres of the town, 572. Real property, £13, 597; of which £323 are in gas-works. Pop. in 1851, 6,183; in 1861, 6,426. Houses, 1,193. more ...

John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72)