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Leyland, Lancashire genealogy

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LEYLAND, a village, a township, a sub-district, a parish, and a hundred, in Lancashire. The village stands near the river Lostock, ¾ of a mile W of the Northwestern railway, and 5 miles S of Preston; is a seat of petty sessions; and has a post office under Preston, and a station on the railway. Fairs are held on 24 March and 26 Oct.; and an agricultural and horticultural meeting is held in Sept. The township comprises 3,651 acres. Real property, £13,658. Pop., 3,755. Houses, 748. The manor belonged, in the time of Edward the Confessor, to the Crown; had then a royal hall and court of justice; and, with Worden Hall, belongs now to the Misses Farmington. Worden Hall stands about ½ a mile S of the village, in a park of more than 300 acres; and is approached through a handsome modern arch-way adjacent to the village. Golden-Hill House is the seat of T. M. Shuttleworth, Esq.; Wellfield is the seat of John Eccles, Esq.; and the Old Hall is a Tudor mansion, now converted into a farm-house. Many of the inhabitants are employed in cotton mills. The sub-district contains the townships of Leyland, Euxton, Cuerden, Clayton-in-le-Woods, and Whittle-in-le-Woods. Acres, 10,182. Pop., 8,768. Houses, 1,739. The parish contains all the sub-district, also the townships of Hoghton, Withnell, Wheelton, and Heapey; and is in Chorley district. Acres, 19,091. Real property, £49,914; of which £556 are in quarries. Pop. in 1851, 13,710; in 1861, 13,684. Houses, 2,667. The ecclesiastical arrangement divides the area into Leyland-St. Andrew, Leyland-St. James, Euxton, Whittle-in-le-Woods, Withnell, Hoghton, and Heapey; but Leyland-St. James includes also a small portion of Croston parish; and it was separately constituted in 1855. Pop. of the whole of this section in 1861, 1,427; of the Leyland portion of it, 1,147. The living of L. St. Andrew is a vicarage, and that of L. St. James is a p. curacy, in the diocese of Manchester. Value of St. A., £1,200;* of St. J., £168. Patron of St. A., the Rev. T. R. Baldwin; of St. J., Miss Farmington. The parochial church, or church of St. Andrew, was mainly rebuilt in 1817; is in the early decorated English style; retains, in its chancel, a fine arch of the previous edifice, together with sedilia and a piscina; includes a chantry chapel of the Ffaringtons, containing brasses and handsome monumental tablets of that family; and has, at the W end, a fine massive tower. The churchyard contains tombstones with crosses of the 13th or 14th century, and others with inscriptions of the 17th. The p. curacies of Euxton, Withnell, Whittlein-le-Woods, Hoghton, and Heapey are separately noticed. Chapels for Independents, Wesleyans, and Roman Catholics are in Leyland township; and dissenting chapels and national schools are in some of the other townships. The Roman Catholic chapel is a plain but spacious edifice of 1846. A grammar school swands at the extremity of the parochial churchyard; is an ancient building; and has an endowed income of £28, transferred to it, by Queen Elizabeth, from the Farmington chantry. A charity school, founded in 1784, is at Golden Hill; and has an endowed income of £21. Alms houses, for six persons, were founded in 1649, and rebuilt in 1849; five modern cottages are near them, the rents of which are appropriated to them; and alms houses for six aged women were founded by Osbaldeston, and have an endowed income of £118. The total yearly value of charities is about £600. The hundred contains Leyland parish and ten other. parishes. Acres, 86,270. Pop. in 1851, 53,641; in 1861, 58,622. Houses, 10,909.

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