DEANE

Deane was a chapelry of the parish of Eccles, owned by Whalley Abbey, until, in 1541, it became an independent parish in the gift of the Crown by letters patent of Henry VIII, patron following the dissolution of the abbey in 1537. In 1545 the vicar of Eccles deposed that the parishioners of Deane had petitioned for the creation of the parish because they objected to having to contribute to the building costs of Eccles church. The parish comprised the townships of Heaton, Middle Hulton, Rumworth, Farnworth and Kearsley, plus the chapelries of Halliwell, Horwich, Little Hulton and Westhoughton.

Before 1541 the priests who officiated at Deane had been appointed by the vicars of Eccles who paid them an annual salary of £4, but thereafter as they had no power to appoint or remove the new vicar, they refused to pay him. Moreover, they claimed that the income of the parish of Eccles was diminished by the consequent loss of fees.

In February 1538 a lease of the rectory of Eccles ‘and the chapel of Deane, annexed to it’ had been granted to John Penne, the royal barber, who had extensive estates in Hertfordshire. However, because John Penne had not paid the rent the lease was transferred to Thomas Holcroft in 1545.

The parish of Deane was a discharged vicarage which means that any vicar was ‘dischardged and acquited for ever’ from payment of a tax called first-fruits on taking over the vicarage because the value of the living was under £10 per annum.

The church building has apparently developed from a small fourteenth-century building to which additions and alterations were made over the following centuries, some of which were not popular. In 1522 Richard Heaton of Heaton complained to the court of the Duchy of Lancashire that he had constructed an ‘Ile’ within the church, with a ‘chappell of tymbre’ containing an altar where Mass was said regularly. A group of about forty men demolished the wooden structure during the night and got rid of all the timber.

Despite such disagreements, the building was subsequently altered and extended, although the west tower and north doorway are fourteenth century. There was a comprehensive enlargement and reconstruction in the nineteenth century.

In the churchyard is a memorial to George Marsh, the Protestant martyr, who was born in the parish of Deane and taken prisoner while preaching there. Immediately after his arrest he was taken to Smithills Hall in the township of Halliwell, before being transferred to prison and then to Chester, where he was tried in the Consistory Court and burned at the stake in 1555.

A large part of the parish is now within the Bolton conurbation and the textile industry has been important in the area, with handloom weaving and the later development of cotton mills. There were also extensive bleach works in the area. The parish is situated on the Lancashire coalfield and mining became an important industry.

Field names 

named in EDC 5/2/1 –
derlayglad hey
radford
mutchaw the new marled yerth in the hyll
the newe close mosse Filde
barli crofft
the heythe
horhey medo
steward medo
chodlachmedo

Sources:

Pleadings and depositions in the Duchy Court of Lancaster Part 1, Henry VII and Henry VIII, ed. Henry Fishwick (The Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 32, 1896), p. 111

Pleadings and depositions in the Duchy Court of Lancaster Part 2, Henry VIII, ed. Henry Fishwick (The Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 35, 1897), pp. 197-199

‘Deane – Dembleby’, in A Topographical Dictionary of England, ed. Samuel Lewis (London, 1848), pp. 23-28. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/topographical-dict/england/pp23-28[accessed 28 November 2022]

‘Salford hundred: The parish of Deane’, in A History of the County of Lancaster: Volume 5, ed. William Farrer and J Brownbill (London, 1911), pp. 1-5. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol5/pp1-5 [accessed 28 November 2022]

‘Henry VIII: April 1545, 26-30’, in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 20 Part 1, January-July 1545, ed. James Gairdner and R H Brodie (London, 1905), pp. 278-329. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/letters-papers-hen8/vol20/no1/pp278-329 [accessed 28 November 2022]

ECCLES

The benefice of Eccles had been granted to Stanlow (or Stanlaw) Abbey in Cheshire in the early thirteenth century, and at that time Deane was one of its chapelries. The abbey at Stanlow was situated on the banks of the River Mersey and was liable to flooding, so by the end of the thirteenth century the majority of the monks had moved to Whalley, where the Abbey became one of the most important and wealthy Cistercian houses in the country.

The monks of Whalley provided a vicar for Eccles, which became a parish in the gift of the Crown following the monastery’s dissolution in 1537. In February 1538 a lease of the rectory of Eccles ‘and the chapel of Deane, annexed to it’ was granted to John Penne, the royal barber, who had extensive estates in Hertfordshire. However, because John Penne had not paid the rent the lease was transferred to Thomas Holcroft in 1545.

It was a discharged vicarage which means that any vicar of Eccles was ‘dischardged and acquited for ever’ from payment of a tax called first-fruits on taking over the vicarage because the value of the living was under £10 per annum. Thus, although the Crown retained the rights to all the tithes and other church dues of the parish, the vicar who served the parish was not very well paid.

A plaque in the church records that in 1541 10 townships were separated off to form the parish of Deane. Following this, the parish of Eccles comprised the townships of Barton, Clifton, Pendlebury and the chapelries of Pendleton and Worsley.

The parish church building is in the later English style and although there has been a church here since Norman times, the earliest surviving parts of the present building are said to date from the thirteenth-century, including the base of the tower. Fourteenth-century elements include the arch leading into the south transept and the studded inner door of the south porch. The church may have been built on the site of an earlier chapel as part of a Celtic cross was discovered nearby. The building was comprehensively reconstructed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries but then remained virtually unchanged until the nineteenth century when it was, again, substantially restored in 1862. The tomb of Richard Brereton and his wife and son survives from the seventeenth century. The brass plates on the ends of the pews record who was entitled to sit in them.

The church, which is listed Grade 1 on the National Heritage List for England, is now surrounded by high-rise blocks and a shopping centre, and the churchyard has mostly been grassed over.

The area of the parish included part of Chat Moss, moss being the local word for a peat bog. This area was waste until drainage schemes began in the early nineteenth century, and it has now largely been reclaimed. Most of the agriculture in the parish consisted of grazing and there was little arable land until this reclamation. Coal mining had begun in the parish by the sixteenth century and the development of canals in the eighteenth century stimulated development not only of the coal industry, but also textile weaving and spinning. A war memorial in the church records employees of Eccles Spinning Company Ltd. who served in the First World War.

Eccles is a market town, now part of Salford, and has given its name to the famous Eccles cakes.

Field names include:

named in EDC 5/2/1 –
the heythe

Sources:

Dom Gilbert Dolan, O.S.B., ‘Notes on the ancient religious houses of the County of Lancaster’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, vols. 43 and 44 (1891 and 1892), pp. 228-229. Available online:
https://www.hslc.org.uk/journal/vol-43-1891-and-vol-44-1892/

The Statutes of the Realm; volume the fourth (London, 1719, reprinted 1963). (1 Elizabeth, c. 4).

‘Eaton-Hastings – Eccleshill’, in A Topographical Dictionary of England, ed. Samuel Lewis (London, 1848), pp. 136-139. British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/topographical-dict/england/pp136-139

‘The parish of Eccles: Introduction, church and charities’, in A History of the County of Lancaster: Volume 4, ed. William Farrer and J Brownbill (London, 1911), pp. 352-362. British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol4/pp352-362

‘Henry VIII: April 1545, 26-30’, in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 20 Part 1, January-July 1545, ed. James Gairdner and R H Brodie (London, 1905), pp. 278-329. British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/letters-papers-hen8/vol20/no1/pp278-329 (vol 20 Part 1, no 19 (9))

Historic England:
Church of St Mary (1067498)
https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1067498 National Heritage List for England