WARMINGHAM 

This small parish was a rectory which comprised the townships of Warmingham, Tetton, Elton and Moston.

The advowson belonged to the owner of the manor of Warmingham which passed to the earls of Oxford at the end of the fifteenth century and was then sold to Sir Christopher Hatton in 1580. The gravestone of Henry Wegley (or Wigley), the rector instituted to the parish in 1654 and died in 1680 may still be seen set into a path around the church.

The medieval timber-framed parish church, of which nothing now survives, was rebuilt in brick and stone in 1715. The chancel and body of the church were rebuilt in 1797 and in 1870 the chancel, nave and transept were again reconstructed, leaving only the tower surviving from 1715, although that has some later alterations.

The sandstone base of a medieval cross still stands in the churchyard, topped by a later column which held a sundial at one time. A late sixteenth-century farmhouse, with later alterations and extensions, may still be seen opposite the church.

A single arch sandstone bridge, dating from about 1750, carries the road between Crewe and Middlewich past the church over the River Wheelock.

The area of the parish is still predominantly agricultural.

Sources

George Ormerod, The History of the County Palatine and City of Chester (second edition, revised and enlarged by T. Helsby, London, 1882), vol. iii, pp. 225-235

WIGAN 

The parish of Wigan comprised the townships of Wigan, Pemberton, Billinge Chapel End, Billinge Higher End, Winstanley, Orrell, Upholland, Dalton, Ince, Hindley, Abram, Haigh and Aspull.

In 1563 it was one of the most populous parishes in the county of Lancashire with 808 households, although converting number of households to size of population is notoriously problematic.

The parish was home to Upholland Priory which was a poor foundation with a rather dubious reputation. It was dissolved in 1536 with the poorer monasteries as its annual income was below £100.

It is understood that there was a church in Wigan before the Norman Conquest, but the oldest parts of the present building date from the thirteenth century. These include the lower part of the tower and most of the roof of the nave.

The building was subsequently reconstructed at various times. In 1620 extensive rebuilding of the chancel, nave and chantry chapels was carried out, but much of this work was demolished and rebuilt in the mid-nineteenth century and none of the medieval fittings remain.

Ownership of the advowson was disputed for several centuries but by 1446 it was settled with the Langton family. However, by the sixteenth century they often sold the right of next presentation and by the end of the century the family had sold their rights in the parish entirely.

In the sixteenth century the tithes, or parts of them, were generally farmed out, so that the rectors did not receive all the income from the parish but even so it was a relatively wealthy living and in the first part of the sixteenth century it was held for brief periods by a succession of absentee pluralists who left the running of the parish to curates. These pluralist rectors included Thomas Stanley, bishop of Sodor and Man, a relative of the earls of Derby. He also held two other parishes as well as the bishopric.

In 1571 Edward Fleetwood was appointed to the parish by the Queen and held the living until his death in 1604. He was a religious radical and keen preacher who was very hostile to Catholics. However, he, too, was not always resident in his parish and allowed the chancel of the church to fall into disrepair. He also failed to provide curates for all the chapels of the parish.

Unusually, the rectors were effectively lords of the manor of Wigan with quite extensive secular legal authority.

In common with many areas of south Lancashire, coal mining and the textile industry flourished with other industry in the parish from the late eighteenth century and agriculture became less important. Wigan is now part of the Greater Manchester conurbation.

Sources:

George T. O. Bridgeman, The history of the church and manor of Wigan in the County of Lancaster, Part 1, Chetham Society, new series, 15 (1888)

Alan Dyer and D. M. Palliser (eds), The Diocesan Population Returns for 1563 and 1603 (Oxford, 2005), pp. xli, 84

Christopher Haigh, Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 305-306

Mike Salter, The Old Parish Churches of Lancashire (Malvern, 2005), p. 84

‘Houses of Benedictine monks: The priory of Upholland’, in A History of the County of Lancaster: Volume 2, ed. William Farrer, J Brownbill( London, 1908), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol2/pp111-112

‘The parish of Wigan: Introduction, church and charities’, in A History of the County of Lancaster: Volume 4, ed. William Farrer, J Brownbill( London, 1911), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol4/pp57-68