History

Bibliography

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Bibliography

Most of this site is dedicated to the so far unwritten history of the town, that is either transcriptions of original material relating to the town or new research into the people and places of the town – and these can be found under the menu headings at the top of each page.

There have been many published works about Great Harwood, and I don’t intend to ‘rewrite history’, but eventually I will add a very brief history of the town. In the meantime below are listed the books that are the main sources.

Whittaker was the first, but concerns himself mostly with the landed gentry, very little of the economy of the area is covered. Abram’s History of Blackburn Town and Parish is more comprehensive, and covers the yeoman families – there are errors though, so read with care. Farrar and Brownbill drew on Abram when they were writing the Great Harwood section of the Victoria County History.

Of the modern histories the best are Louie Pollard’s Great Harwood Gleanings and History of a Village Church, the last being more of a social history than a straightforward history of the church. Mike Rothwell’s Industrial Archaeology of Great Harwood lists the major industries of the town. These are all still in copyright, but can be borrowed from libraries in the UK or sometimes found on eBay or Abe Books.

A while ago Ian Fairclough, Cris Kydd and myself produced a booklet named Great Harwood Revisited to help to make funds to continue the maintenance of this site. We called it revisited simply because many of the topics had been covered by previous writers, but the need for photos of the town never seems to decrease so here is an online version of the book. We were grateful to the people and organisations who gave us permission to use their material, in particular Hyndburn District Libraries.



Abram, W A
A History of Blackburn Town and Parish
Published 1877.
This book is a good, comprehensive history which goes further than the landed gentry in its scope. Short biographies of local families of the yeoman class are included, but again should be treated with some caution.
https://archive.org/details/historyofblackbu00abrauoft/page/n6
Lancashire County Council
Great Harwood: Historic Town Assessment Report
Mercer, John
Autobiography
On this site: John Mercer Autobiography, from original held at Lancashire Archives reference UDCL/8/1
Eaton, H.E.
Genius of Great Harwood: John Mercer

Pollard, L.
Great Harwood Gleanings
Great Harwood Miscellany
People and places in Great Harwood
Story of a Village Church

Pollard, L. and Eaton, H.
Old Harwood

Louie Pollard and Harry Eaton worked on several volumes of local history during the 1970s and 1980s, jointly and separately. These are still in copyright but should be available in local libraries, or sometimes copies do appear on eBay and other sales sites.

Great Harwood Gleanings and The Story of a Village Church are both very good, detailed, local and social histories.
Rothwell, M.
Industrial Heritage of Great Harwood
First published in the 1970s this covers the industrial history of the town. A new edition has recently been published and is available to buy or should be available in local libraries.
Trappes-Lomax, Richard
History of Clayton le Moors
Online at the Internet Archive here:
https://archive.org/details/historyoftownshi0000rich
Victoria History of the County of Lancaster
Published 1911
An early volume in the VCH series it deals mainly with the descent of the manor and the church.
Available online here:
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol6/pp337-344
Whitaker, T D 
A history of the original parish of Whalley and honour of Clitheroe in the counties of Lancaster and York
(First ed. 1800)
Includes Great Harwood. As was usual for these early histories the readers were mainly from the landed classes and the focus mostly on the descent of these families and ecclesiastical history. It includes pedigrees of local families, but these should be used with caution.
Greatest value is the reproduction, sometimes in Latin, of various ancient documents.
Fourth edition of 1872 available at Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/historyoforigina00whituoft/page/n9

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