A NEW book, describing the formation of the Slaidburn Estate and containing 225 illustrations, is to be published this summer.

The author is Chris Spencer, a retired teacher of Clitheroe Royal Grammar School, who has been researching the Slaidburn area for more than 40 years.

He has catalogued the 400 boxes of King-Wilkinson family deeds and papers held in the Lancashire Archives - and this family estate collection has provided the bulk of his material.

It will detail the purchases of property made by the King-Wilkinson family in and around Slaidburn over a period of several hundred years for Chris has been able to trace almost every conveyance of every farm and every cottage in the district.

Leonard Wilkinson came from Aysgarth to live at Swinshaw Farm in Dale Head in the 1730s and the family began buying up farms, cottages and lands in the village, as well as around Slaidburn, Lower Easington and Newton-in-Bowland.

By 1927, the King-Wilkinson family owned almost 6,000 acres around Slaidburn, scattered over 40 farms.

Large parts of the outlying estate were disposed of in 1927 but the Slaidburn Estate still owns most of the cottages in the village, a few in Newton and some of the nearby farms.

The King-Wilkinson family also had Chatburn and Clitheroe connections, having had Middlewood House built in 1866, where they lived until the First World War.

They were strongly connected with St James’s Church in Clitheroe and were acquainted with many of the leading families in the town of that era, including the Garnetts, Mussons, Bodens, Wheelers and Bulcocks.

They also helped to establish the Clitheroe soup kitchen in the 1890s which provided hot food for the poor of the town and founded the annual ‘Whalley Meet’ at about the same time, when hundreds of cyclists from across the county cycled in their club uniforms from Whalley to Clitheroe.

Subscriptions are being invited for the book and there will be a list of subscribers printed in it.

The cost for one copy to be posted to a UK address will be £20.

Chris Spencer can be contacted by email at: senescal@aol.com