BACK in history the parish of Whalley was the second largest in all England.

Most of the East Lancashire we know today, apart from Blackburn, came within its boundaries.

St Mary & All Saints was built on the site of an Eighth century church, known the White Church and then a later Norman church, dating from around 1100.

This parish church had 13 chapels belonging to it, including Blackburn and Clitheroe, and the medieval Parish of Whalley contained 45 townships, extending from Clitheroe to Haslingden and from Accrington to Colne.

The present church building dates from around 1200 with the tower being added in 1440.

Whalley was already an important religious centre when the Cistercian monks from Stanlow Abbey in Cheshire moved to the village and built Whalley Abbey, the second largest monastic institution in the county.

It was founded around 1296 and was built over five stages, from stone from local quarries and Abbot Paslew, the last abbot, added the Lady Chapel from 1520 to 1536, also rebuilding the abbot’s lodging and the north east gateway.

Lancashire Telegraph:

Their patron at the end of the 13th century was Henry de Lacy the Earl of Lincoln and he granted them rights to fish the local rivers and the right to appoint clergymen to livings in the ancient parish.

Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries and Abbot Paslew was later hung, drawn and quartered.

It was reported in the 17th century that ‘Sir Robert Assheton pulled down the great steeple and the walls adjoining the cloister walls and the great window at the head of the stairs in the cloister’.

Sir Ralph was known to ‘regale his tenants with beef, bread and good brown ale’.

Moving forward a couple of centuries, the arrival of the Railway, run by the Lancashire and Yorkshire station, brought people and prosperity to the village.

In the 1900s the station was busy on summer bank holidays, when visitors poured in to visit Brungerley for the boating, They also filled up horse drawn wagonettes, which conveyed them to villages and attractions within the Ribble and Hodder valleys.

Careys restaurant in King Street and The Cafe in Market Place, Owned by Taylor and Hughes supplied ‘noted pork pies, morning coffee and afternoon tea’.

Most of the wagonettes were supplied by Garlick’s stables in Wellgate.

One of the major features of Whalley is the railway viaduct, built in the 1840s, which has 49 arches and is more than 2,000 feet long.

Whalley Local History Society has a huge collection of old photographs of the village, which were displayed at an exhibition held in the old grammar school.