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PENWORTHAM

The historic old town of Penwortham sits on top of a prominent hill rising above the Ribble’s southern bank. It developed around a motte and bailey castle that overlooked an ancient fording place there. The Romans appreciated the strategic importance of the site and were the first to establish a fort here, a commanding position that remained in use throughout the Saxon period, and after the Conquest the Normans, too, established a base. Penwortham was one of the few places in Lancashire to be mentioned in the Domesday Book at a time when the area was largely considered an unproductive wasteland.

In 1075 Benedictine monks from Evesham Abbey founded a priory, and it was probably they who first began draining the surrounding marshes to create new farmland. The priory has long since disappeared, and all that remains of the castle is the artificial earth mound.

The oldest building still standing in Penwortham is the 15th-century church dedicated to St Anne, whose squat square tower can be seen through the trees upon the hill. Tradition holds that there has been a church on the site since 644 AD, a not improbable claim given the sustained significance of Penwortham during those early times, when travel across the sea to Celtic Ireland would have been a less daunting prospect than an overland journey to York or Canterbury. As with many churches in the country, St Anne’s was heavily restored by the Victorians – a practice intended as a proclamation of the prosperity that the industrial age had brought. One of the entrepreneurs who helped create the wealth of the industrial age is buried in a railinged tomb in St Anne’s churchyard. Born outside Bolton in 1768, John Horrocks opened Preston’s first factory cotton mill and went on to establish a textile business that became one of the largest in the world.