Lancashire: A Short History

Here at Clearview, we’re proud of our Red Rose roots and heritage and seeing as Lancashire is where we operate (as well as Cheshire), we thought we’d give you a bit of a rundown of what our fantastic Red Rose county has been through.

Early History

In Lancashire’s early history, some of the southern parts of the county were considered to actually be a part of Cheshire. However, this was soon rectified and they soon became separate counties thanks to the river Mersey.

The name Lancashire comes from Lancaster which in itself actually means ‘Roman fort on the River Lune’. The county was established sometime after the Norman Conquest when the land between the Ribble and the Mersey was given to Roger de Poitou by William the Conqueror.

The Divide

When the counties were divided and everyone knew where they stood with whose was whose they individual counties were then divided into the ‘six hundreds’ and they were Blackburn, Lonsdale, Salford, West Derby, Leyland and Amounderness.

You may notice that Leyland is one of the ‘six hundreds’ here and you would be right in assuming that Leyland, where we’re currently based, was once bigger than what it is now.

The Leyland of old, or Lailand as it once was known actually consisted of a number of different parishes such as Brindle, Chorley, Hoole, Croston, Ecclestone, Leyland, Penwortham, Tarleton, Standish and Rufford.

Modern Day

In the modern times, Lancashire is miles smaller than it once was. This is mainly, in part thanks to the significant local government reform that has taken place in the many years since.

In 1974, the Furness part of Lancashire was transferred to the new county of Cumbria, the south east part of Lancashire went to Greater Manchester and the south west then became part of Cheshire.

In 1998, Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen became independent of the county and stood on their own as unitary authorities. However, they remained in Lancashire for the ceremonial purposes, including the provision of fire, rescue and policing. Not too bad a deal, really!

Lancashire now has a population of just under 1.5 million and is the 8^th largest county in England in terms of population size after Greater London, West Midlands, Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, Hampshire, Kent and Essex.