Bygone Burnley: Worsthorne, with historian Roger Frost MBE

Respected local historian Roger Frost MBE reveals that Worsthorne may once have been the site of a Bronze or Iron Age fort, possibly located where the village square is now.

Although there is no surviving physical evidence, scholars do believe the square was the site of such a fort.

What we do know about Worsthorne is that it is a beautiful, traditional English village with a green, pubs, local shops, community rooms and even its own “gormless” or lamp-post, which as our picture here shows, originally stood in a slightly different position to where it is now.

Roger begins our video by explaining the possible etymology of the name Worsthorne, which is thought to refer to Weorth’s Thorne. Weorth was probably an Anglo-Saxon leader who planted a tree, likely a hawthorne to mark his boundary.

The village has been known as Worthesthorn in 1202.

Roger goes on to say: “It is conceivable that this area was once a Bronze Age or Iron Age fort. We’d have to dig up the square for physical evidence, but it does tell you that Worsthorne has been a significant place for some time.”

Our video next looks at the most significant architectural feature of the village, that of the Church of St John the Evangelist, which is closely associated with the Thursby family.

“The church was built in the 1830s and was largely paid for by one family,” Roger revealed.

“The leading citizen of this part of the borough at that time was the Rev. William Thursby. He was the joint owner of the Hargreaves Colliery Company in Burnley, the town’s biggest industrial enterprise. He was a very wealthy man, who came to settle in Burnley, and through his wife inherited half of the company.

“He decided to live at the Hargreaves’ old house in nearby Cliviger. He found himself in Worsthorne at a time when there wasn’t a church. The church was built by Thursby, although the tower was added later.”

Roger goes on to reveal details about the celebrated local historian Tattersall Wilkinson who is buried in the graveyard. He was said to have been “much challenged” for the things he wrote in his own lifestyle and exaggerated things. His grave marks the humourous epithet ‘Here lies Tattersall Wilkinson’.

We next look at the most attractive former village school, now domestic houses, which Roger describes as a typical Victorian village elementary school.

The village square is home to two other Victorian monuments – a stone pillar, which originally may have been a fountain, and Worsthorne’s ‘gormless’, a lamp-post and reminder of when street lighting was introduced in the 1820s.

Roger takes us next across the road to a pretty row of shops, which were originally built in the mid nineteenth century as handloom weavers’ cottages.

He reveals that a former teashop had a fantastic Burnley-made kitchen range, a Bulcock.

Finally, we look at the Worsthorne with Hurstwood Parish Rooms, built in 1874 by William Thursby, which also carries a blue plaque honouring Worsthorne’s First World War Victoria Cross recipient, Private Thomas Whittam.