James Leslie Crossley, the Great-uncle of our present day parishioner, Maria Duckworth, was born in Rawtenstall in 1998. James was the only son in a family of 5 children, all of whom attended St James the Less church school. The 1901 census shows the family at 7 Double Street, with James’ mother, Mary Ann who [...]
Thomas and Bridget Halstead were parents to six children, all born between 1888 and 1899 as the family moved around different towns across east Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire. Bridget was an Irish immigrant from Dublin and Thomas, born in Haslingden, to where his family had moved some years earlier from a remote [...]
Joshua’s last known relative in the parish passed away in 2015, not long after providing some information about him and his service in the war. Further detail about Joshua has proved difficult to find and it may be that his military records were amongst those destroyed or badly damaged during the second world war. What [...]
John Robert Larner was born on 31st January 1890, the second child of Robert and Francis Larner. He was baptised soon after birth, at St James the Less church, on 20th February. The family lived at Oakenhead Wood which, at that time, would have been a relatively short walking distance from the church, down the [...]
Before Rossendale and the nation could think of getting back to ‘normal’ after the war, a new, deadly, silent threat appeared during 1918. It was a lethal virus that attacked soldiers both in the trenches and returning home and the population in Britain. The new, deadly, silent threat was the ‘Spanish flu’ virus, a pandemic [...]
Samuel Evans was born in Burnley in 1891 to William and Isabella Evans, both of whom had moved to the town from Cheshire and Cumberland respectively, to work in the cotton industry. The 1891 census shows Isabella’s wider family were in Burnley as well and it was at some point prior to the turn of [...]
Joseph Edward Ashworth was born in Rawtenstall on 18th March 1895, the second child of Edward and Susannah Ashworth. It seems that Susannah died at, or shortly after, Joseph’s birth and some two years later Edward re-married, to Mary, an Irish catholic from County Mayo, whose influence may have led to both Joseph and his [...]
Ignatius Holloran was born on 1st February 1892, the eldest son of George and Margaret Holloran who lived at Springfield View, Clowbridge (the row of houses on the main Burnley road, some demolished, which now includes The Beijing Chinese restaurant). Although their home was just within the borough of Burnley, where Ignatius’ birth was registered, [...]
