Wednesday 4th September. No meeting in August – our next meeting, in September, will be a talk by Derek Winstanley on the The Daglish/Clarke Railway. In the 18th century wagonways were built to take coal from the many coalfields around Wigan down to the River Douglas. This particular one was used to transport coal from the Winstanley estate, through Orrell, down to the river at Crooke. But to do this Clarke had to build a stone viaduct at the Pingot to carry the railway over the valley, the first of its type in the world. This year also celebrates 200 years since Daglish built his famous “Yorkshire Horse” to run on the railway – this early steam locomotive predated Stephen’s Rocket by more than a decade. Derek is a local historian who now lives in America but is still passionate about the history of Wigan and therefore it promises to be a great talk.

Wednesday 3rd July. This month we have another regular, Bill Shannon from Lancashire Archaeological Society. In previous visits he’s given us talks on early depictions of Hadrian’s Wall and Maps before Ordinance Survey. This time he will be presenting some interesting Disputed Maps from Tudor Lancashire. Always gives a great talk.

Wednesday 5th June. Ron Cowell is Curator of Prehistoric Archaeology at Liverpool Museum and came along and tell us about his remarkable discoveries in recent excavations on a site near Sefton on Merseyside. The site, which is called Lunt Meadows, is on farmland near the River Alt which is being converted into a nature reserve. Ron’s excavations have revealed Mesolithic settlement dating from 5800 BC. What is remarkable however is that Ron believes he may have found evidence for dwellings. If true, this would be very rare evidence that these nomadic hunter-gatherers were making permanent or semi-permanent settlements. The excavations are still continuing and Ron’s latest discovery is a platform of wooden branches (some of the branches have even been split) which he thinks may have been used as a landing stage on the water’s edge.

Wednesday 1st May.  This month we have Dorothy Kazer from Leyland who will be giving us a talk on the history of Leyland with particular reference to the Farington and Charnock families. Both were and ancient landed Lancashire families. The Faringtons  lived at Farington Hall until it was lost to them in the mid 16th century. Its successor Old Worden Hall on the ROF site, was abandoned in favour of Shaw Hall in the early 18th century, which was rebuilt as Worden Hall in the mid 19th century. Worden Park was eventually obtained by the council in 1950.

Wednesday 3rd April. This month we have Alex Miller from the Wigan Archive Service. This Service is based at the Leigh Town Hall and Alex will be explaining how it can be used by anyone wanting to research all manner of things from family histories to sites of historical interest. They have thousands of archives which have been meticulousness catalogued for ease of access and a wide range of photographs which can now be viewed online.

This month we had our old friend Ian Miller form Oxford Archaeology North. Last year his company were commissioned to carry out an investigation of a former industrial site at Tottington. It started as a small investigation ahead of a planned removal of a culvert to improve the flow of the Kirklees Brook. This developed into a large scale area excavation involving various volunteer groups from around the district. It revealed quite a lot of evidence of the dyeing and printing operations that was once carried out there in the early 19^th century. Ian as usual always gave a great talk on a subject he’s really passionate about.