What information does Barrowford Parish Council collect about me?

When you use Barrowford Parish Council's website, we may ask for personal information about you. This can consist of information such as your name or email address. Different webpages may ask for different personal information.

By entering your details in the fields requested, you enable Barrowford Parish Council to provide you with the services you select.

Please note that sometimes on particular webpages we will require you to provide additional personal information, and sometimes sensitive personal information. For example if you're submitting an application form for a job, we may ask about criminal convictions. When we do this we will specify further on these webpages why we are collecting your information and how we will use it.

How will Barrowford Parish Council use this information?

Barrowford Parish Council will only use personal information you send us for the purposes for which you provide it. For example if you have opted to get emails from us, we may contact you to request your opinion about specific issues or to inform you of new services.

When will Barrowford Parish Council contact me?

The parish council may contact you

• to inform you of new services or to ask for your opinions if you have opted to get emails from Barrowford Parish Council
• to provide you with updates when you have requested services from us

Will Barrowford Parish Council share my personal information with anyone else?

The county council will not pass your personal information on to any other parties, except where required to carry out our duties and functions as a local authority.

All employees and subsidiaries who may have access to your personal data are obliged to respect its confidentiality.

How long will Barrowford Parish Council keep my personal information?

The county council will only hold your information for as long as necessary for the purposes for which you provide the information to us.

What if I have a query or concern about personal data that Barrowford Parish Council holds about me?

If you have a query or concern, please contact:

For data security and protection matters, Barrowford Parish Council’s data protection officer on 01282 696349, or by email on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

You can also write to:

Data Protection, Barrowford Parish Council, Holmefield House, Gisburn Road, Barrowford, Lancashire, BB9 8ND, England

Does Barrowford Parish Council collect information automatically when I visit the council's website?

In order to improve the council's online services, Barrowford Parish Council collects information about your visits to barrowford.org.uk (and it's alias barrowford.net). These statistics do not contain personal data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

We do not use cookies to store personal data and we don't link non-personal information stored in cookies with personal data about specific individuals.

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Barrowford Parish Council does not use cookies to store personal data and we do not link non-personal information stored in cookies with personal data about specific individuals.

Barrowford Parish Council uses cookies for the purpose of rendering our website in your browser in a fully accessible format in order to comply with relevant disability legislation and industry standards.

Barrowford has a long and fascinating history that occupies a number of enthusiastic local historians. This section gives a brief history of Barrowford extracted from the Barrowford Parish Plan of June 2008.

Barrowford's Political Roots

Barrowford's first glimpses of self determination in a political sense began with the formation of the Barrowford and Brogden with Admergill Local School Board formed in December 1874 which consisted of seven members and had three schools under its control. During the first fifteen years the number of children receiving an education doubled and in 1896 they spent £9000, a considerable sum in those days, on the building of Rushton Street School. This local Board ran until September 1903 when it was taken over by the Education Authority.
The next step in the local political scene was the Formation of Barrowford Urban District Council in 1897. The Urban District Council ran for nearly eighty years and was both a blessing and a curse with the provision of affordable social housing but at the cost of some of the oldest and most historically interesting parts of the village. The creation and layout of the park jointly with benefactors and the local people will be their everlasting epitaph.
Big is beautiful was the catchword of the early seventies when countless small towns and villages were brought together to form new faceless local authorities. Barrowford was swallowed up by Pendle in 1974 and an era of very local services ended. But the Urban District Council was not forgotten by older villagers and when the chance to have a Neighbourhood Watch Group came in the late seventies and early eighties it was grasped and indirectly led to the formation of the Parish Council in 1988.
The Parish Council started life meeting at the Civic Hall and their only asset was allotments which the Local Authority had an obligation to hand over and were willing and eager to do so as by and large allotment sites, although an essential service, are a drain on resources. 2008 marks the 20th anniversary of the formation of the Barrowford Parish Council and its impact on local life and decision making is growing year by year. One day they may have the powers returned that were stripped from the old Urban District Council and the political life of Barrowford will have come full circle.

Barrowford's Social History

Barrowford's social past can be traced back to the middle ages when the village was a farming hamlet reliant on hand loom weaving of woollen type cloth. Traces of one of these earlier phase houses dating to this period have been discovered under part of the Heritage Centre during renovations. The first textile water mill in the village was mentioned in court depositions in 1541 and was described as a cloth or fulling mill when sold to Christopher & Abraham Hargreaves for £233 in 1783. This mill stood on the site where the children's play area now stands in the park with the park lake being used as the lodge with the wheel race running along the line of the footpath at the bottom of the cemetery steps.
The change from farming to industrialisation and the cotton industry started with the Grimshaw family building Higherford Mill in 1824 as a water mill then because of lack of power it was converted to steam. This was followed by Bogmoriles Mill situated on David Street in 1832, Barrowclough Mill in 1850, and the original Berry's Mill. This pace of change gathered momentum through the later part of the nineteenth century and continued into the 20th century. Holmefield Mill affectionately known locally as Sam Holden's was one of the last mills built (1908) and the new warehouse complex added in the late 1970's was the last textile building built in Barrowford.
The textile industry saw its zenith just prior to the First World War and by the mid 1920's had started to slip into a slump with many long established firms disappearing altogether during the depression of the 1930's. The Second World War saw a temporary reprieve but by the 1950's a terminal decline had set in. Most textiles manufacturing concerns either amalgamated or were taken over by large conglomerates and with the globalisation of trade most firms closed British factories as production moved overseas. The last large employer, Coates Viyella (Sam Holden's) closed their Barrowford Mill in the 1980's whilst the smaller Vale Weavers Mill soldiered on into the new millennium.

Population & Housing

Barrowford Booth which included Blacko was second only to Colne in population during the first half of the nineteenth century having 2875 people living within the Booth in 1851 whilst Nelson was a sleepy hamlet. Population grew steadily through the second half of the nineteenth century due to the ever increasing size of mills being built in the village and by 1891 had reached 4776 including Blacko and by 1911 this had reached 5527 exclusive of Blacko.
This led to a housing boom with most of the new terraced houses being built either by the mill owners or private enterprise to satisfy the accommodation needs of the mill workers. These new houses were mostly 'two up two down' properties with back yards and a great improvement on the 'one up one down' back-to-back houses built in the first half of the nineteenth century. Some of the back to back properties housed families of over 10 in just two rooms.
Following on the modernisation and improvement of living accommodation Barrowford Urban District Council acquired land at Oaklands Farm for a new council housing estate. Building was begun in the late 1940's and completed by mid 1950's this provided affordable larger properties to rent in the village. Again during the 1960's a large scale slum clearance programme was undertaken, which saw the demolition of all of the older part of the village known as 'the square' these small back-to-back terraces were replaced with modern flats built in blocks with open areas between.
This phase of the village's development has been called council vandalism as this wholesale clearance deprived the village of a large swathe of old historic property. With hindsight modern design and building techniques could have turned these dwellings into small affordable properties with the bonus of being an asset as a tourist attraction of modern Barrowford.

The Parish of Barrowford, which includes Carr Hall and Higherford, has a population of just over six thousand people and over 2,750 households, which has been steadily increasing over a number of years. Barrowford is seen as a 'desirable' place to live, with a number of local estate agents and the pressure on available land for local house building confirms the popularity of the village as a place to settle. Although Barrowford and the surrounding Pendleside villages are seen to be more prosperous than some of the other larger local towns, the high cost of local housing and the reduction in local employment prospects are proving a serious challenge to young people wanting to stay in the village where they were brought up.

Barrowford's local identity and sense of community is partly based on its past heritage and history both built and social, the stability of local families and strong social networks, these needs to be preserved to keep Barrowford as the friendly and lively place it is today.

Barrowford developed as a weaving town and in its heyday the textiles industry operated 10,000 looms in Barrowford and employed several thousand local people. The gradual decline of the textile industry has led to the development of Barrowford as a residential suburb, resulting in little current local industry or employment except for a few mill buildings converted to small Business Parks and industrial units and the yet unbuilt Barrowford Business Park.

New housing estates have sprung up as the textile industry declined, this started with the Lupton Drive, Appleby Drive estate and the Stone Edge estate during the 1970's. Followed by Wheatley Springs and Park Avenue during the late 1980's. This continues with the demolition of some of the larger mills to provide residential land such as Holmefield Gardens, this will continue with the redevelopment of Lowerclough Mill.

The only current link with our weaving heritage are a handful still weaving at the Lancashire Towelling Company, but this is likely to close in the near future, with the prospect of an up-market, Booths, supermarket being built on the site. With this closure, the centuries long local association with weaving will be gone forever.

Where are We

Barrowford is situated just off junction 13 of the M65 and straddles the A682 the main route linking through to Gisburn, Settle, the Yorkshire Dales, Kendal and the Lake District. Barrowford adjoins the Trough of Bowland Area of Outstanding Beauty, which includes Pendle Hill and the villages of Barley, Roughlee and Newchurch. We are within 15 miles of Haworth and 25mile of Manchester.