The Parish of Heapey in the County of -- Lancashire --

HEAPEY, a chapelry in the parish and hundred of LEYLAND, county palatine of LANCASTER, 21/2 miles (N. N. E.) from Chorley, containing 530 inhabitants. The living is a perpetual curacy, in the archdeaconry and diocese of Chester, endowed with £400 private benefaction, £400 royal bounty, and £600 parliamentary grant, and in the patronage of the Vicar of Leyland.

Samuel Lewis, Topographical Dictionary of England 1831

Heapey is a small community nestled in the Pennines that is very popular with walkers and horse riders. It is a very rural community with little in the way of services other than a pub and equestrian centre. There is an old Ordinance facility that has spawned rumours of a secret installation hiding steam engines. More on that subject can be read here.

Heapey in Lancashire, named in Old English as ‘(rose)hip hedge or enclosure’, heope ‘hip’ + hege ‘hedge’ or gehæg ‘enclosure’.

The 7¾ mile Cherry tree Railway Line linked Chorley with Blackburn. It was built in 1866-9 as a joint venture between the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway and the London and North Western Railway, primarily to connect collieries in the Wigan area with the developing towns of East Lancashire. From Chorley, there were stations at Heapey, Brinscall, Withnell and Feniscowles, before joining the Preston to Blackburn line at Cherry Tree. Passenger services were withdrawn in 1960 but the line remained open for goods traffic until 1966, when the line was subsequently dismantled and the viaduct at Botany Bay demolished to make way for the M61.

	Ceremonial Trowel, photograph courtesy of Christabel Jowett

The inscription on the trowel reads

Presented to Richard Wood Esq
Brinscall Hall
on the occasion of his laying
the corner stone of the enlarged
Church of St Barnabas
in the Parish of Heapey
27th August 1864