This OS map of 1849 shows the small settlement named "the Arches" located at the bottom of Brook Lane, Lamberhead Green.
The map was copied by hand to 9inch scale by Harold Hill in autumn 1978.
Harold Hill was a local amateur astronomer who was well known for his detailed lunar drawings.
1841 census
1851 census
"The Pit Brow Women of the Wigan Coalfield" by Alan Davies, published by Tempus Publishing Limited (2006)
Friday 23rd April, 2010
The “Arches” was a name given to a small cluster of buildings at the bottom of Brook Lane, Lamberhead Green - about 2˝ miles west of Wigan town centre. The area was also known as the "The Pingot"
The name “Arches” probably reflects the once dominant presence of a viaduct which carried a colliery railway line across the valley. A nearby modern house still carries the designation.
The 1851 census gives an interesting insight into the lives of the Pingot's small resident community.
Nine households containing forty-six people are listed. All the inhabitants were born in Pemberton or the nearby locations of Orrell, Winstanley and Billinge.
The heads of the households were Jane Ascroft (spelt Ashcroft in 1841), Elizabeth Sharples, James Ainscough, John Simm, Thomason Heaton, Thomas Wright, a second Thomas Wright, William Reynolds, Alice Derbyshire.
Three heads of households were widows, and a fourth, Alice Derbyshire, was an unmarried woman with a baby son.
Two of the widows, Jane Ascroft and Thomason Heaton, worked as hand loom weavers. This job was very demanding physically. By 1851 a hand loom weaver's income had become extremely meagre.
It was usual for weavers to work in the basements of their cottages but there is no way of knowing whether or not this was true of the inhabitants of the Arches.
Alice Derbyshire, the single mother, is described as “weaver”. It's a matter of conjecture as to whether she, too, was a hand loom weaver or whether she worked on a power loom in a factory.
Other workers in the textile industry were three of the daughters of Jane Ascroft - Elizabeth, Isabella and Esther. Jane and Elizabeth were weavers and Esther, just 13 years old, worked as a bobbin winder.
The third widow, Elizabeth Sharples, was described as a “Coal Labourer”. The “Coal Mines Act” of 1842, banned women and girls from working underground, but as this led to a severe drop in family income many continued to do so.
As Elizabeth Sharples had declared her occupation to the census compiler, it seems unlikely that she worked in an illegal occupation. She was probably one of an emerging new breed of Wigan women who were known as “pit brow lasses”.
Although they no longer had to suffer the harsh underground conditions endured by their predecessors, the life of a pit brow lass was far from easy. They performed the arduous tasks of grading coal and moving tubs around the pit head.
Other female “coal” or “colliery labourers” in the Arches were Mary Ascroft, daughter of Jane; Catherine Houghton, a 54 year old lodger who lived with Thomason Heaton; and Ellen Molyneux, Thomas Wright's sister in law.
Thomason Heaton had four young children to support even though her hand loom weaver's wage was very low. To increase the household budget she took in two lodgers, Catherine Houghton and her daughter Alice.
All of the inhabitants of the Arches were poor, but the three widows and Alice Derbyshire (the unmarried mother) must have found life particularly difficult.
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