Featured Collections
Welcome to Wigan & Leigh Archives Online
our new photographic and collections website
You will find thousands of new resources, improved viewing and searching, and over time we'll be adding new collections from the Archives and Museums.
A small minority of images on our site contain offensive content. Archives: Wigan & Leigh have provided captions to contextualise these images. If you discover any content you deem offensive, please get in touch.
We hope you enjoy our new website and would be pleased to hear from you with any ideas and suggestions or donations of new archives or photographs for us to add to the site.
News
Migration Stories: Marian Harriet Harrison - from Petrograd to Standish
Posted on 23rd Oct 2025 by AWL Team
Marian Harriet Harrison was born 8 March 1852 in Petrograd, Russia (Modern-day St Petersburg). Her Father, Robert was part way through writing a travel book, "Notes of a Nine Years' Residence in Russia, from 1844 to 1853, with Notices of the...
Migration Stories: German families in Scholes
Posted on 23rd Oct 2025 by AWL Team
The census of 1881 reveals Scholes to be a site of concentrated immigration. In the enumeration district which covers Scholes there are 805 men, women and children recorded, 229 of those are shown as being born outside the UK. Many...
Migration Stories: Bishop Edward Dicconson: from Wrightington to Appley Bridge via Normandy
Posted on 23rd Oct 2025 by AWL Team
Edward Dicconson lived a life of migration, moving both from and to the Wigan area. Born 30 th November 1670 in Wrightington Hall, aged 14, he left for studies in Douay, Normandy. Douay was an English college where Roman Catholics could...