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The tour begins in Leigh Civic Square

The civic square was the market place until 1968 when the market moved to the north side of the church. It was traditionally a place for announcing and exchanging news, and became more significant as a civic space with the building of the new town hall in 1907. In August 1914 the rumours about a possible war were suddenly confirmed with the announcement that the Army and Navy Reserves were to be mobilised together with the Territorials. However, no-one knew then how long and brutal the war was going to be so people were more concerned with potential food shortages and short-time working hours in the mills caused by the cancellation of cloth shipments, and any new orders.

Ironically, when Mayor Ashworth addressed the departing Leigh detachment of the 5th Manchester Regiment he promised them that he would do everything he could to secure their jobs until they returned, not knowing how few of them actually would. After three cheers for the King and another for the Leigh lads, the company marched down Newton Street to join seven other companies based at Wigan Rugby Football ground where they would be trained and disinfected before departure for the continent.

Not everyone supported them. The Leigh Socialists held a meeting in the Market Place where they claimed that the war 'had been engineered by the capitalists, and heavy toil would have to be paid for it by the poor'. This was followed by a meeting of the Leigh Labour Party who said that, 'every working man and working woman who was a member of a trade union was affiliated with workers of every country in the world - and had no quarrel with each other.' But the vicar of St Mary's, Canon Irton Smith clearly knew what lay ahead as he gloomily predicted in his sermon that week: 'The passions of men are going to be let loose in the worse possible form.

We will now go into the church of St Mary's.

Portrait image of Councillor Joseph Ashworth J.P. Mayor from 1913 to 1919. n.d. [1913].

Click here for a map of this part of the tour.