• The Plague Pits

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    The Plague Pits

     
     
    The Plague Pits

    Image Owner: Unknown

    Visitors to Rivington Lane may be surprised to learn that they could be walking over the communal grave of the poor victims of the Great Plague of 1623. Mentioned briefly by a couple of sources including a poem, this mostly forgotten site is placed in local legend, further up from Rivington Lane in the Tigers Clough area.

    However, by superimposing part of a C1620 tenement map (possibly the oldest map of the area) onto a series of more modern maps, the location of the site can be ascertained within an acceptable degree of accuracy.

    Is it possible to make out a shallow rectangular depression in the middle of the grassy area in this aerial photograph?

     
     
     
     

    Finding the Horwich Plague Pits

     
     
    Finding the Horwich Plague Pits

    Image Owner: munki @ Shootability.co.uk [concept and or portions of image]

    This image shows a badly imaged portion of a map that was apparently commisioned in 1620 and amended sometime after 1623. The area within the red rectangle contains the text 'Plague Pits' to indicate the burial site of victims of the Great Plague of 1623. A readable copy of a larger area of this map is available in Smith's 'More About Horwich' in which Smith also goes some way to explaining the orientation of the map that is difficult to interpret.

    I found little correlation between this ancient map and the modern maps as the landscape boundaries and roads have changed. A good correlation is found when the old map is compared to this OS first edition of C1849 with many field boundaries still in place, together with the former River Douglas before it's diversion and the construction of the reservoirs.

    Note the old Horwich Race Course seems to clip our area of interest in the top left of the circuit.

     
     
     
     

    The Horwich Plague Pits Today

     
     
    The Horwich Plague Pits Today

    Image Owner: munki @ Shootability.co.uk [concept and or portions of image]

    Having oriented and scaled the image of the 1620's map and with the help of the more understandable 1840's map it is possible to overlay more modern maps of the area to get a pretty good idea of the location in today's landscape.

    This solution could be fairly inaccurate on the ground but I think we can be pretty sure within the grassy area. This area has also been known as the 'Robbers Patch', another local legend and site of the old gallows tree. More of this later...

    It looks as though Rivington Lane (which is a fairly modern construct from the estate of Lord Leverhulme) passes directly over the site. Returning to the aerial photo from the top of the image I fancy it is possible to see the narrow path of the old race course as a shallow ditch below the trees in the top right, leading towards the centre of the grassy area where there appears to be a broader and more defined dip in the ground. It seems this could be the actual site of the old Plague Pit. Spare a thought for the potentially hundreds of corpses, hurriedly buried in a mass grave during one of English history's greatest tragedies.

     
     
     
     
     
     
     

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