Great Mitton, ENG - Postcode - BB7 3LP

Description of Great Mitton

The village and civil parish of Great Mitton can be found in the Ribble Valley in the English county of Lancashire.

Located about three miles from Clitheroe, it is separated from the neighbouring civil parish of Little Mitton by the River Ribble. In total, there were 266 people living in the two civil parishes as of the 2011 census. Between the two villages, Great and Little Mitton take up less than 2,000 acres in the Forest of Bowland, making them the smallest township there. The village was transferred to Lancashire on 1 April 1974 for administrative purposes from the West Riding of Yorkshire under the provisions of the Local Government Act of 1972, despite its historical ties to that county.

Manorial courts were once held in Great Mitton's pub, The Three Fishes, as well as the town's ancient manor house, All Hallows. Across the Ribble in Little Mitton is another watering hole called the Aspinall Arms.

Mitton, an old parish located at the mythe where the Hodder and Ribble rivers meet, got its name from the Old English.

History of Great Mitton

Great Mitton and Little Mitton, located on opposite sides of the Ribble, were included in the Domesday manor of Mitton. It was ruled by the Lords of Bowland, who were also the lords paramount of a Royal Forest and a Liberty of ten manors, eight townships, and four parishes, all of which were located on the historic border between Lancashire and Yorkshire, beginning in the late eleventh century. Slaidburn (Newton-in-Bowland, West Bradford, Grindleton), Knowlmere, Waddington, Easington, Bashall Eaves, Mitton, Withgill (Crook), Leagram, Hammerton, and Dunnow were some of the manors that made up the Liberty (Battersby). 

Mitton was a mesne manor that was built in the early 1200s. Radulphus le Rus, the first lord, may have been a de Lacy. The surname "de Mitton" was adopted by Radulphus's offspring. The Shireburne of Stonyhurst dynasty can trace its origins back to the late thirteenth century, when a member of the family married into the house of de Sotheron, later known as Sherburne. The Shireburne family lost control of the manor in the fourteenth century, but they regained it in 1665. After the last male Shireburne died out in 1717, the manor was passed on to the Hawksworths and then the Aspinalls. West of the settlement, near the Hodder River, was where the Mitton Hoard of eleven silver coins (or bits of coins) from the Middle Ages was discovered. Clitheroe Castle Museum now houses the coins. Within Mitton parish was the tiny manor of Withgill (Crook). The de Burys held sway over it until the late 1300s. From 1379 to 1503, the manor belonged to the Singletons, then it was passed to the Leylands and then the Tyldesleys. Due to their participation in the Preston Rebellion of 1715, the prominent Jacobite Tyldesley family was forced to give up their manor. Old Laund Booth, Aighton, Bailey, and Chaigley in Blackburnshire; the chapelries of Grindleton and Waddington; the townships of Bashall Eaves and West Bradford in Staincliffe; and Mitton, which straddled the two, all made up the historical Parish of Great Mitton. Sir William Addison, the historian and writer (1905–1992), was a Milton native.