Chorley's Inns and Taverns: Wrightington

Name: The Rigbye Arms

Address: Whittle Lane, High Moor, Wrightington

The Rigbye Arms takes its name from the Hospitallers who owned considerable lands in Wrightington and Parbold. Harrock Hall was one of the estates, and it was long held by the Rigby(e) family.The family for some time adhered to Roman Catholicism and in 1628 Nicholas Rigby was entered on the subsidy roll as a convicted recusant. The Nicholas Rigby who recorded the last pedigree left a son Nicholas, who died in 1740, and whose eventual heirs were the descendants of his daughter Anne by her husband, the Rev. Thomas Baldwin, sometime rector of a mediety of Liverpool and rector of Leyland. Their son John, rector of North Meols, succeeded to the Harrock estates in 1787 and took the name and arms of Rigbye. His third son, the Rev. Rigbye Baldwin, succeeded him in 1793, and afterwards took the surname of Rigbye. He was in 1829 succeeded by his son Captain Rigbye Baldwin Rigbye. The estate was eventually sold and was owned by the Dicconson family in the early 1900's.

The 1825 directory below does not record the existence of a Rigbye Arms but shows the Rev Rigbye (Baldwin) Rigbye living at Harrock Hall.

First mention of an Inn on High Moor comes in the 1841 census although it is only in 1861 that reference is made to the name Rigbye Arms.

Listed landlords by census return were John Thomas (1841), John Parr (1851), Richard Eccles(1854), John Holcroft (1861), William Blundell (1866), James Jones (1871-72), John Pass (1872), Henry Eccles (1874), Peter Higham (1881-82), John Freeman (1891), William Mawdesley (1901), Thomas Rigbye (1911) and James Bentham (1926).