The Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society is a historical society and registered charity founded, on 21 March 1883, for the study of any aspects of the area covered by the Palatine Counties of Lancashire and Cheshire (and succeeding local authorities) from antiquity to the twenty-first century.
[1] It was at a meeting convened in response to a circular issued by George Charles Yates (held in the Rooms of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, in George Street, Manchester), that several antiquaries and historians (including William Ernest Armytage Axon, James Croston, Alfred Darbyshire, Lt-Col. Henry Fishwick, Robert Langton, George Webster Napier, Thomas Glazebrook Rylands, Rev.
Joseph Heaton Stanning, Henry Taylor, and William Thompson Watkin) proposed the creation of a society with the purpose of organising excursions to places of historical and archaeological interest in Lancashire and Cheshire.
[2][3][4] Honorary Membership (bestowed between 1883 and 1988) was awarded to various individuals who made a contribution to the society or to the life of the Counties Palatine, recipients included James, Earl of Crawford (1883), Charles Roach Smith (1885), Charles William Sutton (1888), Isabella Banks (1893), Sir Henry Hoyle Howorth (1903), Robert Dukinfield Darbishire (1903), Charles Roeder (1903), John Wilfrid Jackson (1918), and Sir Edward Holt, Bt (1943), amongst others.
The society organises a varied programme of lectures and events including visits to exhibitions, libraries, museums, galleries and places of historical, architectural and archaeological interest.