Salesbury is a village and civil parish in Ribble Valley, located centrally in the county of Lancashire, England.

[2] The B6245 road runs straight through the village providing transport links to towns such as Blackburn, Preston and Burnley.

These could be attended by tenants and servants, but for baptisms, marriages and burials people went to nearby churches in Blackburn and Ribchester.

As the population of Salesbury grew towards the end of the 18th Century as a result in a boom in weaving, Viscount Bulkeley and other landowners raised the money to build a Chapelry.

The Chapelry served its purpose for many years until 1848, when a report by the Rural Dean of Blackburn described the old church as 'having been originally very ill-built, and, in its present condition, inconvenient, uncouth, unchurchlike and ruinous.'.

Similarly as World War II ended and marriages boomed the population also increased in to peak in the 1960s.

[1][14] Clayton-le-Dale is situated further down the same road and is approximately the same size if a little bigger than Salesbury, so it could be interpreted that by halving the figure a rough estimate of the population could be achieved.

This increase could be due to the people who are tempted away from big towns and cities as a result of the 'rural idyll' In the census carried out in 1881 55% of men were employed either in agriculture (29%) or working with mineral substances (26%).

At the other end of the scale the least popular forms of employment were as professionals (2%), as workers in food and lodging (3%) or in transport and communication (3%).

[15] Many women were employed by the weaving trade, this was also responsible for a boom in the population towards the end of the 18th century as the craft became more popular.

There are few local amenities in the village of Salesbury as the small size of the settlement and the proximity to Blackburn means that residents can easily access services elsewhere.

The village's amenities include; a public house, a memorial hall, a primary school, a cricket club and of course the church.

[21] The cricket club (Salesbury CC) was founded in 1906, and the team initially played in the Blackburn Sunday school league.