[3] In the Late Middle Ages a fortified house stood near the river, the home of the Denyas family.

An heiress, Alicia Denyas, married Gilbert de Southworth, the builder of Samlesbury Hall.

Samlesbury Hall is a manor house built in 1325 which has been many things since then including a public house and girls' boarding school, but since 1925, when it was saved from being demolished for its timber, it has been administered by a registered charitable trust, the Samlesbury Hall Trust.

The church contains a Norman font, a medieval bell and Sir Thomas Southworth's funerary armour dating from 1546.

[6] The Samlesbury witches—Jane Southworth, Jennet Brierley and Ellen Brierley—were accused of child murder and cannibalism and tried at Lancaster Assizes on 19 August 1612, in the same series of trials as the Pendle witches.

After the war it took over hangars vacated by the English Electric company, and played a significant role in supporting aircraft used on the Berlin Airlift.