Shakerley

Shakerley is a suburb of Tyldesley in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, Greater Manchester, England.

[4] Shakerley is derived from the Old English sceacere and leah meaning the robbers woodland glade or clearing.

[2] An ancient Roman road from Mamucium to Coccium (Manchester to Wigan) passed through the hamlet.

[8] In 1646 the Royalist Geoffrey Shakerley was ordered to pay a fine and sequestration of his lands for his support of King Charles I.

[13] The Shakerley family, absent landlords, finally relinquished their tenure of the hamlet when it was auctioned in 1836.

The sale included farms and land totalling 514 statute acres with "valuable mines of coal and stone lying under the same".

Crow Bank was a farm near the Hindsford Brook, Thomas and Henry Kniveton were tenant farmers who also sold gunpowder and explosives from a magazine in their fields to the local colliery owners.

The Hindsford Brook flowing north to south is the ancient boundary between Shakerley and Atherton.

The area between these brooks is mostly flat and the underlying rocks are the coal measures of the Manchester Coalfield.

When Mary I ascended the throne in 1553 and the Marian Persecutions began, Hurst persisted preaching the Protestant faith, he refused to attend mass and for safety fled into Yorkshire.

Thomas Leyland of Morleys Hall in Astley, accompanied by his chaplain, Ralph Parkinson rode to Shakerley and searched Hurst's mother's house but did not find him.

Leyland apologised for entering her property but found nothing except Latin grammars and a small Tyndale Bible.

In November 1558, Mary I died saving Hurst from the martyrdom that his brother-in-law suffered at the stake at Chester in 1555.

[16] Thomas Higginson, son of a Shakerley nailor, was sent to Cambridge University where he graduated with a BA in 1648.

[28] Another Shakerley man was a graduate of Brasenose College, Oxford in 1671, he was John Battersby who became vicar of Astley Chapel and died in 1690.

Footbridge on path between Shakerley and Atherton