The Parish Church

of

St Leonard, Middleton

A Grade 1 Listed Building

The Church as seen today (apart from the Organ Chamber and North Porch/Vestry and as mentioned below) was completed in 1524 by Sir Richard Assheton.   This was to celebrate the knighthood granted to him by Henry VIII for the part he played in the Battle of Flodden Field in 1513.    He rebuilt and extended the church built by Cardinal Thomas Langley in 1412.   He was Bishop of Durham and Chancellor of England and was born at Langley Hall, Middleton.

 The Church contains two arches made of stonework from the Norman Church. A wooden Saxon Church is believed to have occupied this site long before the Norman conquest. 

 There is a list of Rectors, which include the sons of local gentry especially sons of the Lord of the manor.

The Tower, Porch and Porch door and Rector’s door were certainly part of Langley’s church.

 In 1412 Langley also founded the Chantry school of St Cuthbert in the Chapel of Our Lady and St Cuthbert, commonly     called    the   Langley   or Rector’s Chapel. In the 1572 Alexander Nowell, Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral who came from Read Hall near Clitheroe was educated in Middleton, and  was   a    former  pupil  of the Chantry School, obtained an endowment from Queen Elizabeth I to build a Grammar School in Middleton for local children to be known as The Free School of Queen Elizabeth in Middleton.   This school, now known locally as The Old Grammar School,  was completed in 1586  and is situated near the church on Boarshaw Road.    (See separate page for details of the Old Grammar School)

 The Flodden Window in the Sanctuary is unique, having on it the names of the Middleton Archers who fought at the Battle of Flodden.

 The Rector’s Vestry was added in the 17th century and the Hopwood Pew is late Tudor.

 Around 1600 the ‘wooden steeple for a stubborn people’ was built on top of the tower and in 1714 the original set of five bells re-cast, with a sixth being added.   By the late 19th century the number had increased to eight.   A curfew bell, the ‘Nowster’ was rung from 1812 until 1939, and on special occasions since.

 Following unfortunate alterations in the 18th and early 19th centuries, the Church was restored to its medieval glory by Richard Durnford, Rector 1835-1870, who at 67 years of age, became Bishop of Chichester.

 The church also has one of the finest collection of brasses in Lancashire including the only brass in the country of a Civil War Officer in full armour, namely Major-General Sir Ralph Assheton.

 The clock in the tower was installed August 15th 1807 by William Platt, Clockmaker, of Manchester and  replaced an earlier clock which was installed between 1552 and 1647.