Burscough Bridge, a village and an ecclesiastical parish in the civil parish of Ormskirk, Lancashire. The village stands 3 miles NNE of Ormskirk, on the main road from Liverpool to Preston. The ecclesiastical parish of Burscough Bridge, or Lathom St John, formed in 1831 out of the parish of Ormskirk, comprises the greater part of the townships of Burscough and Lathom. The populous hamlets of Burscough Town, New Lane, Hoscar Moss, and several smaller hamlets are comprised within the parish. Post town and telegraph office, Burscough Town. Population, 4000. The main line of the L. & Y.R. (Burscough Junction), Liverpool to Preston and the north, runs through the parish. The Southport and Manchester branch also has stations at Burscough Bridge, Hoscar Mose, and New Lane. The neighbourhood is entirely agricultural, potatoes being the chief product. There are also large corn mills. The Leeds and Liverpool Canal runs through the village. The Ordnance Stores for the North-Western Military District are situated here. The parish church of St John the Baptist was built in 1831 at a cost of £3000, and has since been restored and a new chancel added at a cost of over £2000. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Liverpool; net annual value, about £200, in the patronage of the Vicar of Ormskirk. There are also Roman Catholic and Wesleyan chapels. In the south corner of the parish are situated the remains of the priory church of St Nicholas, Burscough. It was founded by Robert Fitz-Henry de Lathom about 1124 for Black or Canons Regular of the Augustinian order, and endowed with the advowsons of Ormskirk and three other churches, with the weekly market at Ormskirk and a yearly fair there, and with considerable lands. At the dissolution its net revenues were estimated to have been equal to £1000 of our money, and the priory was then granted by the king to Sir William Paget, K.G., principal Secretary of State. The priory was for some years the burial place of the Earls of Derby, descendants of its founder, but at the dissolution the bodies were removed to the Derby chapel erected in Ormskirk Church in 1572. The great tenor bell is now part of the peal in Ormskirk Church. In the immediate neighbourhood stands Lathom House, the seat of the Earl of Lathom, and formerly the seat of the Earls of Derby, built on the site of the former church, which sustained two sieges by the troops of the Parliament in 1644 and 1645.
