Ainscough - Expansion, Employment and Trade

Expansion, Employment and Trade

Early records come from the Churches of Croston, Ormskirk and Standish in Lancashire. Many Lancashire Ainscough families were Yeoman farmers and some of the family continued farming until the period of industrialisation. The Milling company of H & R Ainscough (Hugh and Richard of Parbold) established a successful business at Burscough and Southport. Branches of the family developed around Blackrod, and by the 19thC, across the whole of Lancashire. As industrialisation came to Lancashire, the women took work in cotton mills and the men on the railways, particularly the L&YR and the LMS.

In the early 19th century, most male - and some female - Ainscoughs in the villages of Blackrod, Haigh, Aspull were coal miners. They started as drawers, pulling coal carts, at the age of ten (until this was stopped by legislation), graduating to miners at around the age of sixteen. The area was rich in cannel coal, a high-grade, rich but volatile coal, and many mines were on the estate of the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres who lived at Haigh Hall. All but one of the five sons of Ralph (b.1782 in Blackrod) were miners - and nearly all male descendants of these Ainscoughs were also miners, as censuses from 1841 to 1901 attest. In the 1850s and 1860s, some of the Ainscough miners moved further afield to Westhoughton, Pemberton, Hindley and Ince, with some members of their families going into the silk and cotton weaving industries.

In 2006 several Ainscoughs featured in the Sunday Times Rich List.