Arrangements were made with the Society’s executive committee who agreed to come to an open meeting in Chorley. This was set up in St Mary’s Parish Club which was very well attended and at the end of it, the branch was set up, a committee arranged and speakers booked from the society ‘experts’ who had come along to offer their services in helping us get started. 

Jim was our first chairman and held the position for five years. He was a strong guiding force. 

Our first meeting was the second Tuesday in January 1990 and was held in one of the upstairs rooms in St Mary’s club. We continued to hold meetings there until October when the church was being redecorated and they needed the club rooms for church business.    

We held the November meeting in a room in the LDS Church on Water Street and in December we moved to St Peter’s Institute on Eaves Lane.  This did not have the same car-parking facilities as St Mary’s and, being further out of town, attendance started to fall dramatically. We had always had an average of 65 people at meetings and it soon became obvious that we needed to be more central.  

For some time, we had had our names on a waiting list for Chorley Library and their meeting room became available to us for our second AGM in January 1992, to our amazement the members came flooding back, attendance was 64! The following month, we changed our meeting day from the second Tuesday to the third one; this allowed members who had attended the Local History Society meetings to be free from divided loyalties and able to attend both society meetings. 

The rest as they say is history, the attendance has continued to be good and thanks to hard work by the committees down the years and with good speakers at meetings, it has stayed constant ever since.  

 edited by Steve Williams from an original document by Rita Platt