Mellor is a village situated in the Borough of

Ribble Valley Ribble Valley is a local government district with borough status in Lancashire, England. Its council is based in Clitheroe, the largest town. The borough also includes the town of Longridge and numerous villages and surrounding rural areas. ...

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated ''Lancs'') is a ceremonial county in North West England. It is bordered by Cumbria to the north, North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to the east, Greater Manchester and Merseyside to the south, and the Irish Sea to ...

, England. The population of the civil parish at the census of

2011 The year marked the start of a Arab Spring, series of protests and revolutions throughout the Arab world advocating for democracy, reform, and economic recovery, later leading to the depositions of world leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen ...

was 2,262.

Etymology

The name ''Mellor'' is first attested around 1130, in the form '' Malver'', with forms such as ''Meluer'' appearing thereafter. Its origin lies in the

Common Brittonic Common Brittonic (; ; ), also known as British, Common Brythonic, or Proto-Brittonic, is a Celtic language historically spoken in Britain and Brittany from which evolved the later and modern Brittonic languages. It is a form of Insular Cel ...

words which survive in modern Welsh as ("bare") and ("hill"). Thus the name once meant "the bare hill"..

Geography

Mellor has two churches, one

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the State religion#State churches, established List of Christian denominations, Christian church in England and the Crown Dependencies. It is the mother church of the Anglicanism, Anglican Christian tradition, ...

parish church (St Mary's) and one

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a Protestant Christianity, Christian Christian tradition, tradition whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's brother ...

, as well as a primary school, three public houses and a hotel. It also boasts a post office and general store, a hair salon, a beauty salon, a high-quality butcher's shop, a pharmacy and a private-hire company. There are also three disused

quarries A quarry is a type of open-pit mine in which dimension stone, rock, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, gravel, or slate is excavated from the ground. The operation of quarries is regulated in some jurisdictions to manage their safet ...

, and the remains of an

eel Eels are ray-finned fish belonging to the order Anguilliformes (), which consists of eight suborders, 20 families, 164 genera, and about 1000 species. Eels undergo considerable development from the early larval stage to the eventual adult stage ...

farm destroyed by fire in the 1990s. Stanley House is a 16th-century building listed on the English Heritage Register. It is now a hotel and spa. Atop the highest hill on Mellor Moor, overlooking the village, is the site of a Roman signalling station, and a now disused

Royal Observer Corps The Royal Observer Corps (ROC) was a civil defence organisation intended for the visual detection, identification, tracking and reporting of aircraft over Great Britain. It operated in the United Kingdom between 29 October 1925 and 31 Decembe ...

Nuclear Blast and Fallout Monitoring Station. The monitoring post was opened in July 1959, was decommissioned in October 1968, and is situated on a low mound ten yards west of a

trig point A triangulation station, also known as a trigonometrical point, and sometimes informally as a trig, is a fixed surveying station, used in geodetic surveying and other surveying projects in its vicinity. The station is usually set up by a map ...

overlooking BAE Samlesbury Airfield. Many people still believe this was a nuclear shelter or an air-raid shelter for the use of the local population during times of war. A millennium viewpoint pillar has been erected alongside, encroaching on the top of the post. Mellor has a village hall, situated near the centre of the village. It hosts sports such as football, tennis, bowls and hockey. The hall is also used for other activities such as line dancing, disco parties and exercise classes. The hall is available for hire, and functions as the community centre for the village, where residents can go to discuss how to improve the local area. Close to the village hall is a playing field and a tennis court, very popular in the summer. In the centre of the village is a playground, adjacent to a small public library and a doctor's surgery which share the same building. The local populace is generally middle-class and middle-aged, though the tranquil rolling hills and tight sense of community have made it a prime retirement location. Mellor is linked to

Mellor Brook Mellor Brook is a village which straddles the borders of the Boroughs of Ribble Valley and South Ribble in Lancashire, England. The village population at the 2011 census was 2,467. The village of Mellor Brook is approximately north west of ...

, another small village, which features a bakery, post office with general store, an art gallery and the ''Feildens Arms'', a public house. The hub of

is the Community Centre, which was originally a chapel before becoming a primary school, which closed in 1962. In 1966 the building became a community centre, having been bought from the church, to be maintained as a Registered Charity until this day.

References

External links

St Mary the Virgin Parish ChurchFeildens Arms Public HouseMellor Village HallMellor Brook Community CentreMellor St Mary's CE Primary School league table results (2006)The Carrier Pigeon Magazine Community magazine
{{authority control Villages in Lancashire Civil parishes in Lancashire Geography of Ribble Valley Lancashire places with etymologically Brittonic names

Etymology

Geography

See also

References

External links