Heywood and Arrowsmith Farms were adjacent properties located 4.5 km north of Wigan town centre near the junction of Red Rock Lane and Arley Lane. The farms were situated between the Leeds Liverpool Canal to the east and the River Douglas to the west. The farm buildings were probably built between 1829 and 1840. No buildings appear clearly at this location on ordinance survey maps from 1829 (Hennet maps) although the land may have been under cultivation. Heywood Farm is clearly marked on the first edition ordinance survey maps (6 inch) surveyed 1844–50.
The Henry Harold Harrison family has close historical ties to Heywood and Arrowsmith Farms. Henry Harold’s great-grandparents, Henry Ball (b. 1779) and Betty Ormishaw (b. 1784), settled here between 1814 and 1837. In 1841 and 1851 Henry and Betty lived at Heywood Farm in their 60s and 70s with a number of their grandchildren, while their sons Daniel and James, and later daughter Elizabeth, lived next door at Arrowsmith with their families. Henry was “a farmer of 36 acres” with two or three farm workers helping with the farm in addition to his children and older grandchildren. While most of the family were engaged in farming Daniel was employed as a shoemaker. Between the two farms some 15 to 20 relatives seemed to be living together on this property for perhaps two decades. The 1841 and 1851 census records for Heywood and Arrowsmith provide snapshots of the various Ball families residing here at those times.
While living at Heywood Farm in 1837 daughters Mary and Betty Ball registered the out-of-wedlock births of “their” children Peter and Hannah on the same day in August. (see The Strange Case of Peter and Hannah Ball).
In 1851 grandaughter Ellen Ball was enumerated at Heywood Farm living with her mother, Elizabeth, and her grandparents (see Who Were Ellen Ball’s Parents?). Around that same time Joseph Harrison came to live at Arrowsmith as an apprentice to Ellen’s uncle Daniel, learning the trade of shoemaking. Ellen and Joseph married a few years later in 1855. Edward Harrison, aka Edward Ball, was almost certainly born at Heywood in April 1855.
The Ball family were obligated to leave Heywood and Arrowsmith Farms in the late 1850s when the farm properties were purchased or expropriated by the Wigan water authority during the construction of the Worthington Lakes Reservoirwhich involved the construction of a tunnel under Henry Ball’s farm. Henry and Betty, their son James, Joseph, and Ellen, and assorted children and grandchildren moved about a kilometre up Arley Lane to another farm at Blundles Fold.
The site of Heywood and Arrowsmith farms can be visited today near the junction of Arley Lane and Red Rock Lane in Haigh. The property is still owned by the municipal waterworks and is known as Waterworks Farm (although the property, which still has a water supply tunnel beneath it, isn’t actually being farmed). There are a few modern houses on the east side. The Worthington Lakes reservoir can be visited on the west side of the property, accessible from Chorley Road. What was once Arley Hall to the north is now the Wigan Golf Course. The Leeds Liverpool Canal lies east of the property across Arley Lane. Modern maps show a farm at the junction of Red Rock Lane and Canal Row (visible on the Google map below) known as Heywoods. As this farm is only a few hundred metres southeast of Henry Ball’s former farm there may be some unknown historical connection between the properties.