The Diary of Roger Lowe
(Image: cover illustration from “The Diary of Roger Lowe of Ashton-in-Makerfield, Lancashire. 1663-1678. Including a record of burials at Winwick Church 1666-71”, published by Ian Winstanley and Picks Publishing 1994)
Described by some as Lancashire's answer to those other great diarists of the period, Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, Roger Lowe was an apprentice shopkeeper at Ashton-in-Makerfield during the reign of Charles II. Inclusive of his lists of “the seaveral names and persons that are dead in Ashton and buryed att Winwicke” and “such as dyd within My Aprentiship and providentiallie I was cald to the funerall”, which come at the end of the manuscript, the document now in preservation at Wigan Archives ref. D/DZ A58 runs to about 150 pages and covers the period from January 1663 to January 1679.
Several transcripts of Lowe's diary have been published over the years. Click on the links below to access digitised versions of some of these plus a multi-part “Illustrated Companion to the Diary of Roger Lowe” compiled by our own Makerfield Rambler.
The inspiration provided by Ian Winstanley's editions of the Leigh Chronicle transcript of the Diary, published by Ian and Picks Publishing in 1994 and 2004, is gratefully acknowledged.
A “reading version” of the Diary produced by independent researcher Angus Graham in 2008
"Illustrated Companion" Part 1: "Introduction" and "1663"
"Illustrated Companion" Part 2: "1664"
"Illustrated Companion" Part 3: 1665
"Illustrated Companion" Part 4: "1666"
"Illustrated Companion" Part 5: "1667 - 1674"