The prominent summit of Rivington Pike was the site of one of a series of beacons spanning England as an early warning system. The beacon system was put in place by Ranulph de Blundeville, 4th Earl of Chester around 1139, following a Scottish raid in 1138, when a small Lancashire army was defeated near Clitheroe by a much larger Scottish force. The beacon here was one of the famous examples used in Elizabethan England to warn of the approaching Spanish Armada, lit on 19 July 1588. There are records of a petition for reimbursement of a watching beacon in 1640. The stones from the beacon firepit were used to create a base for the Pike Tower in 1733.
