The opera singer Kathleen Ferrier was born in which Lancashire village?

Kathleen Mary Ferrier (22 April 1912 – 8 October 1953) was an English contralto singer who achieved an international reputation as a stage, concert and recording artist, with a repertoire extending from folksong and popular ballads to the classical works of Bach, Brahms, Mahler and Elgar. Her death from cancer, at the height of her fame, was a shock to the musical world and particularly to the general public, which was kept in ignorance of the nature of her illness until after her death.

The Ferrier family originally came from Pembrokeshire in South West Wales. The Lancashire branch originated in the 19th century, when Thomas Ferrier (youngest son of Private Thomas Ferrier of the Pembrokeshire Regiment) settled in the area after being stationed near Blackburn during a period of industrial unrest. Kathleen Ferrier was born on 22 April 1912, in the Lancashire village of Higher Walton where her father William Ferrier (the fourth child of Thomas and Elizabeth, née Gorton) was the head of the village school. Although untrained musically, William was an enthusiastic member of the local operatic society and of several choirs, and his wife Alice (née Murray), whom he married in 1900, was a competent singer with a strong contralto voice. Kathleen was the third and youngest of the couple's children, following a sister and a brother; when she was two the family moved to Blackburn, after William was appointed headmaster of St Paul's School in the town.