History of Wigan   (Help with ancient and recent history.)

" A.D. 923. This year went King Edward with an army, late in the harvest, to Thelwall; and ordered the borough to be repaired, and inhabited, and manned. And he ordered another army also from the population of Mercia, the while he sat there to go to Manchester in Northumbria, to repair and to man it. This year died Archbishop Plegmund; and King Reynold won York.

From: here

No mention of Wigan, or of famine, but it seems that year the front line between Anglo Saxons and Danes was hereabouts. Something which usually impinged upon harvests, I guess had a storm amplified such difficulties it would have been worthy of mention.

"A.D. 976. This year was the great famine in England." same source.