Sharples, Lancashire
Historical Description
Sharples, a township in Bolton-le-Moors parish, Lancashire. It lies 2¼ miles N of Bolton station, on the L. & Y.R. and L. & N.W.R., and its post town and money order and telegraph office is Astley Bridge, under Bolton. It contains the villages of Belmont, Banktop, Sweet Loves, High Houses, Gale, Folds, Piccadilly, Water Meetings, Old Houses, and part of Astley Bridge. Acreage, 5051; population, 6981. There are cotton mills, calico print-works, and extensive bleach-works. Eden's Orphanage School at Astley Bridge was erected in 1879, at the cost of over £12,000, and was enlarged in 1885 and again in 1890. The township forms with, and under the name of, Astley Bridge an ecclesiastical parish. Population, 6239. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Manchester; net value, £290 with residence. Patron, the Crown and the Bishop alternately. There are Baptist, Roman Catholic, and Wesleyan chapels at Astley Bridge. Belmont was constituted a separate ecclesiastical parish in 1861. Population, 818.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
Ancient County | Lancashire | |
Civil parish | Bolton | |
Hundred | Salford | |
Poor Law union | Bolton |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Church Records
Ancestry.co.uk, in association with Lancashire Archives, have images of the Parish Registers for Lancashire online.
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Sharples from the following:
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Lancashire is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Sharples are available from a number of sites:
- Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- Google Streetview.
- National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
- OpenStreetMap.
- old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
- Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)
Newspapers and Periodicals
The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Lancashire newspapers online: