Bolton or Bolton le Moors, Lancashire
Historical Description
Bolton or Bolton-le-Moors, as it was formerly called, a large manufacturing town in South Lancashire, is now a county borough, and is represented in Parliament by two members. The parish of Bolton is very extensive and contains the following townships:-Anglezarke, Breightmet, Tong-with-Haulgh, Edgworth, Entwisle, Longworth, Quarlton, Rivington Lostock, Darcy Lever, Sharples, and the chapelries of Blackrod, Bradshaw, Harwood, Little Lever, and Turton. The townships of Great and Little Bolton, which were formerly under separate jurisdiction, were amalgamated on the incorporation of the borough in 1838. It stands on the rivulet Croal, one of the tributaries of the river Irwell, and is 11 miles NW of Manchester. There is canal communication between here and Manchester and Bury. The L. & Y., L. & N.W., and M.R. companies have lines or running powers in every direction, north, south, east, and west. The principal industries of the town are fine cotton spinning and fancy manufacturing, bleaching, engineering, and machine making, many of the establisliments being not only very extensive, but also of world-wide renown.
The town now contains seventeen churches-the parish church (St Peter's), rebuilt by the late Peter Ormrod, Esq., at a cost of over £60,000, and consecrated in 1871; All Saints' Church, originally known as the Chapel-in-the-Fields (1726, rebuilt 1871), St George's (1796), Holy Trinity (1827), Emmanuel (1838), Christ Church (1844), St Stephen's and All Martyrs' (1845), St John's (1849), St Paul's (1863), St Mark's (1871), St James' (1871), St Luke's (1874), St Matthew's (1876), St Bartholomew's (1879), All Souls' (1881), St George the Martyr's (1880), and the Church of the Saviour (1885)-and there are several others just outside the present boundaries of the borough. There are also 15 Wesleyan Methodist chapels, 6 Congregational chapels, 5 Roman Catholic, 1 Presbyterian (St Andrew's), 2 Baptist, 2 Independent, 2 Unitarian, 1 New Jerusalem, and several Primitive Methodist chapels, Friends' Meeting House, Catholic Apostolic Church, and mission halls of less pretentious character.
The Grammar School, was first endowed by William Haigh in 1524. A new school was built and endowed by Robert Lever, 1641. This building was pulled down, and a new school erected in 1883 at a cost of £2500. Ainsworth, the noted lexicographer, was a scholar, and probably a tutor in the school, and the noted Dr Lempriere was the master at the latter end of the 18th century. The Church of England Educational Institution was built and opened in 1855, and there are now 18 Board schools and 26 denominational schools, with a total on their registers of 24,174. The Mechanics' Institute has recently been converted into a technical school by the Corporation, and great results are anticipated of its usefulness. There is a large Public Free Library in the Town Hall Square (converted out of the Exchange, which was erected in 1825), and four branch lending libraries and reading-rooms - the total number of volumes being over 78,000 in all the departments.
The Town Hall (of classic design), built at a total cost of £166,418, erected on the old Market Square, was opened by the Prince of Wales in 1873. The Market Hall (one of the finest in the kingdom) was built and opened in 1855; the cost, together with the approaches, being at least £80,000. A new Infirmary, at a cost of £40,000, was opened in 1883, and contains 100 beds. The Chadwick Orphanage, the Eden Orphanage, Blair's Hospital, savings bank, post office, county court, Bradford estate offices, Conservative club, and several banks, all add to the prospective view of the town. There is also a very commodious and comfortable theatre, which is largely patronised.
In the year 1866 a public park, which had been purchased and laid out at a total cost of £89,000, was opened by the Earl of Bradford; the Heywood Recreation Grounds was opened at the same time, and in 1869 the Darbyshire Recreation Ground was opened, given by the donors whose names they bear. The last bequest was made in 1888, of Mere Hall and adjoining estate, by J. P. Thomasson, Esq.; this also has been laid out by the Corporation as a park, swimming baths, bowling green, and gymnasiums, and the building converted into an art museum and public library. In the public park a natural history museum has been erected out of the bequest of the late Dr Chadwick, whose name it also bears, at a cost of over £5000.
The total area of the borough is 2357 acres. The following census figures show the progress of the town during the last century:-(1801) 17,416; (1821) 31,295; (1841) 49,747; (1861) 70,395; (1881) 105,414; (1891) 115,002.
The government of the town was originally vested in the lords of the manor and their court-leets, but in the year 1792 the first Act of Parliament was obtained for the improvement and management of the two increasing townships of Great and Little Bolton, and trustees appointed to carry out the provisions of the Act. These bodies were superseded when the town was made a municipal borough by the Boroughs Incorporation Act in 1838, and thetwo townships are now merged into one, and governed by a council or corporation of 64: members, 16 being aldermen and 48 councillors.
The town is very well supplied with good water collected from the moorland on the northern limits of the parish. The water-works were originally a private company, hut were bought up by the corporation, and greatly extended, at a total cost of nearly £800,000, so that now the supply is sufficient not only for their own use, but all the surrounding district over an area of 56,620 acres, and supplies at least 234,000 inhabitants with a sufficiency, and plenty to spare for compensation. The total storage capacity is at least 961,500,000 gallons, and the works are well provided with filtering beds on the newest principle. The profits of the sale of the water are utilised for the reducing of the rates of the borough.
The sewage works have also been constructed with the latest improvements, and the general refuse is destroyed or converted into saleable manure. These works are about to be greatly extended by additional "destructors" in another part of the town.
The gas works, which were also originally a private concern, have been taken over by the town, and "mains " laid to provide lighting power over 32,000 acres of the outlying townships at a total cost of about £400,000, and powers have also been obtained to provide electric lighting to the borough.
For local traffic about 12 miles of tram lines have been laid for some years, and have proved a great boon to the residents of the outlying townships.
There are two well laid out cemeteries for the use of the town-the Tong Cemetery on the south-east, and the Heaton Cemetery on the west, with mortuary chapels for the various denominations.
The workhouse, which is called Fishpool, is built outside the borough, and is a very large and handsome group of buildings, capable of accommodating at least 1200 persons, was erected in 1861 for the Union of Bolton, which comprises 26 townships and urban and rural districts. The Bolton Poor Law Union comprises an area of 46,413 acres, and embraces a population of 226,803 persons, and the control of the poor is vested in 45 guardians of the poor, elected from the various townships. There are three weekly and two daily newspapers published in the town, one of them, the Evening News, being the first halfpenny paper published in the country. The town has both a borough and sessional court of magistrates, as well as a petty sessions held quarterly by a recorder. The market days are Monday and Saturday, and cattle fairs are held on 4 and 5 Jan., 30 and 31 July, and 13 and 14 Oct. There is also a noted pleasure fair-held on 1 and 2 Jan. each year. There are some extensive coal mines in the district, which greatly facilitate the industries of the town and neighbourhood; this, together with the inventive genius and enterprise of many of its inhabitants, have made it, if not one of the brightest abodes, yet it may truly be called one of the great hives of industry. Cooperation here is most successful, as there are over 40 branches connected with extensive central stores, with a quarterly turnover of at least £122,400, and a net profit of £17,500.
The town is mentioned in Domesday Book, and was given by William the Conqueror to Roger de Poictou as a reward for his services, but was confiscated for his opposition, and given to Roger de Merechay, who sold it to Ranulf de Blundeville, Earl of Chester, in 1228. It then passed to William, Earl Ferrers, who obtained a charter for "free warren and a market and fair" for the town in the year 1251. This family lost the manorial rights through some implication with the Montfort rebellion. The Pilkingtons were the next possessors, but lost it for supporting the cause of Richard III., when it was given to the Stanleys in 1485, and the Derby family held the same until the time of the Civil War, when it was three times besieged, and the seventh Earl of Derby was beheaded here in 1651 for his opposition to the Cromwellian party. Since then the manorial rights have been divided between several families, but are now extinct. The parish of Bolton is very ancient, and the site of the present parish church has most probably been covered by three previous ecclesiastical structures, a Saxon, then Early Norman, and then a mediaeval Norman edifice; and as early as the middle of the 13th century Bolton held one of the prebendary stalls in Lichfield Cathedral, in which diocese all South Lancashire was comprised. As early as the latter part of the 12th century Bolton was one of the seats of the woollen trade, and a great stimulus was given to it by the settlement of a large number of Flemish weavers about the year 1337. But this branch of industry was superseded by the introduction of cotton spinning in the neighbourhood early in the 16th century, and about the year 1638 Bolton became the principal market for fustians, and later on for muslins, toilets, and quilts. About the year 1769 Richard Arkwright, then a barber in the town, patented the "water-frame" for spinning, and six years later Samuel Crompton, in the parish of Bolton, invented the "spinning mule" which have revolutionized the cotton industry. From that time forward the town has rapidly increased in extent of population and prosperity, as the cotton trade steadily rose to the position of the greatest of British manufacturing industries.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
Ancient County | Lancashire | |
Ecclesiastical parish | Bolton-Le-Moors St. Peter | |
Hundred | Salford | |
Poor Law union | Bolton-le-Moors |
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 Bolton or Bolton le Moors from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Bolton-Le-Moors (St. Peter))
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Lancashire is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Bolton or Bolton le Moors 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: