Bolton
Bolton is a town in Greater Manchester in England. In the foothills of the West Pennine Moors, Bolton is between Manchester, Blackburn, Wigan, Bury and Salford. It is surrounded by several towns and villages that form the wider borough, of which Bolton is the administrative centre. The town is within the historic county boundaries of Lancashire.
A former mill town, Bolton has been a centre for textile production since the 14th century when Flemish weavers settled in the area, introducing a wool and cotton-weaving tradition. It was a 19th-century boomtown, development largely coincided with the introduction of textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution. At its peak in 1929, its 216 cotton mills and 26 bleaching and dyeing works made it one of the largest and most productive centres of cotton spinning in the world. The British cotton industry declined sharply after the First World War and, by the 1980s, cotton manufacture had virtually ceased in the town.
The town has a population of 184,073, whilst the wider metropolitan borough has a population of 296,169. Bolton originated as a small settlement in the moorland known as Bolton le Moors. In the English Civil War, the town was a Parliamentarian outpost in 1644 in a staunchly Royalist region and, as a result, the Royalist Prince Rupert of the Rhine led the 1644 storming of Bolton of 3,000 Royalist troops, which is also referred to as The Bolton Massacre, with 1,600 residents perished and 700 were taken prisoner.
Bolton Wanderers football club now play home games at the Toughsheet Community Stadium in Horwich. Cultural interests include the Octagon Theatre and the Bolton Museum and Art Gallery, as well as one of the earliest public libraries established after the Public Libraries Act 1850.
Bolton is of high strategic importance, being the location of missile production for the Ministry of Defence through the MBDA facility at Over Hulton.
History
Toponymy
Bolton is a common Northern English name derived from the Old English bothl-tun, meaning a settlement with a dwelling. The first recorded use of the name, in the form Boelton, dates from 1185 to describe Bolton le Moors, though this may not be in relation to a dwelling. It was recorded as Bothelton in 1212, Botelton in 1257, Boulton in 1288, and Bolton after 1307.Later forms of Botheltun were Bodeltown, Botheltun-le-Moors, Bowelton, Boltune, Bolton-super-Moras, Bolton-in-ye-Moors, Bolton-le-Moors.
The town's motto of Supera Moras means "overcome difficulties", and is a pun on the Bolton-super-Moras version of the name meaning literally, "Bolton on the moors". The name itself is referred to in the badge of the Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council using a form of visual pun, a rebus, in combining motifs of arrow for 'bolt' and heraldic crown for 'tun', the term for the central high point of a defensive position that is the etymon of the suffix of Bolton.
Early history to the Civil War
There is evidence of human existence on the moors around Bolton since the early part of the Bronze Age, including a stone circle on Cheetham Close above Egerton, and Bronze Age burial mounds on Winter Hill. A Bronze Age mound was excavated in Victorian times outside Haulgh Hall. The Romans built roads from Manchester to Ribchester to the east and a road along what is now the A6 to the west. It is claimed that Agricola built a fort at Blackrod by clearing land above the forest. Evidence of a Saxon settlement exists in the form of religious objects found when the Victorian parish church was built.In 1067 Great Bolton was the property of Roger de Poitou and after 1100, of Roger de Meresheys. Bolton became the property of the Pilkington family until they forfeited the land in the Wars of the Roses. The land was given to the Stanley family and thus the Earls of Derby who became royalists in the English Civil War. The area surrounding Bolton was subsequently divided into four parts including the Stanley family, the Earl of Bradford, a Freeman and various other parties. Great Bolton and Little Bolton were part of the Marsey fee, in 1212 Little Bolton was held by Roger de Bolton as plough-land, by the service of the twelfth part of a knight's fee to Randle de Marsey. The parish church in Bolton has an early foundation although the exact date is unknown; it was given by the lord of the manor to the Gilbertine canons of Mattersey Priory in Nottinghamshire, founded by Roger de Marsey.
A charter to hold a market in Churchgate was granted on 14 December 1251 by King Henry III of England. Bolton became a market town and borough by a charter from the Earl of Derby, William de Ferrers, on 14 January 1253, and a market was held until the 18th century. Burgage plots were laid out on Churchgate and Deansgate in the centre of the medieval town close to where Ye Olde Man & Scythe public house, dating from 1251, is situated today.
In 1337 Flemish weavers settled and introduced the manufacture of woollen cloth. More Flemish weavers, fleeing the persecution of Huguenots, settled here in the 17th century. The second wave of settlers wove fustian, a rough cloth made of linen and cotton. Digging sea coal was recorded in 1374. There was an outbreak of the plague in the town in 1623.
During the English Civil War, the people of Bolton were Puritans and supported the Parliamentarian cause. A parliamentary garrison in the town was attacked twice without success but on 28 May 1644 Prince Rupert's Royalist army with troops under the command of the Earl of Derby attacked again. The attack became known as the Bolton Massacre in which 1,500 died, 700 were taken prisoner and the town plundered. The attackers took to referring to the town as the "Geneva of the North", referencing Geneva's dominant Calvinism, although historian Malcolm Hardman says this was a description borne "more of irritation than accuracy". At the end of the Civil War, Lord Derby was tried as a traitor at Chester and condemned to death. When his appeal for pardon to parliament was rejected he attempted to escape but was recaptured. For his part in the massacre, he was executed outside Ye Olde Man & Scythe Inn on 15 October 1651.
Industrial Revolution onward
Bolton was a 19th-century boomtown and, at its zenith in 1929, its 216 cotton mills and 26 bleaching and dyeing works made it one of the largest and most productive centres of cotton spinning in the world. The British cotton industry declined sharply after the First World War and, by the 1980s, cotton manufacture had virtually ceased in Bolton.A tradition of cottage spinning and weaving and improvements to spinning technology by local inventors, Richard Arkwright and Samuel Crompton, led to rapid growth of the textile industry in the 19th century. Crompton, whilst living at Hall i' th' Wood, invented the spinning mule in 1779. Streams draining the surrounding moorland into the River Croal provided the water necessary for the bleach works that were a feature of this area. Bleaching using chlorine was introduced in the 1790s by the Ainsworths at Halliwell Bleachworks. Bolton and the surrounding villages had more than thirty bleachworks including the Lever Bank Bleach Works in the Irwell Valley. The mule revolutionised cotton spinning by combining the roller drafting of Arkwright's water frame with the carriage drafting and spindle tip twisting of James Hargreaves's spinning jenny, producing a high quality yarn. Self-acting mules were used in Bolton mills until the 1960s producing fine yarn. The earliest mills were situated by the streams and river as at Barrow Bridge, but steam power led to the construction of the large multi-storey mills and their chimneys that dominated Bolton's skyline, some of which survive today.
Growth of the textile industry was assisted by the availability of coal in the area. By 1896 John Fletcher had coal mines at Ladyshore in Little Lever; The Earl of Bradford had a coal mine at Great Lever; the Darcy Lever Coal Company had mines at Darcy Lever and there were coal mines at Tonge, Breightmet, Deane and Doffcocker. Some of these pits were close to the Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal providing the owners with markets in Bolton and Manchester. Coal mining declined in the 20th century.
Important transport links contributed to the growth of the town and the textile industry; the Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal constructed in 1791, connected the town to Bury and Manchester providing transport for coal and other basic materials. The Bolton and Leigh Railway, the oldest in Lancashire, opened to goods traffic in 1828 and Great Moor Street station opened to passengers in 1831. The railway initially connected Bolton to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal in Leigh, an important link with the port of Liverpool for the import of raw cotton from America, but was extended in 1829 to link up with the Manchester to Liverpool Line. Local firms built locomotives for the railway, in 1830 "Union" was built by Rothwell, Hick and Company and two locomotives, "Salamander" and "Veteran" were built by Crook and Dean.
Bolton's first Mayor, Charles James Darbishire was sympathetic to Chartism and a supporter of the Anti-Corn Law League. In August 1839 Bolton was besieged by Chartist rioters and the Riot Act was read and special constables sworn in. The mayor accompanied soldiers called to rescue special constables at Little Bolton Town Hall, which was besieged by a mob, and the incident ended without bloodshed. Derby Barracks was established in Fletcher Street in the early 1860s.
One of two statues prominent on Victoria Square near Bolton Town Hall is that of Samuel Taylor Chadwick a philanthropist who donated funds to Bolton Hospital to create an ear, nose and throat ward; built houses for people living in cellars; through Bolton Council fought for better public health including cleaner water; established the Chadwick Orphanage; improved the Bolton Workhouse and funded the town's natural history museum that was the basis of the present Bolton Museum at Le Mans Crescent. The second statue at Victoria Square is in memory of a former Bolton Mayor Sir Benjamin Alfred Dobson who died in office in 1898, he was a textile machinery manufacturer and chairman of Dobson & Barlow, a significant employer in the town. By 1900 Bolton was Lancashire's third largest engineering centre after Manchester and Oldham. About 9,000 men were employed in the industry, half of them working for Dobson and Barlow in Kay Street.
Another engineering company Hick, Hargreaves & Co based at the Soho Foundry made Lancashire boilers and heavy machinery. Thomas Ryder and Son of Turner Bridge manufactured machine tools for the international motor industry. Wrought iron was produced for more than 100 years at Thomas Walmsley and Sons' Atlas Forge.
By 1911 the textile industry in Bolton employed about 36,000 people. As of 1920, the Bolton Cardroom Union had more than 15,000 members, while the Bolton Weavers' Association represented 13,500 workers. The last mill to be constructed was Sir John Holden's Mill in 1927. The cotton industry declined from the 1920s. A brief upturn after the Second World War was not sustained, and the industry had virtually vanished by the end of the 20th century.
During the night of 26 September 1916, Bolton was the target for an aerial offensive. L21, a Zeppelin commanded by Oberleutnant Kurt Frankenburg of the Imperial German Navy, dropped twenty-one bombs on the town, five of them on the working class area of Kirk Street, killing thirteen residents and destroying six houses. Further attacks followed on other parts of the town, including three incendiaries dropped close to the Town Hall.