Nelson, Lancashire
Nelson is a town and civil parish in the Borough of Pendle in Lancashire, England, it had a population of 33,617 in 2021. Nelson is north of Burnley and south-west of Colne. Nelson developed as a mill town during the Industrial Revolution.
History
An Iron Age hillfort called Castercliff is on a hill to the east of the town. The modern town spans the two parts of the township of Marsden in the ancient parish of Whalley. Little Marsden was on the south-west of Walverden Water, its lands considered part of the manor of Ightenhill and Great Marsden to the north-east, part of the manor of Colne. Great Marsden included the southern parts of Colne, and Little Marsden included all of modern-day Brierfield.Walverden Water joins Pendle Water next to Nelson & Colne College, with that river forming the boundary of the Forest of Pendle. Both the manors and forest were parts of the Honour of Clitheroe. The lord of Clitheroe had a mill on the river in 1311, thought to have been sited near the confluence with Clough Head Beck, where Scholefield Mill now stands. There is also evidence of an ancient fulling mill further upstream. A small chapel is thought to have been built during the reign of Henry VIII on the site of St Paul's Church.
The forest of Pendle was made famous by the Pendle witch trials of 1612. One of the accused in the less well-known witch trials of 1634, Margaret Johnson, confessed that she first met her familiar in Marsden.
A small mill had been established by the Ecroyd family at Edge End as early as 1740, and they started Lomeshaye Mill as a water-powered spinning mill in 1780. The coming of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal in 1796, followed by the East Lancashire Railway Line in 1849, spurred its development as an industrial town, with an economy based mainly upon cotton weaving. The first Ordnance Survey map of the area, published in 1848, shows three small villages: Marsden, and Hebson and Bradley, both on Walverden Water in the modern-day centre of town. Also apparent are the estates of Marsden Hall to the east and Carr Hall across Pendle Water to the north-west, as well as the turnpike roads of the Marsden, Gisburn and Long Preston trust heading north, and the Blackburn, Addingham and Cocking End trust heading east.
Brierfield railway station was originally called Marsden, and Nelson railway station was known as the Nelson Inn station, Great Marsden, after the adjacent public house, the Lord Nelson Inn. As the villages developed into a town, the name Nelson was chosen to differentiate it from Marsden across the Pennines in the neighbouring.
File:Queen Street Mill - Tandem Compound 5479.JPG|thumb|left|An 1895 stationary steam engine built by William Roberts & Co of Nelson installed at Queen Street Mill Textile Museum, Burnley
There was a worsted mill at Lomeshaye close to a "cotton factory" and another cotton mill along the canal at Reedyford by 1848. Walverden Mill in Leeds Road was built in 1850, and it was soon followed by others. From 1862, Phoenix Foundry, the steam engine factory of William Roberts, stood at the site of the shopping centre's car park, and has been called "Nelson's most significant engineering site". By 1891, there were 57 cotton spinners and manufacturers listed in Nelson. The largest had 1,950 looms and the smallest only 8.
The cotton industry was the most important in the town, and by 1910, more than 12,000 local workers were members of the Nelson and District Power-Loom Weavers' Association.
Nelson is considered part of the Burnley Coalfield. There is evidence of old bell pits and surface mining at Swinden Clough and Castercliff, and as early as 1465 there was a complaint of people unlawfully digging coal in the area. Clough Head Colliery, also known as Town House Pit, was on Clough Head Beck on the eastern edge of the town and it had a troubled history. While under construction in 1845, an accident during assembly of the steam pumping engine resulted in the death of one worker. On 12 April 1850, six men were working in the pit when one man went to check for gas with a safety lamp, but before he had signalled it was safe, another man opened his lamp causing an explosion that killed them all. Another explosion in November 1856 resulted in two fatalities. A surface tramroad connected it to railway sidings at Bradley Lane Head. It is uncertain when the colliery closed, but it was possibly in the late 1880s.
The town became associated in the 20th century with the production of confectionery, including Jelly Babies and Victory V, and it was where the package holiday company Airtours began life as an independent travel agent. The textile industry, in particular, has now sharply declined, leaving the town with low property prices and higher than average unemployment.
Governance
Nelson was granted its charter of incorporation as a municipal borough by Queen Victoria in 1890. Radical left wing politics in the early 20th century led to it being labelled "Little Moscow" by both the local and national press; indeed, the Nelson Leader ran the headline "Moscow calling" during the lock-out of 1928. There was significant Communist Party influence in the town between the wars. When the Labour Party came to power in the town, they responded to local political feeling by placing utilities such as gas and water under the control of the municipal council, anticipating by decades the nationalisation of such utilities after World War II. The council refused, moreover, to participate in celebrations for King George V's silver jubilee in 1935, saying that they would rather spend public money on free dinners for school children and the jobless.Under the Local Government Act 1972, the town became part of the non-metropolitan district of Pendle on 1 April 1974. Initially forming part of an unparished area, a new Nelson civil parish was formed in 2008, covering a similar area to the old municipal borough. It currently has three tiers of local government, Lancashire County Council, Pendle Borough Council and a town council, with 24 councillors, which was elected for the first time on 1 May 2008. Nelson Town Council and the wider Pendle Borough Council are situated at Nelson Town Hall on Market Square.
After boundary changes in 2020 which reduced the number of wards in the borough to 12, four cover parts of Nelson parish – Bradley, Brierfield East & Clover Hill, Marsden & Southfield and Whitefield & Walverden. Pendle Borough Council is currently under 'No Overall Control' and governed by a coalition of independents and Liberal Democrats, led by Councillor Mohammed Iqbal. The mayor is a ceremonial post, rotated annually.
Lancashire County Council was governed from 1994 to 2009 by Labour, at which point it switched to Conservative control, then to no overall control in 2013, and back to Conservative in 2017. The town is represented on the council in three divisions: Brierfield & Nelson North, Nelson South, and Pendle Central.
The Member of Parliament for Pendle and Clitheroe, the constituency into which the town falls, is Jonathan Hinder, who was first elected in 2024.
Demography
In the 2011 Census the Middle-layer Super Output Areas of Nelson East, Nelson West and Nelson Bradley, making up the bulk of the town of Nelson, had Asian populations of 4,615, 6,818 and 4,489 respectively, compared to White populations of 5,370, 2,216 and 2,891. In total, the Asian population of the three MSOAs came to 57.5% of the total population, with the White population making up 37.8% of total population.Economy
The Pendle Rise Shopping Centre has been the focal point of the town centre for over 50 years. It opened as the Arndale Centre in June 1967 and was rebranded as the Admiral Shopping Centre before taking its current name. Nelson Market is a covered market below the Pendle Rise Shopping Centre. The Victory Centre opened on the site of the former Salem Chapel in 1993. Of the 12 units only one remained occupied in 2017, by a branch of William Hill.The main road through the town centre, pedestrianised in the early 1990s, was reopened to traffic in August 2011, to help boost trade. In 2012, Nelson was among twelve English towns chosen to participate in the Portas Pilot Areas initiative, receiving £100,000 to help rejuvenate the shopping area.
The largest business park in the town is located at Lomeshaye, by Junction 12 of the M65. The original 15-hectare site was designated as an Enterprise Zone on 7 December 1983. The estate currently occupies 53 hectares and is home to more than 80 businesses. Between them they employ approximately 4,000 people on the estate. A 31-hectare site was taken out of the Green Belt when the council's new Local Plan was adopted in December 2015, to facilitate a further extension to the west and north. The Lomeshaye Business Village, a refurbished former cotton mill to the east of the estate, contains a further 151 units, principally occupied by small and medium-sized enterprises engaged in office and light industrial uses.
Transport
Nelson is served by Junction 13 of the M65 motorway, which runs west to Burnley, Accrington, Blackburn and Preston, and north-east to Colne. From the town centre, the A56 runs southwest to the M65 at Brierfield and north-east to Colne and beyond, while the A682 – Britain's most dangerous road – heads north into the Yorkshire Dales.In November 1969, a multi-storey car park with space for 350 cars was opened in Nelson. The car park was demolished in 2019 to make way for a McDonalds.
In December 2008, the town's new bus and rail interchange was opened at a site which used the existing railway station. The new interchange facility cost £4.5 million and included enhancements such as cycle stands, taxi and car drop-off facilities, electronic information displays, a direct link to the railway station including a passenger lift and an enclosed passenger concourse with 10 bus stands.
Rail services to and from Nelson are provided by Northern. The Interchange has an hourly stopping service 7 days a week west to Blackpool South via Blackburn and Preston, and east to Colne.
The main bus operator in Nelson is Burnley Bus Company, although Tyrer Bus, Boomerang and Holmeswood operate some services. National Express operates one coach service to London Victoria Coach Station each day from the Interchange. The town has good bus links into Burnley with peak hour services on to Manchester: X43 Witch Way service runs from Burnley and Rawtenstall to Manchester city centre, using a fleet of specially branded double-decker buses with leather seats and WiFi. Some early morning X43 journeys to/from Manchester start and end at Nelson instead of Burnley.