Bolton is one of the largest towns in England, with 280,000 inhabitants. It has a Victorian town centre, a spectacular town hall and a reputed market.
It is situated 15 miles north of Manchester and 40 miles west of Liverpool. To the north of the town, within 3 miles there is beautiful open countryside, with Granada's Winter Hill TV mast towering over all, at the top of 450mt high Winter Hill. The Metropolitan Borough of Bolton covers almost 54 square miles. Over a half of the Borough is 'greenspace' and includes nearly 15.4 square miles of agricultural land. The earliest written record of Bolton - spelt 'Bothelton' - appears in the 'Pipe Rolls' of 1185. In 'The Feet of Fines' for 1331 it is referred to as 'Bolton-le-Moors' and this was it's correct postal address until quite recent times. It became a borough in 1838, absorbing many of it's surrounding small townships gradually over the years, including my own village of Egerton.
Bolton was a centre of Puritanism, and in the Civil War of the 17th Century it was a Parliamentarian outpost, surrounded by Royalist areas. Prince Rupert's army of 10,000 men were joined by troops under the leadership of the Earl of Derby, and stormed the town on May 28th 1644 from Deane Moor. This was the third major assault against Bolton, of the 3000 local troops led by Colonel Rigby, 1500 were left dead, and 700 taken prisoner. It became known as the Bolton Massacre. After Cromwell's Parliamentarian victory, the Earl of Derby, James Stanley was hunted down and captured in Cheshire. After a three day trial, he was taken to Bolton, spent his last hours at Ye Olde Man and Scythe public house, then beheaded in Churchgate on October 15th 1651.
As for the town's industrial heritage, in the 12th century, agriculture was the chief occupation of the residents. The moors were ideal grazing land, the fleece of the sheep was weaved for it's local population. Although initially the textiles made were for local use, word spread about the quality and this reputation attracted Flemish weavers to settle in Bolton about 1337. They introduced spinning and weaving, and also clog making. Mechanisation of the cotton industry took a big leap forward with the invention of the spinning mule, by Bolton-born Samuel Crompton (1753 - 1827) in 1779. The railway brought more industry through the 18th and 19th centuries, in particular heavy engineering. Of the number of mills, in the 1950's there were still 103 cotton mills, in 1966 there were 34, by 1979 just 8 remained.
