1830s The Church Hotel was situated on Crook Street at the junction of Moncrieffe Street and was built in the 1830s.

​

1830s-1840s Water wheel at Ashworths’ Cotton Mill, Egerton, Bolton. This water wheel was 62 feet (18.6 metres) in diameter and cost £4,800 to erect. It was one of the largest water wheels in Britain and a popular visitor attraction in the 1830s and 1840s, even though new mills built at this time usually used steam power.

​

1830 (21 May) Joseph Ridgway laid the foundation stone of current Horwich Parish Church.

The church was largely funded by the Ridgway family. In recognition of their generosity the Ridgway family crest which features a camel was built into the tower under the clock face above the entrance to the church.

 

1830 (16 Oct) Newspapers: The Bolton Literary Journal and Weekly Miscellany began 16th October 1830, printed by R Holden, 14 Mealhouse Lane price 3.1/2d. It also was short-lived ceasing on 9th April 1831.

 

1830 Rothwell, Hick and Rothwell was set up; the partners became interested in the production of steam locomotives after the Rainhill Trials. The first engine was the Union, a 2-2-0 for the Bolton and Leigh Railway, followed by three more the following year for American railways.

 

1830 Rothwell, Hick and Rothwell made the locomotive Union for the Bolton and Leigh railway.

 

1830 Ladyshore Colliery (originally named, Back o'th Barn, opened 1830).

 The pit closed in 1949 and the colliery offices (now a house) and the stables survive.

 

1830 Beer House Act.

 

1830 The 1830 Beerhouse Act enabled people to set up pubs on payment of 2 guineas (£2.10). Many pubs began in this fashion and were initially just a person's sitting room. There was no bar and because only beer was served there were no optics or bottles of spirits. Quite often there would be a beer barrel on a stillage. As a result, the cost of setting up a pub was minimal.

 

1830 Many people after the 1830 Beer House Act was passed, paid a fee of two guineas to allow their premises to sell beer.

 

1830’s Back o’ th’ Barn (Ladyshore) colliery opened

Founded by Thomas Fletcher Senior.

 

1831 (13 Jun) Bolton Great Moor Street Station opened.  

 

1831 (13 Jun) By June 13th 1831, this line started to carry passengers as well. Carriages ran between Liverpool and Bolton, together with Kenyon Junction, permitted businessmen to travel easily between Manchester, Liverpool and Bolton. Stations opened at Bolton, Daubhill, Chequerbent, Atherton, West Leigh and Pennington. Colliery subsidence had some effect in changing the gradients the locomotives had to cope with.

 

1831 (Jun) Bolton Great Moor Street railway station was the first railway station in Bolton, originally opened as Bolton Station by the Bolton and Leigh railway

 

1831 (Jun) June. News item. 'A new engine was started on the Bolton and Leigh railway on Wednesday (June 1), called the "Phoenix," which took twelve carriages with it, containing upwards of three hundred persons, and at one period went at the rate of eighteen miles; an hour. It was made at Messrs. Crook and Dean's foundry, in Little Bolton, and is extremely simple in its construction. On Thursday a new engine called the "Union," made at the Union Foundry, by Messrs. Hick and Rothwell, was also tried, and took a party of gentlemen to Newton races. It is constructed upon a very much improved principle, especially as regards the arrangement of the boiler and steam reservoir. Some delay was occasioned at the time the engine should have set off, by one of the pumps being out of order. After this inconvenience was remedied, they succeeded in starting, about twelve o'clock, with a carriage capable of containing forty passengers, but we have not heard what number it actually conveyed. We have been informed that on one part of the road it went at the rate of from thirty-five to forty miles an hour.'

 

1831 (17 Aug) The Rothsay Castle (also spelt Rothesay Castle) was a paddle steamer built in 1816 for service on the River Clyde, Scotland, and was later transferred to Liverpool, England, where she was used for day trips along the coast of North Wales. She was shipwrecked on the Lavan Sands (Welsh: Traeth Lafan) at the eastern end of the Menai Strait, North Wales, in 1831, with the loss of 130 lives.                                 At around midday on 17 August 1831, she left Liverpool carrying 150 passengers. She had been intended to leave at 10 am but was delayed by the weather and the late arrival of a passenger.                                 On leaving the Mersey estuary, she encountered a strong NNW wind and a rough sea. One of the passengers went to see the captain, a Captain Atkinson, to ask him to return to port, but he found Atkinson drunk and unwilling to consider turning back. By 10 pm the ship had still only reached the Great Orme and the ship was found to have two feet of water in the stokehold. The pumps were found not to work, there was not even a bucket available for bailing, and the single lifeboat (shipboard) had a hole in the bottom and had no oars. At around 1 am on 18 August the Rothsay Castle ran aground on Dutchman Bank and after a while broke up, the captain and the two mates being swept to their death when the funnel collapsed. Twenty-three passengers were rescued in the morning.      Bodies were washed up over a wide area of Anglesey and the Welsh mainland. An inquest was held at Beaumaris and the jury concluded:  had the Rothsay Castle been a seaworthy vessel and properly manned, this awful calamity might have been averted. They therefore cannot disguise their indignation at the conduct of those who could place such a vessel on this station ...                                                                                  As a result of this man-made disaster, a lifeboat was established at Penmon on the south-east tip of Anglesey in 1832 and a lighthouse built there in 1837.

 

1831( Aug 17) August 1831, one of Britain's worst shipwrecks took the lives of 100 passengers within sight of the Welsh coast.

Almost a quarter of the victims were trippers from Bury -- including well-known local figures such as Lord Derby's land-agent.

n its day, the wreck caused as much of a sensation as the Herald of Free Enterprise 150 years later.

The train of events which led to the tragedy, and the tales of heroism and despair which came out of it seized the town's imagination and were the subject of poems, books and popular ballads.

It was a cheerful crowd of trippers which embarked at Liverpool on the steam packet Rothsay Castle on Wednesday, August 17, 1831.

Officially, there were 100 passengers aboard. But it is certain there were an extra 20 or 30 passengers, and maybe more.

It seems unlikely that so many extra people had merely sneaked aboard; possibly someone was supplementing his pay by selling extra tickets.

The crew comprised captain, mate, steward, two firemen, two seamen (although there should have been four). There was also a three-piece band.

The ship's destination was Beaumaris in North Wales, 50 miles away. The annual regatta there was to be held next day.

But the Rothsay Castle never arrived in Wales. By midnight the passengers were struggling in the sea or clinging to what was left of the ship.

It had grounded on a sandbank half a dozen miles from Beaumaris, and literally fallen apart from the influence of wind and waves.

Was overloading the main cause of the wreck? Although partly to blame, it seems unlikely this was the principal cause.

The Rothsay Castle was a 200-ton paddle steamer, built 15 years before on the Clyde, in the infancy of steam navigation. She had just been fitted with a new keel and boiler at a cost of £1200, but was not very seaworthy, by some accounts.

Although the disaster happened long before such safety measures as the Plimsoll line, designed to end overloading, the drama which unfolded that fateful day 162 years ago was more a series of small mishaps than of one overwhelming disaster.

Notable were three factors: the weather, the captain and the delay.

The ship was advertised to leave Liverpool at 10am but one passenger, a Londoner, had a carriage to be loaded on board.

The delay this caused was later blamed for the ship's arrival at low tide in Conwy Bay -- a bay which at low tide is mostly sands, with only a narrow navigation channel.

The wind, in the form of gales, also delayed the ship.

Finally, the captain, a Lieut. Atkinson RN, was suffering from a large dose of over-confidence mingled with stubbornness. And at dinner, he drank too much. The consequences would kill three quarters of his passengers.

But until the ship reached the open sea about 15 miles out of Liverpool, none of the passengers were worried. They were out to enjoy themselves; they were travelling on a scheduled service on a British-built ship, so what could go wrong? But once out on the rough sea, some of the passengers became alarmed by the waves and the wind. One passenger who had done a lot of sea trips, said he'd never seen such weather.

Finally, Mr William Tarrey, 55, Land-agent to the Earl of Derby, who was travelling with his family, went below to ask Lieut. Atkinson to put back.

The captain, who was at dinner said: "I think there is a great deal of fear amongst you, and very little danger. If we turned back, it would never do: there would be no profit".

For the next two hours, the bold captain stayed below, eating and drinking, rebuffing nervous passengers and becoming more and more brusque and abusive to anyone who remonstrated with him.

As the afternoon wore on and the wind and waves lashed the vessel, it became clear that they were going to be very late indeed.

From the Little Orme's Head to the Great Orme's Head -- a distance of four or five miles -- survivors said it took the ship three hours. This puts the ship's speed at between one and two knots: a walking pace.

When they rounded the Head about 10pm, they came up against the ebbing tide from Conwy Bay and their speed dropped still more.

By now, most of the passengers were seasick; children were crying' their mothers were fearful. Some of the men asked the captain to try and get into Conwy harbour.

He refused: a wise choice, it seems, because the ship could never have made it into the shallow harbour at low tide.

Just before midnight, half a dozen miles from Beaumaris, the engine lost power.

The pumps, manned by passengers, soon packed up. Attempts to re-light the boiler failed, and now the vessel was in real trouble; drifting, powerless, pitching and rolling, driven by wind and tide towards a sandbank in the dark.

Now the captain ordered two or three passengers to help him raise a sail. But too late; before they could do anything, the ship grounded on Dutchman's Bank, about two miles from Puffin Island.

Even now, the captain's sang-froid was remarkable. He said: "it's only sand, she will soon float".

As he spoke, the stays holding the funnel parted, and it fell with a crash on desk.

Now, with the cabin filling with water, something like panic reigned. Lord Derby's steward, Mr Tarrey, and his 36-year-old wife Alice (daughter of the landlord of the White Lion in Bury), probably drowned below with their children.

All the passengers who could do so rushed up on desk to find no refuge there.

The ship's boat had dropped off its mountings into the sea some way back. There were no flares aboard, no guns, no way of signalling.

This left only the ship's bell to signal with. Someone began to ring it, but the sound was whipped away by the wind.

Yet the ship was only two miles from dry land -- and ten other vessels were not far away, riding out the storm.

The sea began to pound the ship to bits. Waves broke constantly over the deck, washing whole groups of terrified passengers overboard. Women screamed and clutched their children. A clergyman began to pray.

About 40 survivors cowered on the quarterdeck. The captain and the mate had both vanished.

The survivors clutched at whatever pieces of wreckage were at hand and committed their souls to the Lord.

One of these was the Bury chemist, John Nuttall. Moments before, he had been standing on deck holding the hand of Selina Lamb, 24, chambermaid at the Grey Mare on Bury Market Place.

In a trice, they were overboard, and the girl vanished. Nuttall was luckier. Though a non-swimmer, he managed to scramble back onto the wreck.

Dragging a half-drowned woman out of the sea by her hair, he was astonished to find it was a neighbour, Mary Whittaker.Soon the deck under them broke free and floated away. Nuttall and another survivor seized pieces of wreckage and paddled for shore.

Miss Whittaker tore off her petticoat and waved it as a distress signal. They were saved hours later by Beaumaris life-boat.

Mary's brother Robert Whittaker, a brazier, stripped to his underwear when the ship struck, and threw away 80 gold sovereigns, the weight of which threatened to drown him.

Clinging to a piece of wreckage, he floated about for nine hours. When picked up he thought he had been adrift for days -- and he had gone blind, too, although he recovered later.

But his little boy and his sister's child had both perished. Lawrence Duckworth, shopkeeper, of Edenfield, had climbed on the roof of the cook's cabin and tried to pull his wife Mary, 33, up after him. But she was swept away by a wave.

Soon afterwards, he, too, was swept off into the sea, but managed to climb onto a piece of timber about the size of a door.

He was rescued after eight hours in the water.

And so the long night wore on. It was 4am before anyone noticed the wreck. A lookout at Penmon Point, two miles away saw the remains of the ship on the sandbank.

Within minutes a boat was launched. Picking up what few survivors it could, it made for Beaumaris.

As soon as the alarm was raised in Beaumaris, every boat in the town made all speed to the Dutchman's Bank and began searching for survivors.

Sadly, few were left alive. Many bodies were never found. Some were even washed up 100 miles away.

At the inquest in Beaumaris, the verdict on the dead was "drowned".

The jury later wrote to the coroner, deploring the fact that an unseaworthy ship could put to sea with a drunken captain.

Others said that the Rothsay Castle was a leaky old tub that should never have put to sea.

Over the years, government regulations on sea safety were gradually tightened. Life-jackets, boats, signals, Plimsoll line, radio, all made navigation safer.

None of them made sea travel foolproof, but they made it unlikely that a British ship would ever find itself as helpless as the Rothsay Castle did that night 162 years ago.

One family's memorial

IF YOU cross Rochdale Road from the "Flying Shuttle" and look over the low wall at the side of the United Reformed Church, you will see three gravestones against the wall of the Halfords store.

The nearest one to the road is a memorial to the Walmsley family, who drowned in August 1831, in the wreck of the Rothsay Castle, which took the lives of 100 passengers. Nearly a quarter of those who perished were Bury folk.

The stone has been eroded in recent years by traffic pollution, but the text is in Bury Reference Library:

"In affectionate memory of WILLIAM WALMSLEY aged 29, MARY his wife aged 28 years, HENRY his son aged 5 years and MARGARET, an aunt aged 27 who perished in the wreck of the Rothsay Castle steam packet off Beaumaris during the night of 17 August, 1831. "Thou didst blow with thy wind. The sea covered them...They sank as lead in the mighty waters".

Those who perished

OUT OF 128 people who drowned, 21 were from Bury:

Wm Tarrey, 55, Lord Derby's estate agent.

Alice Tarrey, 36, his third wife and John, 15 months, their son.

Betsy, 13, daughter by his second wife Margaret (daughter of Jos Cass, Birtle).

Thos Appleton, 13, Alice's son by a previous husband.

Mary Appleton, 10, ditto.

Rachel, 16, Tarrey's maid, daughter of Jas Howarth, butcher of Rock St.

Wm Walmsley, 29, dyer, Seedfield, brother of Jas Walmsley, confectioner of Millgate (Bolton St).

Mary Walmsley, 28, his wife, daughter of Samuel Hamer, Bury.

Henry, 5, their son.

Margaret Walmsley, 27, daughter to Wm Walmsley, pot maker, Birtle.

Her fianc. Kas Fitton, 30, farmer, Seedfield. John Wilkinson, 25, joiner, Redvales.

Jas, Whittaker, 8, only child of Robt Whittaker, brazier of Silver St.

Thos Whittaker, 6, son of Robt Whittaker's sister Mary.

Selina Lamb, 24, chambermaid, Grey Mare Inn, Market Place, Bury.

Thos Charles, 35, shoemaker, son of Jas Charles, shoemaker of Millgate (Bolton St).

Betty, 43, wife of John Duckworth, Shuttleworth.

Mary, 33, wife of Lawrence Duckworth, shopkeeper, Edenfield.

Thos, 38, spinner, son of Lawrence Entwistle, Edenfield.

Luckier was John Whitehead, bleacher of Lowercroft, who would have been aboard the Rothsay Castle but for a last-minute change of plan.

 

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

 

1831 (23 Aug) Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal Navigation Railway Company founded

 

1831 (11 Dec) Alfred Barnes, Chairman of Farnworth Local Board: 1863-1867, 1878-80 (Liberal), born in Gladstone Road, Farnworth.               Died 3 Sep 1893.

 

1831 Edmund Ashworth (1800-1881) married Charlotte Christy (d. 1868) of Chelmsford, Essex, the daughter of Thomas Christy, a wealthy Quaker business associate of the Ashworths.

 They had nine children, and lived at Egerton Hall, Turton.

 

1831 The Bolton and Leigh Railway: In 1831 the railway owned three other locomotives, Union built in 1830 by Rothwell, Hick and Rothwell, Bolton, Salamander and Veteran both built by Crook and Dean in Bolton.

 

1831 The original (ground level) Great Moor Street railway station opened.

 

1831 In 1831 Jesse Hartley (1780 – 1860) was appointed to convert the Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal to a railway line. He persuaded the company to keep the canal open and build the railway more or less along its route.

 

1832 (28 Sep) Charles Bell Birch, English sculptor, born in Brixton

Statue of Samuel Taylor Chadwick in Victoria Square, Bolton

Died 16 Oct 1893

 

1832 (13 Oct) John Kynaston Cross, born in Bolton

MP for Bolton 1874-1885 (Liberal)

Died 20 Mar 1887 Heaton, Bolton

 

1832 (14 Dec) UK General Election: Robert Torrens and William Bolling (Tory) became MPs for Bolton Lancashire.

William Bolling held the seat until 1841

 

1832 Bolton Infirmary opened

(> 1996)

 

1832 Entwistle Reservoir was built, its 108 feet high dam being the highest in Britain at that time

 

1832 Turton and Entwistle Reservoir is a water reservoir in the village of Edgworth, Lancashire, England. The reservoir's existence is due to the Entwistle Dam. When constructed in 1832 the Entwistle Dam was the highest in Britain; it rises 108 feet from the base. The reservoir contains almost 750 thousand imperial gallons (roughly 3,400,000 litres) and, with the Wayoh Reservoir just below, satisfies around 50% of Bolton's need for drinking water.                                                                      Entwistle Dam was designed by Thomas Ashworth, a local land surveyor, overseen by Jesse Hartley, the Liverpool Docks engineer. Other works were by Joseph Jackson, an engineer and surveyor from Bolton. It was built for the Commissioners of the Turton and Entwistle Reservoir, a group of local mill owners who obtained an enabling Act of Parliament in 1832 to regulate the supply of water in Bradshaw Brook for water power for the finishing textiles. Records suggest it was built entirely of puddle clay with no distinct core. Earth dams usually have a waterproof cut off under their earthworks designed to stop seepage under the dam but it is doubtful whether there was any such a cut off at Entwistle. The reservoir has a rock-cut outlet tunnel driven through the valley side rather than a culvert or pipeline and a siphon draw-off pipe. The dam is 108 ft high and 110 metres long at the crest. The present overflow channel and valve tower were added by the Bolton Corporation Water Works who took over the reservoir in 1864

​

1832 In 1832 brothers Henry (1794-1880) and Edmund Ashworth bought the partially completed Egerton Mill which had been built upstream at Egerton.

 

1832 At the 1832 general election Bolling was elected Tory Member of Parliament (MP) for Bolton. He held the seat until 1841.

 

1832 Thomas Thwaites (c.1768-1832) of Smalley, Thwaites and Co, Thwaites, Cochrane, Hick and Co and Thwaites, Hick and Rothwell, died at his residence, Rose Hill, near Bolton, age 64. Formerly Borough reeve of Great Bolton

 

c. 1832 James Booth born in Blackburn, Lancashire.

Cotton spinner, chemist and drysalter

Chairman of Turton Local Board 1880-1882

 

1833 (2 Jan) Edmund Ashworth, born at Egerton Hall, Egerton, Turton, Lancashire

Chairman of Turton Local Board 1882-1886

Died 10 May 1901 Holland Villas Road, South Kensington, London.

 

1833 (15 Jan) Isaac Dobson (1767-1833), founder of Dobson and Barlow, died at his residence Gilnow, near Bolton-le-Moors, age 65 years.

 

1833 (Jul)-1834 (Jun) Between July 1833 and June 1834, 21,060 passengers travelled by packet boat from Bolton to Manchester, 21,212 people travelled from Manchester to Bolton, and 20,818 intermediary passengers hopped on and off the boats en route between the two points. 

 

1833 (27 Sep) Samuel Chatwood, founder of The Chatwood Safe Company, born at Edenfield, near Ramsbottom in Lancashire, the son of a wheelwright

Died 1909

 

1833 Thomas Bonsor Crompton built a large cotton mill at Prestolee

 

1833 Benjamin Hick and Sons set up their own manufactory at Soho Foundry, Bolton

 

1833 Rothwell, Hick and Rothwell : Partnership dissolved. '...the Partnership heretofore subsisting between the undersigned, Peter Rothwell, Benjamin Hick, and the Executors of the late Peter Rothwell, deceased, as Iron and Brass-Founders and Engineers, and carried on at the Union Foundry, in Bolton-le-Moors, under the firm of Rothwell, Hick, and Rothwell, was this day dissolved by mutual consent; and that all debts owing to or by the said concern will be received and paid by the undersigned Peter Rothwell, who will in future carry on the said businesses tinder the firm of Rothwell and Co...

 

1834 The Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 allowed parishes to form unions, which would be jointly responsible for the administration and funding of Poor Law in their area.

 

1834 John Tillotson was apprenticed to printer Robert Marsden Holden, who had premises in Mealhouse Lane, Bolton

 

1835 (9 Jan) Peter Ainsworth (born 1790) elected MP for Bolton

 

1835 (30 Sep) Franklin Baker (born 1800) married Mary Crook (1802–1879), daughter of Jeremiah Crook, a Liverpool merchant formerly of Bolton.

There were no children

Another of his daughters married Baker's brother Thomas.

 

1835 (21 Nov) Newspapers: The Bolton Free Press began on 21st November 1835 (sic) published by John Ogle, 7 Market Street, price 7d, ‘for ready money’, but was suspended in 1835 when the following ‘black edged’ advertisement appeared in the Chronicle on 13th October – ‘Died this morning, 31st October 1835 (sic), in Fold Street, for want of sustenance, The Bolton Free Press’. It was published again on 26th February 1836 by John Burrell, 4 Oxford Street followed by several publishers until it ceased on 16th January 1847. It was a strenuous advocate and supporter of the Liberal cause, during the incorporation of the Borough and the subsequent proceedings.

 

1835 (25 Nov) Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-American industrialist, businessman, entrepreneur and a major philanthropist, born in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland, UK.

Bolton is the only town in Britain to have three Carnegie libraries opened on the same day. Carnegie himself personally performed all three ceremonies

Died 11 Aug 1919

 

1835 Turton Tower was sold to James Kay (1774-1857), a local man who had made good through the harnessing of steam power to spinning of flax, and developing the first commercially successful wet-spinning process for flax, in 1825

 

1835 The Municipal Corporations Act

Recognising that the rapid expansion of new industrial towns required urgent action, Parliament passed the Municipal Corporations Act in an attempt to reform local government

 

1835 Greater Bolton most of Little Bolton, and Tonge with Haulgh amalgamated as a Municipal Borough, the second to be created in England, part of Rumworth added 1872, part of Halliwell 1877, Breightmet, Darcy Lever, Great Lever, the rest of Halliwell, Heaton, Lostock, Middle Hulton, the rest of Rumworth which had been renamed Deane (in 1894) Smithills, and Tonge plus Astley Bridge Urban District, and part of Over Hulton in 1898

 

1835 The Wheatsheaf built on the corner of Newport Street and Great Moor Street

 

1836 (25 Oct) Joseph Stott, architect, born in Oldham, the third son of James Stott and Mary Henthorn.

 

1836 Rowland Hall Heaton (born c.1807) had a saw mill in Deansgate, according to the 1836 directory.

 

1836 Rowland Hall Heaton (born c.1807) built a cotton factory, the Parkfield Mill – also known as Solomon’s Temple - in Dawes Street on what is now the site of Morrison’s car park.

 

1836 Robert Aitken Bowes, born

 Became editor of the Bolton Guardian.

 Died 1879

 

1836 Edward Partington, 1st Baron Doverdale (1836 – 1925), English industrialist, born in Bury, Greater Manchester, the son of Edward Partington.                                                                                Died 5 Jan 1925.

 

1836 The first post office in Farnworth opened.

Prior to that post was collected from Bolton

 

1836 Legs of Man on Churchgate first opened

 

1836 The Bolton and Leigh Railway amalgamated with the Kenyon and Leigh Railway.

 

c. 1836 Thomas Hardcastle, born at Bradshaw Hall, Bradshaw, Turton

Bleacher, dyer and calico printer – proprietor of James Hardcastle & Co at Firwood Bleach Works.

Chairman of the Turton Urban District Council 1901-1902

Died 27 Sep 1902 Leicestershire

 

The Lancaster architectural dynasty of Sharpe, Paley and Austin modified its name over the years to reflect the changing partners. From 1836-45 Edmund Sharpe practised alone. In 1845 Edward Graham Paley - Sharpe's student - became his partner, and they worked together for six years. From 1851, following Sharpe's retirement, Paley worked alone until 1868, when was joined by Hubert James Austin. The fertile partnership of Paley & Austin flourished until 1886 when they were joined by Paley's son, Henry (Harry) Anderson Paley. On E.G. Paley's death in 1895 the firm became Austin & Paley, and continued as such until 1914 when Austin's son Geoffrey joined them. H.J Austin's death in 1915, and the departure of Geoffrey from the practice the same year, left Harry Paley to carry on alone until his retirement in 1936. The name Austin & Paley was used throughout this time, and continued until the firm's closure in c.1944.

 

1837 (1 Feb) Bolton Poor Law Union was formed.

 

1837 (12 Feb) Thomas Moran, American painter and printmaker, born in Bolton

Died Aug 25 1926.

 

1837 (15 Jul) The Bolton and Preston Railway (B&PR) obtained an Act of Parliament on 15 July 1837 to build a line between Bolton and Preston via Chorley.

 

1837 (19 Aug) Charles James Darbishire presided over the establishment of the Bolton Reform Club

​

1837 Joshua Porritt (1837-1916), born in Bolton Lancashire, England.      Died 7 Oct 1916.

 

1837 Lostock joined with other townships (or civil parishes) in the area to form the Bolton Poor Law Union and took joint responsibility for the administration and funding of the Poor Law in that area

 

1837 The Bolton Poor Law Union was established in 1837 under the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 and was administered a the Board of Guardians. It took responsibility for the administration and funding of the Poor Law in Little Lever and neighbouring townships and chapelries.

​

1837 In 1837 Benjamin Hick (1790-1842) was, among other local figures including Thomas Ridgway (1778–1839), Edward Bolling, John Hargreaves elder (1780–1860) and Jr, a member of the Provisional Committee of the Bolton and Preston Railway.                                        

1837 Two cotton-spinning and doubling mills were opened at Barrow Bridge.

Dean Mills stood six storeys high

 

1837 Queen Victoria accession to the throne

 

1837 Eagley Cricket Club formed.                                                      The club was established and the owners of the Mills allow the club, then known as Eagley Bridge Cricket Club, to use the ground which the club has occupied ever since. Friendly matches were organised with other clubs near and far. Then, the duration of the match was two innings each side and 50 runs per inns was considered a decent score.

 

1837-1847 Race meetings were held at Horwich Moor between 1837 and 1847

 

1837 Jonas James Bradshaw, architect, born

Designed Watermillock 1880-1886

Died 1912

 

1837 James Black (born 1788/1789) published in the Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association a paper entitled ‘A medico-topographical, geological, and statistical sketch of Bolton and its neighbourhood’

 

1837-1901 During Queen Victoria’s 64-year reign approximately 1,100 judicial hangings were carried out in Great Britain and Ireland.

 

1838 (10 Mar) On 10 March 1838 Joshua Jebb (born 1793) had been appointed by the Lord President of the council to hold inquiries on the grants of charters of incorporation to Bolton and Sheffield

 

1838 (29 May) The Manchester, Bolton and Bury Railway (MB&BR) coming up from Salford  opened on 29 May 1838.

 

1838 (24 Jun) Thomas Rushton, solicitor and banker, died at The Height, Manchester Road, Bolton, Lancashire

A co-founder of Hardcastle, Cross & Co – Bolton’s first commercial bank

 

1838 (11 Oct) Bolton granted a Borough Charter

 

1838 (9 Nov) George Henderson, a Scottish merchant walking over Winter Hill from Bolton to Blackburn, was murdered by gunshot

James Miller, a 22-year-old collier from Belmont, was brought to court and found guilty. However, he was found not guilty at a second trial at Lancaster

There is an iron post with a plaque in memory of the victim erected in 1912- known as Scotsman’s Stump, which is opposite the television station.

 

1838 The Bolton to Salford railway opened in 1838 to carry coal.

 

1838 Charles James Darbishire became the first Mayor of Bolton

 

1838 Emmanuel Church built.

 

1838 In 1838 the Royal George Mill burnt down

 

1838 Nelson Square health office – from this date some patients were given beds in an emergency but some time after this about sixty beds were provided

 

1838 Civil engineer Alexander J Adie took James Brunlees (1816-1892) on as his pupil and assistant on the Bolton and Preston Railway line

 

1838 Trinity Street station opened when the Manchester and Bolton Railway completed its route to Salford Central.

 

1838 An estimated 8, 621 were working in the cotton trade

 

1838 A group of Liberal reformist businessmen including, among others, the future first and second Mayors of Bolton, Charles James Darbishire and Robert Heywood and brothers Henry and Edmund Ashworth successfully petitioned for Bolton to become only the second town in England (Devonport was the first) to be granted a Borough Charter under the new Act

 

1838 Incorporation of Bolton as a Borough

 

1838 Thomas Rushton died

A founding partner in the Bolton Bank

Succeeded as partner by his son, Thomas Lever Rushton

 

1838 The first iron foundry in Farnworth.

 

1839 Robert Heywood became the second Mayor of Bolton

 

1839 (15 Feb) Benjamin Dobson (1786-1839), machine maker and iron founder, died at his residence, near Bolton.

 

1839 (10 Jul) On Monday 10 July 1839, some of the town’s constables visited the The Flying Horse pub along with the Mayor of Bolton. This was probably Robert Heywood, local businessman and reformer who gifted part of his estate to form ‘Bobby Heywood’s park’ and who was the second Mayor Of Bolton in 1839-40.

Unfortunately, the welcome Mayor Heywood and the constables received in the Flying Horse was not a warm one.

As one of the constables stated in his report: “While in the Flying Horse at 10 o’clock the Landlord became very abusive and threatened to take the poker to the Mayor and myself, calling us spies.”

 

1839 (13 Aug) The Chartist Riots

Crowds of people paraded the streets of Bolton led by George Lloyd and John Warden. A company of grenadiers protected Hick’s Foundry and Ormerod and Hardcastle’s Mill. Bells were rung at the Parish Church, signalling that Special Constables had been sworn in, the Riot Act was read at 4pm

As Mayor Charles J Darbishire acted with firmness and restraint, arriving with a contingent of soldiers to rescue 23 special constables who were besieged by the mob at Little Bolton Town Hall and achieving his objective without bloodshed

 

1839 (16 Aug) The Chartists, workless people who banded together to secure rights of government, rioted in the town.

The Parish Church was occupied causing considerable damage They also went on to attack the Police Office at the former Little Bolton town hall where the mob leader was imprisoned after his arrest, using a lamp post as a battering ram forced entry to the building, and further damage stopped only when a troop of Grenadiers from the 96th Foot Regiment arrived to disperse the rioters.

 

1839 (Nov) There was a dinner in Bolton in honour of Abraham Paulton, who had just returned from an unsuccessful Anti-Corn Law tour in Scotland. Among the speakers were Cobden and Bright, and the dinner is memorable as the first occasion on which the two future leaders appeared together on a Free Trade platform. Bright is described by the historian of the League as "a young man then appearing for the first time in any meeting out of his own town, and giving evidence, by his energy and by his grasp of the subject, of his capacity soon to take a leading part in the great agitation."

 

By 1839 By 1839 200,000 children worked in Manchester’s cotton mills.

 

1839 William Carpenter (born 1797) was elected to represent Bolton at the first Chartist convention of 1839, where he attacked Feargus O'Connor's extreme political rhetoric and opposed proposals for a general strike

 

1839 Thomas Hardcastle died

A founding partner in the Bolton Bank.

​

1839 Thomas Hampson (1839 – 1918), English author and local historian, born in Horwich, the youngest child of Henry and Mary Hampson.                                                                                  Died 25 Nov 1918

​

1839 John Musgrave & Sons was a company that manufactured stationary steam engines. It was founded in 1839 by John Musgrave and his son, Joseph, at the Globe Ironworks, in Bolton.

 

​

​