Westhoughton

Westhoughton
Lancashire
Westhoughton Town Hall, built 1903
Location
Grid reference:	SD6505
Location:	53°32’53"N, 2°31’44"W
Data
Population:	23,056  (2001)
Post town:	Bolton
Postcode:	BL5
Dialling code:	01942
Local Government
Council:	Bolton
Parliamentary constituency:	Bolton West
Website:	Westhoughton Online

Westhoughton is a town in Lancashire, 4 miles southwest of Bolton. Westhoughton was once a centre for mining, cotton-spinning and textile manufacture. However, today it is predominantly a residential town with a total population of 23,056 measured in 2001.

As well as the central area, Westhoughton incorporates several former villages and hamlets which have their own distinctive character, sports traditions and amenities including railway stations. They include Wingates (famous for the Wingates Brass Band), White Horse, Over Hulton, Four Gates (or Fourgates), Chequerbent (which was all but destroyed by the building of the motorway), Hunger Hill, Snydale, Hart Common, Marsh Brook, Daisy Hill and Dobb Brow.

Name

The name Westhoughton is derived from the Old English, halh (modern dialect "haugh") for a nook or corner of land, and tun for a farmstead or village, so "West corner farm".

The name has been spelt various ways, often the "West-" affix was omitted. In 1210 it was spelt as Halcton, 1240 as Westhalcton, 1292 as Westhalghton, 1302 as Westhalton, and in the 16th century as Westhaughton and Westhoughton.

The people of Westhoughton are known as "Howfeners" or "Keawyeds" (cow heads) or a combination of the two "Keawyedners", and the town is known as "Keawyed City". Folklore describes a farmer who found his cow with its head stuck in a five barred gate, and, rather than damage the gate, cut the cow's head off, as the cow cost less than the gate.

History

Banastre Rebellion

In 1315 a group of men led by Sir William Bradshaigh of Haigh Hall, Sir Henry Lea of Charnock Richard and Sir Adam Banastre met at Wingates to plan a campaign of violence against Sir Robert de Holland of Upholland, chief retainer of the powerful Earl of Lancaster. The campaign came to be known as the Banastre Rebellion and ended with the deaths of most the main parties concerned.

Civil War

In 1642 during the Civil War, a battle was fought on Westhoughton Common between Lord Derby's Cavalier forces and Parliamentarians. It is believed that Prince Rupert of the Rhine gathered his troops in Westhoughton before the attack and ensuing massacre at Bolton in 1644. The street named Whitsundale is the site of the Battle of Warcock Hill. Civil War activity is known to have occurred around the site of Hunger Hill. A sword claimed to be from the time of the Civil War was discovered in the garden of one of the cottages at Pocket Nook in Chew Moor during the 1950s.

Industrial Revolution

On 25 March 1812 a group of Luddites burned Rowe and Dunscough's Westhoughton Mill, in one of the first terrorist acts in Britain. Twelve people were arrested on the orders of William Hulton, the High Sheriff of Lancashire. James Smith, Thomas Kerfoot, John (or Job) Fletcher and Abraham Charlston, were sentenced to death for their part in the attack. The Charlston family claimed Abraham was only twelve years old but he was not reprieved. They were publicly hanged outside Lancaster Castle on 13 June 1812. It was reported that Abraham cried for his mother on the scaffold. By this time, however, hanging of those under 18 was rare and of those under 16, in practice, abolished. The others were transported to Australia.

The original Pretoria Pit Memorial

The family of William Hulton of Hulton Park had many small collieries from the 16th century. After 1828 the pits at Chequerbent were served by the Bolton and Leigh Railway. The Hulton Colliery Company sank Chequerbent Colliery in 1892 and Bank Pit Nos 1–4 between 1897 and 1901. They mined the Trencherbone, Plodder and Arley seams. Bank Pit No 3, known as the Pretoria Pit, was the site of one of the worst coal-mining disasters when on 21 December 1910, 344 men and boys died in an explosion of firedamp. The Pretoria Pit Disaster was the third worst in British mining history, after the 1866 Barnsley Oaks Disaster in Yorkshire, and the 1913 Senghenydd Colliery Disaster in Glamorgan.

In 1896 the Wigan Coal and Iron Company's Eatock Pits employed 484 underground and 89 surface workers whilst the Hewlett Pits, at Hart Common, employed 981 underground and 182 on the surface.

Churches

The parish church of St. Bartholomew

The parish church of Saint Bartholomew was completed in 1870. Its east window depicted the Twelve Apostles. On the Wednesday before Advent Sunday, 28 November 1990, the church was gutted by fire, but the tower was saved. A new church designed by architects Dane, Ashworth & Cottam was built by Laing North with Bradshaw Gass & Hope as project managers and structural engineers. It cost about £1 million. After the fire services transferred to the Parochial School. The church bought the town's redundant telephone exchange, now the Parish Hall, as a temporary worship centre until the new church opened.

The new church was consecrated on 28 October 1995. A procession from the top of Wingates into the church grounds preceded the Right Reverend Christopher Mayfield, Bishop of Manchester, entering and blessing the doorway. Nicholsons of Malvern built a new two manual organ for the church. It has 1,256 pipes, ranging from 1/2 inch to 16 feet. The pipes are made of tin, spotted metal (an alloy of lead and tin) and hammered lead.

John Wesley, the co-founder of the Methodist church, preached a sermon at Barnaby's Farm at Wingates in April 1784. The spot is marked by a plaque. Houses cover the site where Wesley stood, but the stone from which he preached stands outside the old Grove Lane Chapel, now Westhoughton Methodist Church's Church Hall, Wigan Road.

Services were held in the cottages opposite the farm, which became known as Methody Row before the first Methodist church was built in 1835 and the Methodist Church in Dixon Street in 1871. The Wingates Band began as the church's drum and fife band, part of the temperance movement. The final service was held there (by then the Independent Methodist Church) on 6 May 2001 and it was subsequently demolished. Daisy Hill Methodist Church was closed and demolished in the late 1980s. The remaining Methodist church is located on Wigan Road at its junction with Grove Lane, now truncated and turned into the church car park.

The industrial north west was a focus for non-conformism, and until the 1990s there was a Church of the Nazarene in Church Street, now replaced by a block of flats named 'Nazarene Court, a Quaker Meeting House on Wigan Road, now a Christian fellowship, and a Tin tabernacle off Bolton Road. There is a Pentecostal church on Bolton Road and a large United Reform Church (The Bethel) on the remaining stub of the old Leigh Road.

Following the move to St. George's, The Hoskers, The old Hart Common Church and School was sold on and remains as Hart Common Church in the capable hands of the Hindley Christian Fellowship.

Geography

Westhoughton covers an area of 4,341 acres and has an average breadth of over 2 miles from north-east to south-west, and an extreme length of nearly 3.5 miles from northwest to south-east. The highest ground at over 480 feet is to the north east with the land sloping downwards to the south-west. The lowest point at about 120 feet is in the extreme southerly corner. Borsdane Brook separates the township from Aspull, another brook divides it from Hindley joining a stream which rises on the northern edge of Westhoughton and flows south through Leigh to Glazebrook.

There are three Local Nature Reserves at Hall Lee Bank Park, Cunningham Clough, and Eatock Lodge at Daisy Hill.

Local landmarks

Pretoria Pit Disaster memorial

The former Snydle water tower, built by Westhoughton Council in 1914, is now converted to a private dwelling that is visible from the M61 motorway.

A memorial, in the Ditchfield Gardens in Market Street, to the miners killed in the 1910 Pretoria Pit Disaster, was unveiled in 2010.

Media

Westhoughton Library, Library Street

The Horwich and Westhoughton Journal was published (by The Bolton News) from 1925 until 1980

The town's Carnegie library is at the rear of the Town Hall. Its Carnegie Hall is used for meetings and other activities. A small museum has exhibits that relate to the Pretoria Pit Disaster.

Outside links

• Westhoughton Online
• SWAN (Save Westhoughton Act Now)
• Westhoughton Liberal Democrats
• Parish of Westhoughton
• More information and photos of Westhoughton
• Pretoria Disaster grave photos