Farnworth Grammar School

A Brief History of Farnworth

Transcribed from the 1950 Summer Term Lumen, lent by Ron Hodson

"JUSTE NEC TIMIDE"

H. JACK, U.V.B.

At first sight, Farnworth and the surrounding district appears to have little or no historical interest, yet there is quite a large quantity of not so obvious material, some of which has been of no small importance in the story of our country as a whole.

Situated, as it is, on boulder clay, there are rocks to be found, all over the area, bearing striations received when carried down by glaciers, from places as far away as Scotland, during one of the ice ages.

Probably the earliest sign of man in the neighbourhood is the Druidical circle on Turton Heights, while many traces of the Stone Age have been found in Bolton, which can now be seen in Bolton Museum. A Roman station known as Coccium or Occium existed on the A6 road at Blackrod, but its precise location is not certain.

To bring us up to the Middle Ages, we must turn to the documents kept in the County Records Office, at Preston. One of these goes as far back as the twelfth century, mentioning Farnworth and Kearsley as "Farnewurd" and "Cherselawa."

What was once the finest example of a Tudor building in Lancashire, Kenyon Peel Old Hall, can still be seen at Little Hulton, though it is now in rather decrepit condition.

Another old hall was Birch Hall, which formerly stood on the site now occupied by the garage across from Farnworth Grammar School. This was notable for being the first building in the locality to have been built of bricks, and for being, in 1651, the last place the seventh Earl of Derby ever slept in — he was beheaded at Bolton the following day.

With the coming of the Industrial Revolution, Farnworth began to exist as a town, and in the 1760's the Duke of Bridgewater opened his "Coal Pitts" on the Farnworth Moor, connected by an underground waterway to his canal at Worsley.

To connect Manchester with the new cotton factories and coal pits at Bolton, the Manchester and Bolton Canal was built by Robert Fulton, the engineer who built the " Clermont," the first successful steamboat in America, and whose six locks at Prestolee are still to be seen, though unused for twenty years.

The inventions of Samuel Crompton of Hall-i'th'-Wood and Richard Arkwright — who owned a barber's shop in Deansgate, Bolton — helped to raise Farnworth's importance a great deal, for when the first cotton mill was opened here in 1828, the population rose rapidly, and that of the neighbouring agricultural villages of Middle Hulton, Over Hulton and (to a less extent) Little Hulton, fell accordingly.

It would be interesting to some people to know that the Bolton and Leigh Railway (which pre-dated even the Liverpool and Manchester line) exists within easy walking distance of Farnworth, and that over this (one of George Stephenson's lines) ran the classic locomotives "Sanspareil" and "Rocket," even into what is now the cemetery-like Great Moor Street Station. The Manchester-Bolton line closely followed, being opened in 1838.

The Industrial Revolution was by now in full spate, and many of Farnworth's early historical associations were obliterated under a mad race for wealth from the new cotton mills. Rows of slums were built — many still with us — and huge, ugly factories were erected to dominate the landscape, and belch forth pollution into the atmosphere.

The river Irwell, which had, in the 1830's been compared with the Wye valley, and which was renowned for its fish, is now little less than an open sewer. In a book of 1832, the writer says (of Kearsley): "The gentle Irwell wends its way immediately beneath us ... and nature in all her loveliness here triumphs."

The Farnworth district has certainly seen many changes.

The once rural village, whose inhabitants lived on potatoes and beer, and whose only amusement was in the alehouses, has been transformed in a mere century into a municipal borough of at least thirty thousand inhabitants.

It will be seen from the above that even within a very small area, there are quite a few noteworthy things, but if we go as far as ten miles away, there is the first co-operative society, the homes of Fitzgerald (translator of "Omar Khayyam"), of John Byrom (writer of " Christians Awake ") and of Dr. J. P. Joule and Dr. John Dalton, the world-famous scientists, and very many others.