In 1854 Manchester was awarded the sobriquet ‘Cottonopolis’. The northern city accommodated early spinning mills in the Ancoats district and had become the administrative centre of the cotton trade, with warehousing and distribution facilities close to the city centre. According to one authority, “Manchester had developed into a centre of international importance, recognised as the world’s first truly industrial city.” (The Textile Mills of Lancashire, Oxford Archaeology North, 2017) The completion of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway in 1830 ensured Manchester’s premium position in the cotton textile business, later followed by the Manchester & Leeds Railway, whose first timetable was issued in 1841.
Between 1780 and 1820 canals had served the Lancashire cotton industry with a reliable form of transport. By 1845 railways had usurped canals, each town by then having a railway connection with Cottonopolis and with neighbouring towns.
Manchester occupied part of a topographical feature, the Manchester Embayment, this being the tract of lowland bordered in the east by the Pennine Hills and to the north by the Rossendale Fells. This area of lowland was drained by the Rivers Irwell, Irk, Croal, Roach, Medlock and Tame, with the Lancashire Coalfield lying beneath.
To the north of Manchester lay a string of towns which had a strong link with the city: Bolton, Bury, Heywood, Rochdale and Oldham; to the east of the city lay Ashton-under-Lyne. An infilling of minor towns and districts formed a continuous urban landscape known as the Manchester Conurbation.
The large number of spinning mills formed an iconic urban landscape. The author recalls enjoying a panoramic view of Shaw, a township between Oldham and Rochdale. Shaw in the 1950s was dominated by a forest of mill chimneys. The typical post-1880 spinning mill comprised an oblong, brick-built three or four-storeyed edifice, with an engine house attached and a brick chimney overlooking a lodge or reservoir. It was not unusual for weaving sheds working alongside the spinning process in a separate shed.
Lying to the north of the Rossendale Fells were the dominant cotton weaving towns of Blackburn, Burnley and Accrington along with the smaller townships and districts of Padiham, Oswaldtwistle and Church, Great Harwood and Rishton. In the cotton weaving areas, the same industrial landscape existed amidst a grid of terraced houses. The typical weaving mill was a single-storey building with a saw tooth roof of north-light glazing. As a rough guide, stone was the main building material. The older mills had square tapered chimneys; those built in the late nineteenth century had octagonal and circular chimneys. Some degree of overlap occurred in Rossendale, where cotton spinning rubbed shoulders with weaving in towns such as Haslingden, Rawtenstall and Bacup.
Closely linked with the spinning were the boilermakers, manufacturers of mill machinery, makers of bobbins, weaving tools, shuttles, calenders etc. There were also firms involved in dyeing, bleaching, finishing and printing.
This article focuses on the stations of the small towns and districts that also lay in the Lancashire cotton textile area; the large towns (Bolton, Heywood, Bury, Oldham and Ashton-under-Lyne) are eschewed. The historical evolution of each station is traced and news reports concerning any one station are included. No attempt is made to be fully inclusive of all such towns and districts: to do so would test the patience of the readership of Backtrack.
The structure of the article follows four categories: 1- a survey of selected urban districts in south east Lancashire, 2 - a survey of two selected urban districts in north east
