Lancashire | Archive | 2001 | July | 24
From the Bolton Evening News, first published Tuesday 24th Jul 2001.
SOME claim that Bolton was referred to in Domesday Book; others that there is no solid ground for such a claim.
In fact there is no mystery. It doesn't. But that is immaterial; the small settlement upon the widespread moors many centuries ago developed into the town we know today.
Yet over the years, a number of ancient relics, pointing to some kind of very early occupation, have been found; a Bronze Age Circle at Turton Heights, for example, possibly used later by Druids (although in 1871 several of the stones were 'most pitiably mutilated by some members of a picnic party'). The Saxons and early Normans also left traces of their handicraft.
The town has also had many names throughout the centuries, including Bodeltun, Botheltun, Bodeltown, Bothel-tun-le-Moors, Bowelton, Boulton, Bolton-super-Moras, Bol-ton-in-ye-Moors, and Bolton-le-Moors (to distinguish it from others such as Bolton-le-Sands, and describing its situation as among the surrounding moorlands, formerly wild, almost uninhabited, and infested with wolves and wild boars).
But the bedrock of local history was the rebellion of the Montgomery family against Henry I, whereby Roger of Poitou lost the Manor of Bolton which he had received from William the Conqueror as part of land between the Ribble and the Mersey involving 188 manors, one of them Bolton. Over the years the Manor came into the possession of the Ferrers, first line of the Earls of Derby.
Bolton owed its first charter for a weekly market and yearly fair to the second Earl of this line, granted by Henry III at Windsor on 14 December 1251.
Though Earls of Derby -- first the Ferrers, then the Stanleys -- held the Manor of Bolton at successive periods until well into the 19th century, their ownership was not continuous, and the Manor changed control many times.
Robert de Ferrers lost it through his support of Simon de Montfort, but it soon came back, and was held by the Earls until the ancient family of Pilkington secured it by marriage. It remained with that family until after Bosworth Field in 1485 when Henry VII granted the lands to Lord Stanley, Earl of Derby, for loyalty. (Those were the days, of course, when, if you looked after the King, he looked after you.)
No wonder, then, that the family rallied round his son Henry VIII in the attack on James IV of Scotland; Sir Edward Stanley took a strong contingent of 'lustie ladds' from Bolton to help him to victory at Flodden Field in 1513. This was, though, the last conspicuous example of feudalism; the territorial history of Bolton then became secondary to the trading importance of the place.
Nearly 300 years earlier there had been a growing woollen-cloth trade in the parish; a cloth measurer had been appointed in the reign of Richard Coeur de Lion; then in about 1337 some of the Flemish weavers 'invited' to this country by Edward III, after he had laid futile claim to the French throne and the Flemings (vassals to the French crown) offered support, settled in Bolton, bringing with them clogs, which, centuries later, became so important to the townspeople (indeed, it is said that clogs were introduced into this country through Bolton, and developed here). The weavers also brought 'Jannock', a form of coarse bread/oatcake eaten in the area until the last century; it used to be a dialect word for 'good' or 'gradely'.
By the time of the Civil War, the area was recognised as having cotton yarns and goods for its staple trade. Yet Bolton, though steadily growing, was neither large nor famous. When the Long Parliament assembled in 1640, the Manor of Great Bolton was of fewer than 800 people.
However, by 1801 Bolton had 17,416 inhabitants, and the 1911 census showed nearly 181,000. Nowadays, since the Bolton Metropolitan Borough was formed in 1974, the population is about 260,000.
It is only during the last three centuries or so that the history has been well chronicled, and so it is at that period that I mainly look.
This information is provided courtesy of the BEN's Les Gent, who provides our daily Lookin Back stories
© Newsquest Media Group 2008