Wheelton: “A Modest Manufacturing Village near Chorley”

When we think of English villages, we tend to think of leafy clusters of thatched and timber-framed cottages surrounding a quiet green, looked over by a 13^th century church and perhaps a Tudor manor house. The villagers would in ancient times have worked on the local farms. Such villages do exist in Lancashire, however, much more common are the somewhat less picturesque villages that were founded during the Industrial Revolution and which owe their existence to manufacturing. In this article I will look around Wheelton, a small, self-contained industrial village between Chorley and Blackburn which developed in the mid-19^th century around a cotton mill, offering it as a classic example of this kind of community.

The Creation of Wheelton Village

The township of Wheelton is an area of rolling, grassy hills in central Lancashire, on the far western edge of the Pennines. Along with its neighbouring township of Heapey, it was sparsely populated prior to the 19^th century. Part of the lands belonging to the owners of Hoghton Tower, it contained no sizeable settlement or manor house, but was dotted with small, old farms that mostly reared sheep and scattered cottages in little hamlets known as “folds”. There was no church in the township, the nearest being in Heapey.

Into this unpromising area came Penwortham-born Peter Todd, with his wife and young children. By 1851, aged 35, he owned a business manufacturing “gold thread and British gum”, but he was setting his sights higher and in 1859 he opened Victoria Mill, a cotton spinning and weaving mill on a greenfield site on the border of Wheelton and Heapey. Within two years his mill had 315 employees and continued in operation for a hundred years. Although “Peter Todd’s” has long been demolished, its legacy is the neat little village of Wheelton.

Victoria Mill: Peter Todd’s

The earliest cotton mills were established in the late 18^th century in country locations, near to the fast flowing rivers needed to turn the water wheels that provided power. As steam replaced water power in the early 19^th century, new mills were more likely to be built in towns, to take advantage of the pool of workers and better transport links. However, mills like Peter Todd’s continued to be built in rural locations throughout the 19^th century.

It is sometimes thought that the cotton-masters of the industrial revolution mainly rose from the ranks of the workers and were non-conformist in religion. In fact, the majority, like Peter Todd, came from business backgrounds and were members of the Church of England. Peter Todd’s brother also became a mill-owner, employing over 200 workers.

Peter Todd chose the site for his mill carefully. It was situated on the Chorley to Blackburn turnpike road (later the A674) and the Leeds-Liverpool canal ran nearby, allowing for coal to be supplied for the mill’s steam engine (the railway did not reach the area until the Chorley to Blackburn line opened in 1869 and the nearest station was two miles away at Heapey). There was a stream, the Kenyon Brook, which provided adequate water. Although the nearest thing to a village in the area was a mile or so away at Wheelton Stocks, there was some infrastructure adjacent to the mill, including a coaching inn, the Red Lion, and a smithy. There was also the beginnings of a workforce, as the district was home to a colony of handloom weavers, living and working in purpose-built dwellings that included a loomshop. 

A classic example of a handloom weaver's cottage in the centre of Wheelton village, with the loomshop in the basement. It would have predated the development of the village, probably being built in the late 1700s

The majority of cotton mills specialised in one aspect of textile production, either spinning, weaving or ‘finishing’ (bleaching, dyeing and printing cloth). However around a third of mills, like Victoria Mill, carried out both spinning and weaving. Mechanised weaving was relatively new at the time; while mechanical looms had been around since the late 18^th century, it was only recently that they had become efficient and reliable enough for large-scale production. By 1891 the mill contained 30,000 spindles and 1,090 looms, making it medium sized compared with others in the area.

The handloom weavers of Wheelton would not have been happy about the advent of a mechanised weaving mill in the area as it spelled the end of their trade. Some gained work at the mill, but often on reduced wages and with less comfortable working conditions. For example, James Parkinson and his wife and daughter were born and raised in Wheelton and in 1851 were living in a cottage by the turnpike road and working as handloom weavers. By 1861, however they were power loom weavers in the mill and twenty years later James, now aged 67 was still working there as a ‘twister’, a more sedentary  job that he probably had to take because of his advancing age.

Old meets new in Wheelton Village. In the background are late 18th century handloom weavers cottages (known as Old Size Cottages). By repute, Peter Todd lived there when he first came to Wheelton. In the foreground are the 'new' cottages of Albert Street, built by Peter Todd to house mill workers.

Wheelton Village

Like many other cotton-masters who established themselves in rural areas, Peter Todd created a village to house his workers. Villages attached to mills served a number of purposes. First and foremost, they attracted workers to the area. Secondly, they allowed cotton-masters to ‘play the Squire’, a role that Peter Todd enjoyed. Thirdly, they let cotton-masters show their paternalistic and philanthropic sides, through providing amenities and means of improvement for their workers. Finally, they ensured that the workers were kept under observation and control and gave them little excuse for being late for their punishingly long shifts.

The development of Wheelton village required constructing two new roads, Meadow Street and Mill Street, lined with terraces of ‘two up, two down’ workers’ cottages. New cottages were also built along Blackburn Road and the road to Brinscall, renamed Victoria Street. While some Wheelton-born people rented these cottages, most original occupiers were ‘incomers’. Meadow Street and Mill Street were largely occupied by youngish families who had moved in from neighbouring districts, such as Whittle-le-Woods, Chorley and Leyland. Often they brought young families with them and it is likely that many had been working in mills in their home districts. As an example, in 1871 James Hodges, his wife Alice and their three children were living in Meadow Street. James and Alice, both power loom weavers, had been born in Croston, as had their elder two children, while the youngest was born in Wheelton. Their children were listed in the census return as “scholars”. It was conventional for children under the age of 12 to be recorded thus, but other sources indicate that over 100 children were employed at Victoria Mill in the years prior to the introduction of compulsory schooling in 1872. When the Todd family sold the mill in the 1920s, the estate included a total of 120 cottages, rented to workers.

The straight lines and trim "two-up-two-down" terraced cottages mark Meadow Street out as a 19th century addition to the village

In the 1880s the little lane that ran from the turnpike down to the canal was abandoned and Kenyon Lane built across the hillside. This road became lined with ‘villas’, more upmarket houses for those of higher income. Some were occupied by local people who had done well at the mill. For example, William Standish was born in 1871 in Rye Bank cottages (on the old Blackburn road). In 1891, aged 20 he was living in two rooms in a shared cottage in Mill Street with his wife Emily and young son Herbert and worked at the mill as a weaver. Ten years later in 1901, however, he was an overseer at the mill and the family had moved to one of the new villas in Kenyon Lane. They were still there in 1911, William now Weaving Manager.

Bridge Street today leads nowhere, but prior to the 1880s it led to a bridge over the Kenyon Brook and down to the Leeds & Liverpool canal at Copthurst Lane. It was abandoned when Kenyon Lane was constructed some yards to the north.

These classy semis in Kenyon Lane were built in the 1890s. Such "villas" were largely occupied by better off families, including overseers at the mill and the headmaster of the village school

Peter Todd built for himself and his family the manor house that Wheelton had previously lacked (though he modestly described himself in the 1871 census as a “Cotton Spinner”). Prospect House was sited on the hillside to the north of the village, above the turnpike road, far enough to muffle the drone of the mill machinery but close enough to keep an eye on the workforce. It was well apportioned, with three reception rooms, five bedrooms, its own farm and nine acres of land. Grooms, coachmen and domestic servants lived in adjacent cottages. Lavish parties would be held on notable family occasions, with the workers invited to join the festivities. Peter Todd himself died in 1874, aged 58, but his family kept ownership of the mill until 1922, when it was sold to another local firm, Joshua Hoyle and Co. Peter Todd’s grandson, J.P.T. Jackson, was manager for many years prior to the sale and lived in Prospect House until his death in 1945.

The paternalistic side of the Todd family showed itself in their promotion of amenities and fostering a community spirit in the village. A correspondent to the Preston Herald in December 1890 wrote approvingly of the atmosphere of what he called “a modest manufacturing village near Chorley”:

“Here we see efficient institutions well conducted, with considerable attendance thereat – Sunday and day schools, Men’s Reading and Amusement Rooms, a Free Library well stocked with papers and books for healthy reading, a Young Women’s Christian Association, the Church of England Temperance Society, with which is allied the Band of Hope, and in order to give further pleasure, an efficient fife and drum band, a string band, and cricket and football clubs, all in excellent order and enjoyed much by all classes, and consequently with considerable success”.

Needless to say, community relations were not always so idyllic. The mill workers went on strike in 1874 in protest at reduced working hours. The management discouraged union membership and in 1901 a number of ‘twisters’ were dismissed for joining a union. Workers could also be dismissed for refusing to live in Wheelton village. Another strike among weavers in 1928 was triggered by a dispute over compensation for sub-standard yarn (as the weavers were paid piece-work, poor yarn could cost them money through delays in production caused by excessive breakages). Small-scale crime and domestic strife also occurred and in a lurid case in 1903, the wife of the landlord of the nearby Golden Lion Inn was found stabbed and battered to death. While all the circumstantial evidence pointed to her husband as the murderer, at his trial the judge ruled that there was no definitive evidence against him and he was acquitted. Peter Todd himself was no stranger to controversy, waging a bitter row with the Vicar of the local parish church at Heapey. In 1868 Peter and his followers (unsurprisingly these were mainly his employees) broke away from the Church of England and established the “Free Church of England” in Wheelton village, building their own chapel, dedicated to St. Paul.

20^th Century Decline

The Lancashire cotton industry began to decline from the late 19^th century, due to competition from other countries that had lower wage costs or higher productivity through investment in more modern machinery. By the 1940s Victoria Mill, like many other Lancashire mills, was manufacturing fabric from artificial fibres such as rayon. The proud independent firms such as Peter Todd and Co. had long been amalgamated into large concerns designed to compete with foreign imports through economies of scale. All was in vain however and Victoria Mill closed in 1960. Some years later the buildings were demolished and a rather severe housing estate built on the site.

Prospect House has also gone. Following the death of J.P.T. Jackson (by then Sir John) in 1945, the house went through many years of neglect before being demolished in 1975 and replaced by a modern bungalow. Other village amenities have disappeared; the village school has long closed down, though the building is now the village hall, and the number of pubs has reduced from three to one. Following Peter Todd’s death the ‘Free Church of England’ was re-assimilated into the Church of England and St. Paul’s church became a curacy of Heapey parish, but it too has now been demolished.

A graphic illustration of how Wheelton has become an economic backwater can be found in its by-pass, built in the 1960s following subsidence of the former turnpike, which now takes the A674 Chorley to Blackburn road away from the centre of the village. I cannot tell how many of the clubs and societies that existed in 1890 are still going, but I suspect few, if any. Wheelton, like many surrounding districts, is now essentially a dormitory for people working in such places as Preston and Manchester, or a haven for those who have retired.

The years when Wheelton was the ‘family village’ of the Todd and Jackson families are long gone and most signs of their presence have been swept away. Wheelton is a quiet, pleasant and atmospheric place, the neat terraced houses the main reminders of its busy past. The days are gone when, as the Preston Herald’s correspondent put it, “the pattern of Wheelton and its practical works and pleasures might with advantage be emulated in every manufacturing village in the county”.

Sources Used

Articles from local newspapers, available at The British Newspaper Archive.

Census returns available at UK Census Online

Historic Ordnance Survey maps available at Old Maps.
 Hodgkinson K (1987) Heapey, Wheelton & District: A Pictorial Record of Bygone Days. Chorley: C.K.D. Publications.

Timmins G (1996) Four Centuries of Lancashire Cotton. Preston: Lancashire County Books.