Chorley and South Ribble History Pages

  It is a cliché – but a true one – that the British industrial revolution was built on coal. The energy derived from coal, so much more plentiful and efficient than wood, enabled British industry to dominate the world in the 19 th century, as Britain had more extensive coalfields and exploited them more effectively than other nations. Everywhere in Britain that there were coal deposits, there were collieries, and over a million people worked in the coal industry at its peak.   The cotton-based industrial revolution in south-east Lancashire was built on coal in a literal sense. The Lancashire coalfield lay underneath the main cotton textile-manufacturing area, and the cotton industry became the leading user of Lancashire coal. The ancient market town of Chorley is sited on the northern edge of the Wigan coalfield, and even its rather skimpy seams were exploited, with mining taking place within the modern borough for over two hundred years. In this article, I will consider the c