Georgian Chorley

‘The two most fascinating subjects in the universe are sex and the 18th century’ – Bridget Brophy

Sorry, but this article is about the 18^th century. It was indeed a fascinating time, when Britain gradually evolved from a rather sleepy agricultural nation into the world’s first industrial economy and global power. The massive changes that began during the Georgian ‘long eighteenth century’ even touched little Chorley, sited as it was in one of the cradles of industrialisation. In this article, we will focus on Chorley in Georgian times, and consider how it became part of industrial Lancashire (the history of sex in Chorley remains to be written – though probably not by me).

The 18th Century Manse adjacent to Chorley Unitarian Chapel, the childhood home of Sir Henry Tate

The Georgian Period – the Long Eighteenth Century

The Georgian period covers the reigns of the four successive Hanoverian King Georges, who held the British throne from 1714 to 1830. The scene was set for their ascendancy by the Act of Settlement of 1701, in which Parliament decreed that no Catholic could become monarch of Britain. This excluded some fifty claimants to the throne, most notably James Stuart, son of the deposed King James II. The nearest Protestant candidate to succeed the incumbent Queen Anne (who left no living children, despite multiple pregnancies) was George, Duke of Brunswick and Elector of the German state of Hanover, who duly became George I of Britain. The Hanoverian dynasty reigned until 1837 and presided over a period of monumental change. But by the time of their accession, Britain had a constitutional monarchy, with government by Parliament and a Cabinet of Ministers, led, after 1720, by a Prime Minister. The role of the monarch had become increasingly ceremonial, with the four King Georges leaving varied impressions on Britain.

George I (r. 1714 – 1727) George I spoke no English when he came to the throne at the age of 54, and spent much of his reign in his native Hanover, with a Regency Council acting on his behalf in Britain. The year after his succession in 1714, his reign was challenged by James Stuart (the Old Pretender), who tried to seize the throne, with the support of Scottish clans. The first Jacobite revolt reached Preston, where the Jacobite army was defeated, with, as we will see, severe consequences for some of Chorley’s gentry. George I left the government of Britain largely to his ministers, in particular Robert Walpole, the first person to take the title of Prime Minister.

George II (r. 1727 – 1760) was George I’s son. He was also born in Hanover and English was not his first language. He was the last serving British monarch to lead troops into battle, against the French at Dettingen, Germany in 1743. Like his father, he faced a Jacobite revolt, this time from Charles Edward Stuart (“Bonnie Prince Charlie”), in 1745. George did not lead the British army this time, leaving it to his third son, the Duke of Cumberland, who earned the nickname ‘Butcher Cumberland’ for his ruthless extermination of Highland Jacobite supporters following their defeat at the battle of Culloden. George’s eldest son pre-deceased him, and he was succeeded by his grandson, who became George III.

George III (r. 1760 – 1820) had the third-longest reign of any British monarch to date, after Queen Victoria and our current Queen Elizabeth. He was British-born and was a cultured and learned man. Also, unusually among British monarchs, he was happily married for over fifty years. He was deeply conservative, and abhorred the loss of the American colonies following the War of Independence in 1783, and the liberal philosophy behind the French Revolution. He was king throughout the Napoleonic wars. In 1801, he caused the resignation of the Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger, by refusing to allow Catholic emancipation. In his later years, George III had progressively longer periods of severe mental disorder, and throughout the last decade of his reign was incapacitated, with his son, later George IV, acting as Regent.

George IV (r. 1820 – 1830) was a cultured patron of the arts, and finally agreed to Catholic emancipation, but overall has a poor reputation. As a person he was lazy, entitled, spendthrift, boorish towards those beneath him, estranged from his wife and a serial philanderer (sound familiar?) He was also morbidly obese and an alcoholic. Following his death, the Times newspaper said: "There never was an individual less regretted by his fellow-creatures than this deceased king. What eye has wept for him? What heart has heaved one throb of unmercenary sorrow?... If he ever had a friend – a devoted friend in any rank of life – we protest that the name of him or her never reached us".

With no surviving legitimate children, George IV was succeeded by his younger brother, William IV, (r. 1830 – 1837), the last of the Hanoverians. Following an uneventful reign, he was succeeded by his niece, Queen Victoria.

England in 1714

The population of England at the beginning of the Georgian period was around 5.2 million (compared with 56 million today). England was divided administratively into counties, hundreds and townships, and also into ecclesiastical parishes, which were sometimes co-terminous with townships and in other places embraced several thinly populated townships. Another unit of governance was the ‘Manor’, a portion of land with a single owner. The principal landowner in a township was known as the ‘Lord of the Manor’.

England was overwhelmingly a rural, farming country. The exception was London, which in 1700 had a population of 575,000; 11% of the total population of England. No other town had a population greater than 25,000. The next five largest towns were Norwich, York, Bristol, Newcastle and Exeter, while the population of Manchester was around 5,000 and Preston 3,000.

Overall, 83% of the population of England lived in rural areas. Most were directly employed in agriculture, as farmers or farm labourers. while the rest were country house residents and their servants, rural merchants, or tradesmen such as smiths and millers.

England was a very unequal country. 2% of the population were rich landowners or ‘plutocrats’, those who had become rich through trade. There was a small professional class of lawyers, clergymen and military officers, often the younger sons of landowners, who under the laws of primogeniture would not inherit any land and needed an alternative income. Today’s urban, ‘white-collar’ middle class did not exist; instead there was a class known as the ‘middling sort’, made up of yeoman farmers, land stewards (who administered country estates), physicians and apothecaries, local merchants, shopkeepers and innkeepers, senior servants and master tradesmen and artisans. This group made up around 5% of the total population, leaving over 90% in the ‘labouring class’ of small farmers, journeyman tradesmen, junior servants and labourers. Labouring class women would have worked as servants until marriage, while women from the middling and upper classes sought marriage, and if it did not happen, may well have felt a burden on their family (though women from the middling sort could and did own businesses).

Local government revolved around the Manor, with landowners and rich merchants taking on the roles of Justices of the Peace and Members of Parliament. Manor Courts, with juries made up of the ‘middling sort’ administered the neighbourhood and dealt with petty crime. In parallel, the Parish Vestry, led by the Vicar or Rector and again involving the ‘middling sort’, administered the Parish Church and the Poor Law provisions for those unable to fend for themselves.

So this was England at the start of the Georgian period; a rural country that had not changed much since the Middle Ages. But even before George I came to the throne, the first straws had begun to blow in the wind of change. In 1701, a Berkshire farmer named Jethro Tull invented a mechanical seed drill, the first small manifestation of the agricultural revolution that massively improved farming productivity and led ultimately to population increase and the rise of urban living. In 1709, Abraham Darby of Coalbrookdale in Shropshire first used coal, in the form of coke, to produce iron, and in 1712 in Staffordshire, Thomas Newcomen built the first atmospheric steam engine. It would take much of the 18^th century for these innovations to lead to the economic and demographic explosion that we call the Industrial Revolution, but by the end of the Georgian period Britain – and Chorley – had been transformed.

Chorley in 1714

At the beginning of the Georgian period, Chorley was the largest and most populous township in Leyland hundred. This was however relative, as the hundred was a purely rural area. The population of Chorley township was between 500 and 1,000, divided between the town itself and the surrounding farms and country houses. The town was sited on the main road from Wigan to Preston – indeed one of the main roads from London to Scotland. Due to this, it was the market town for the hundred, with weekly markets held on Tuesdays, for residents of the hundred to sell on surplus produce and to buy goods unavailable locally. In 1536, the traveler John Leland wrote that Chorley had 'a wonderful poor, or rather no market', but by 1683 another writer opined that “its market...is well furnished with yarn and provisions”. As well as the weekly markets, fairs were held four times a year, and were social as well as commercial events.

A map of 1769 depicts Chorley as essentially a single-street town, extending from St Laurence’s church southwards along present day Market Street to the junction with Bolton Street and Pall Mall. A cluster of buildings surrounds the town square, where the market was held, which was situated behind the modern town hall. The houses would have been largely occupied by the ‘middling sort’; tradesmen and shopkeepers, but with agricultural land bordering the main street there were also farm houses in the town itself. There were also a number of inns, where long-distance coaches could change horses, or make overnight stops. To the north, the town ended at the river Chor, which ran east-west through a steep valley, known today as Chorley Bottoms. The main road had to descend to the floor of this valley, and cross the Chor at a ford, an arrangement that continued until the construction of Park Road in the 1820s.

In the eighteenth century, Market Street was part of the main road from London to Scotland, as well as being the main street of Chorley town.

Chorley's town square and market place were situated on present day St Thomas's Square, which is today a depressing example of 1960s brutalism, edged by the police station and former magistrates court

In Georgian times, this building would have graced the south side of the town square. Its origins are obscure, but it may have been a seventeenth century farmhouse.

The oldest building in the town was St. Laurence’s church, which was built in the 13^th century. Unusually, it was not a Parish Church, but a chapel connected to the parish of Croston, and its incumbent had the status of a curate. In the 1600s a grammar school was established adjacent to the church.

The township included several country houses. In 1714 the Lord of the Manor was John Gillibrand of Gillibrand Hall, who held regular Manor Courts and employed a Constable, who was responsible for keeping order in the town (these arrangements continued until the 1850s). Other prominent houses were Astley Hall, then the residence of the Brooke family, and Crosse Hall, which was sited to the east of the town, near modern Cowling Brow and was home to Thomas Crosse. Then there was Chorley Hall, sited to the north-west of the town, near present-day St Michael’s school. This was home to the Chorley family, but in 1715, Richard Chorley and his son Charles, both Catholics, joined the Jacobite army at the battle of Preston. Following its defeat, the Chorleys were captured. Richard was executed for treason at Preston (by being hung, drawn and quartered), and his son died in prison in Liverpool. Their lands were confiscated, and were later purchased by a Derbyshire banker, Abraham Crompton (an ancestor of the writer Beatrix Potter). Another Catholic family were the Chadwicks, of Burgh Hall, near Birkacre.

Surrounding the town was agricultural land, divided into small family-run farms. These would have included some arable land, but were mainly dairy farms – the standard diet of the labouring class in England was bread and cheese. There were corn mills near Crosse Hall and Astley Hall, and on the river Yarrow at Birkacre. Many of the farmers would have supplemented their income by manufacturing textiles. This was a long-standing home-based industry in Lancashire, with farmers weaving cloth from thread spun by their wives – linen and fustians were the cloths produced. This tradition of textile production was a key factor in Lancashire becoming the centre of the factory-based cotton industry in the late eighteenth century.

So this was Chorley at the beginning of the Georgian period – a small market town in the middle of sparsely populated countryside, smaller than many modern villages. But change was on its way, and by the time the last King George left the throne, Chorley, and the rest of England, had been transformed. In the rest of this article we will look at the changes that happened to Chorley – and by extension, the country as a whole - during the ‘long eighteenth century’.

Transport

At the beginning of the Georgian period, England’s roads were notoriously poor, and long-distance travel was difficult and sometimes dangerous. But from the early eighteenth century, main roads were improved by the establishment of Turnpike Trusts. These were bodies of local worthies, who obtained Acts of Parliament for the construction of new roads (or the improvement of existing roads) in their neighbourhood. These roads were funded through levying tolls on those who used them (the ‘turnpike’ was the barrier in the road that prevented travellers from passing through without paying the toll). The first such Trust was established in 1707, and by the 1840s, the country was covered by a network of good quality roads.

One of the earlier Turnpike Trusts was the Wigan and Preston Trust, established in 1725 to expedite the movement of coal from the Wigan coalfields to Preston. Unusually, it had two routes: a western route that followed the current A49 past Leyland, and an eastern route that went through Chorley. Market Street became part of the new road, which, though improved, still had the steep descent to Chorley Bottoms and the ford across the river Chor. Goods wagons and pack horses would have trundled through the town at all times, and by the 1820s, some fourteen passenger coaches a day would have rattled through, calling at the main coaching inns, the Royal Oak and the Gillibrand Arms (both long demolished), and linking Chorley to Preston, Blackburn, Wigan and Liverpool, and, by means of the daily Royal Mail, to Carlisle, Manchester and London.

This painting, by John Bird of Liverpool, is the only contemporary depiction of Georgian Chorley. It dates from around 1810. The easel was set up at the top of Market Street, adjacent to the current Town Hall, looking north. Park Road had not yet been built, and the main road descends down a steep slope, past the building in the centre of the picture, which still exists, as the former Swan with Two Knecks public house. On the far right of the picture is the former Town Hall, which was built in 1802, and in the distance is Chorley Hall, prior to its demolition in 1817. Link to Picture

By 1820 it was clear that further improvements were needed to the roads, and the problem of crossing the river Chor was solved by constructing a road on a bank from St Laurence’s church northwards along the edge of Astley Park, to rejoin the turnpike some two hundred yards to the north. The Chor was culverted under the bank, and the new road was named Park Road. This and other improvements were so appreciated by the worthies of Chorley that in 1828 a public dinner was held to honour Mr Nathaniel Brownbill, the surveyor responsible for the works, who was presented with a ‘Service of Plate’.

The descent from Market Street to Chorley Bottoms has been much altered. Park Road, to the left of this picture, was widened in the 1970s, and the remains of the former turnpike road were replaced by a flight of steps. At the bottom of the steps is the former Swan with Two Knecks, and St Laurence's Church is to the right.

The turnpike road originally ran along Water Street, crossing the River Chor at a ford, sited in the centre of this picture. The Chor is now culverted under the street. The area to the right was the site of Chorley's first gas works, which opened in 1819.

The Chor emerging from under Park Road into Astley Park

In 1797, an alternative means of transport reached Chorley, in the form of the Lancaster Canal. By that year, the canal stretched from Wigan to Knowley, with coal being the main material transported. The basin at Knowley became known as Botany Bay (though it is unclear why). Subsequently, canals extended westwards to Liverpool, northwards to Lancaster and Kendal (via a tramway across the river Ribble at Preston), and north-east to Blackburn and Leeds. Other goods transported by canal included limestone southwards from quarries around Kendal, and millstones from Whittle-le-Woods. Passengers were also carried, though slowly, as the motive power was provided by horses trudging along the towpaths.

Horse-powered transport remained the norm throughout the Georgian period, as the first steam-powered passenger-carrying railway, the Liverpool to Manchester, did not open until 1830. But in 1819 Chorley’s residents were treated to the sight of early air flight, when a hot-air balloon, piloted by Messrs Livingstone and Sadler, flew over the town.

Agriculture

The eighteenth century saw extensive changes to British agriculture, the effects of which were to massively increase the productivity of the land, in terms of both meat and cereal production. These changes, which some call the agricultural revolution, paved the way for the industrial revolution by allowing large numbers of people to make their living by means other than farming. It led to population increase and the growth of towns and cities.

Changes partly involved technological innovations such as Jethro Tull’s seed drill, but mainly embraced improved crop rotations, the introduction of efficient fertiliser crops such as turnips, and better breeds of sheep and cattle. Land owners and yeoman farmers took the lead in bringing in and refining the new materials and techniques. More controversial was ‘enclosure’, in effect the privatisation of common land and its allocation to individual farmers. This was meant to improve efficiency, but had the effect of taking land from the poorest farmers, who had to either become labourers, or to seek work in the growing towns.

The agricultural revolution reached Chorley, but old ways of farming persisted. The pattern of small, mainly dairy farms continued throughout the Georgian period and beyond. Contemporary commentators complained about the backwardness and ignorance of Lancashire’s farmers at not embracing new ideas, but more recent analyses have found that the model of small farms was actually quite efficient, allowing for a more flexible response to changing circumstances. Some local landowners did, however, embrace modern methods, including the Cromptons of Chorley Hall, who by 1815 were growing turnips for animal feed and to improve soil, and introducing new breeds of sheep. Enclosure also came to Chorley, in the form of an Enclosure Act of 1769, which led to the privatisation and enclosure of common grazing lands on Chorley Moor (between Pall Mall and Bolton Road); Knowley; Eaves Green and Hartwood Green (the site of Chorley District Hospital). Altogether, some 300 acres were enclosed, around one tenth of the township.

Although Chorley evolved into an industrial town in the nineteenth century, with more mouths to feed agriculture remained important. New farms were established in the early years of the century, and in 1826 the market was moved to a purpose-built site east of Market Street (the present-day covered market still occupies this site).

Industry

Chorley’s farmers had long supplemented their incomes by spinning and weaving cloth, and during the eighteenth century, technological innovations massively increased textile production. This, along with the greater availability of food that resulted from the agricultural revolution, and the harnessing of coal as a domestic fuel and source of industrial energy, led to the growth of Lancashire’s factories, and subsequently towns and cities. By the end of the century, the industrial revolution was under way.

The first innovation in textile production was the invention in 1733 of the flying shuttle, by John Kay. This speeded up handloom weaving. Then in 1765, James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny, which allowed eight or more spools of thread to be spun at once. A few years later, in 1769, Richard Arkwright patented the ‘water frame’, the first spinning machine powered by water rather than human effort. This improved productivity further, and allowed for stronger threads to be spun, making all-cotton material feasible for the first time. The water frame was not, however, suitable for home-working, and Arkwright opened the first water-powered spinning mill in Cromford, Derbyshire in 1771, creating a new village to house the full-time workers.

Other small, water-powered spinning mills followed, and in 1777, Arkwright leased land from the Chadwicks of Burgh Hall to build a cotton mill at Birkacre, south of Chorley. The mill opened in 1779, but its introduction coincided with a recession in the cotton trade. Home workers marched on Birkacre and other mills, seeking to destroy the machines that they blamed for their economic misfortune. They were resisted and three were reported to have been killed. A subsequent, larger riot was also quashed and the ringleaders imprisoned. Arkwright however withdrew from Birkacre.

Despite this partial victory, the rioters could not halt progress, and cotton mills proliferated. The spinning mule invented by Samuel Crompton (no relation to the Cromptons of Chorley Hall) improved on Arkwright’s water frame. Early mills tended to be built in rural areas, as they were water powered and needed to be sited near appropriate rivers. However, the first spinning mill in Chorley itself was a small factory built in 1789 and sited near the eastern end of Hollinshead Street. It was originally worked by a horse gin and was in business until the 1820s, when it was converted into houses. The introduction of steam power allowed larger factories to be built in towns and by the 1820s, Chorley had two steam-powered mills: Hilton's Water Street Mill and Lightoller and Wood’s Standish Street Mill.

While the first power-loom was patented in the 1770s, technical difficulties meant that weaving continued to be mainly carried out by handloom weavers, working in domestic loomshops. The greater productivity of spinning mills led to demand for more weavers, and handloom weavers’ cottages, with basement loomshops, were built in Chorley and in surrounding rural areas. Villages such as Whittle-le-Woods effectively owed their existence to handloom weaving. By the 1820s, however, power looms were becoming commercially viable, and Water Street Mill introduced weaving with power looms alongside cotton spinning. This led in 1826 to another wave of rioting, as during another economic slump impoverished handloom weavers broke up powerlooms across Lancashire, including at Water Street Mill. The protests were inevitably quelled and several of the leading rioters were sentenced to transportation. The economy eventually improved, and handloom weaving continued to be viable in Chorley until at least the 1850s.

Handloom weavers' cottages on Parker Street. The basement loomshops can be clearly seen

Chorcliffe House, on Hollinshead Street, was the residence of the Sylvester family, landowners with connections to Manchester. In 1826, Colonel Edward Sylvester, as Justice of the Peace, read the Riot Act when protesting handloom weavers besieged Water Street Mill, not far from his home. It was not the first time he had read the Riot Act: in 1819 he had done so at a peaceful anti-poverty demonstration on St Peter's Fields, Manchester, an action which triggered the infamous 'Peterloo Massacre'.

Less controversial was the mechanisation of the ‘finishing’ trades: bleaching, dying and printing cloth. Factories undertaking some or all of these trades were established by the late eighteenth century near Crosse Hall and at Birkacre, on the site of Arkwright’s ill-fated spinning mill, as well as in outlying villages.

Other industries were slower to become established in Chorley, but by the 1820s there was a rope works and several small iron foundries in the town. Coal mining, which had been carried out to the south of Chorley during the eighteenth century, expanded into the town itself, with shafts sunk close to Market Street.

People and Buildings

By 1801, the population of England had risen to 8.87 million, from 5.2 million at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The population of Chorley increased at a much greater rate, rising from less than 1,000 to 4,500 in 1801. By 1821, Chorley’s population had reached 7,300. This expansion of course required a major increase in housing. New streets were constructed leading off Market Street to both east and west, and houses stretched between Bolton Road and Pall Mall to the south (the new roads in this area were given the names of famous London streets in the early nineteenth century) and along Water Street and Hollinshead Street to the north. The new turnpike road, Park Road, was also faced with houses. Several areas were dominated by handloom weavers’ cottages, while the north of the town acquired ‘gentleman’s residences’ for the growing upper-middle class.

Late Georgian 'gentleman's residences' on Park Road

The structure of the population of England was changing, with 27% of the total population living in towns by 1801 (up from 17% in 1700) and 36% involved in agriculture (down from 55%). The ‘middle class’ was becoming more defined and was growing as a proportion of the population, making up some 10 - 15% of the population by 1800 (up from 5% in 1700). While towns such as Chorley retained their role as centres for tradesmen, artisans, merchants and shopkeepers (not to mention inns and taverns), a growing number of residents were factory workers and their families – along with mill owners, managers and other professionals.

The ‘respectable gentlemen’ of Chorley enjoyed socialising, and dinners were held on many pretexts, attended by local landowners, clergymen, attorneys, agents, manufacturers, etc. In 1814 a dinner celebrated victory over Napoleon. In 1820, another dinner was held to celebrate the victory of George IV’s wife, Queen Caroline of Brunswick, who defeated her husband’s (and the government’s) attempt to persuade the House of Lords to grant him a divorce, on the grounds of her adultery. The irony of an all-male dinner to celebrate a woman’s triumph in such a matter would of course have been totally lost on the participants.

More late Georgian residences, opposite St Laurence's Church. To the left is 'St Lawrence's Lodge', former home of Rev. Oliver Cooper, curate of St Laurence's Church from 1763 to 1798, and most recently Applejax night club. To the right is 'Terrace Mount', at one time the home of Rev William Tate, and likely birthplace of Sir Henry Tate. It later became the Savings Bank.

Attitudes towards women were conventional in other ways. In 1825, one James Hague was tried for ‘violating the person’ of a woman following an evening in a Market Street tavern. The case was thrown out by the (all male) jury before all the witnesses had been heard, when they learnt that the accuser was a woman of ‘questionable reputation’ known as “Bolton Sal” and therefore must have consented to Hague’s attentions. At the same time, a trade directory of 1829 lists several women as running shops and businesses in Chorley, including dressmakers and milliners, butchers and bakers, schoolmistresses and innkeepers.

The growth of the town, and the buoyant finances of the well-to-do, led to some fine new buildings, some of which still survive, though Chorley’s country houses had mixed fortunes. Gillibrand Hall, originally a medieval moated manor house, was rebuilt b y Thomas Gillibrand in 1810 (it is now a Care Home). The Crosse family left Crosse Hall in the mid-eighteenth century for a newly built country house at Shaw Hill, Whittle-le-Woods. Crosse Hall itself became a tenement building housing mill workers, and was later demolished. The Cromptons left Chorley Hall in 1817, selling it to Robert Townley Parker. He stripped Chorley Hall of its finery to furnish his new country house at Cuerden Hall (now overlooking Cuerden Valley Park). Chorley Hall was largely demolished, the remnants becoming a farm house, before being swallowed up by later housing estates.

Astley Hall, today the jewel in Chorley’s crown, dates from Elizabethan times, but the frontage and state rooms that give the hall its Grade One listed status were rebuilt in the mid-seventeenth century. By the late eighteenth century, it came into the ownership of Robert Townley-Parker, who rented it to Sir Henry Philip Hoghton. Following his death, his widow lived there for many years, surrounded by servants. This relative state of neglect may well have saved Astley Hall from more extensive nineteenth century ‘improvements’.

Astley Hall was largely spared Georgian and Victorian 'improvements'.

In 1802, Chorley gained its first town hall, on the corner of Union Street, opposite the present town hall, which replaced it in 1879, on the site of the former coaching inn, the Gillibrand Arms. The other main coaching inn, the Royal Oak, was adjacent to the old town hall, and was demolished in the 1930s. Chorley’s first gas works opened in 1819, on Water Street, and its first bank, a branch of the Lancaster Bank, opened in 1828. Chorley’s first workhouse, to accommodate those unable to support themselves, was built under Poor Law legislation in the 1780s, on Eaves Lane. It later became Eaves Lane hospital.

Religion

As mentioned above, St Laurence’s Church was not originally a parish church, but a chapel connected to Croston parish (apparently due to the whim of a medieval Lord of the Manor of Croston). In 1793, Chorley finally became a parish in its own right; the first Rector being Rev John Whalley Master. The growth of the town in the early nineteenth century led to the need for another Anglican church, and St George’s church, on Chapel Street was consecrated in 1825, initially as a chapel of St Laurence’s but later as a separate parish church.

Nonconformist religions began to flourish in Britain during the eighteenth century, as Enlightenment thinking led many to question old religious certainties. The Cromptons of Chorley Hall were Presbyterians, and donated money to fund a chapel in the town. It opened in 1726, on Park Street, overlooking Chorley Bottoms (and St Laurence’s Church). From 1799 to 1836, its minister was William Tate, father of Sir Henry Tate, the sugar magnate and benefactor of the Tate Gallery, who was born in Chorley.

Chorley Unitarian Chapel was founded as a Presbyterian chapel in 1726, financed by the Cromptons of Chorley Hall

In 1792, a Methodist chapel was established near to Market Street, and in the same year Hollinshead Street Congregationalist chapel opened. Small groups of Baptists held services in the town from the late eighteenth century.

There was always a strong undercurrent of Catholicism in Chorley. We mentioned earlier Richard Chorley’s gruesome death in 1715 for supporting the Catholic Old Pretender, James Stuart. The Gillibrands were also a Catholic family, and another prominent Catholic family were the Chadwicks of Burgh Hall, south of Chorley. Father John Chadwick celebrated mass in the chapel of Burgh Hall between 1755 and 1770. St Gregory’s Roman Catholic church was opened in 1774 at Weld Bank, on land provided by another Catholic family, with Father Chadwick as the first priest (despite the saying of mass remaining illegal in Britain until 1791). Following his death in 1802, he was succeeded by Father Richard Thompson, who oversaw the rebuilding of the church in 1814.

Conclusion

In October 1828, shortly before the end of the Georgian period, an article in the Liverpool Mercury sang the praises of Chorley:

“There are few towns in this county that have participated more in the improvement of modern times than Chorley. In addition to the increase of dwellings and the extensive cotton manufactories which have risen up within the last few years, and the consequent increase in its population, there is a magnificent new church, capable of accommodating nearly 2,000 people”.

Chorley had certainly come a long way from the small, rural settlement of a hundred years previously. The spirit of enquiry and enterprise that marked the Georgian ‘long eighteenth century’ had left its mark on the town.

From a distance of nearly 200 years, we may query the extent that the industrial revolution and its related changes were actually 'improvements’. We are too conscious of the degree of exploitation – of peoples and the environment – that industrialisation and the consumer economy has entailed. But we can be in no doubt that without the Georgians, Britain – and Chorley – would today be very different places.

 

Sources Used

Historic Maps available at MARIO and Lancashire Old Maps

Newspaper articles available at the British Newspaper Archive 

Trade Directories available at Historical Directories of England and Wales

Corfield P (2022) The Georgians: The Deeds and Misdeeds of 18th Century Britain. London: Yale University Press 

Daunton M (1995) Progress and Poverty: An economic and social history of Britain 1700-1850. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Dickson W (1815) General View of the Agriculture of Lancashire

Heyes J (1994) A History of Chorley. Lancashire County Books

Hodkinson K (1987) Old Chorley: A pictorial record of bygone days. CKD Publications

Smith J (2017) Secret Chorley. Amberley Publishing