From Linen to Suburbia – A History of Clayton-le-Woods
Local government is a complicated thing. We have layers of County Councils, Borough Councils and Parish Councils, all with different voting boundaries and electoral cycles. Sometimes the system seems purposely devised to prevent us from keeping track of who is responsible for the bewildering kaleidoscope of wheelie bins, for failing to mend potholes and for avidly fining us when we stray into bus lanes. Life was simpler in olden times. Counties were divided into Hundreds and Hundreds into Townships, whose boundaries had been fixed by the Saxons. The Lord of the Manor held sway, and such local government as existed was carried out by local worthies through the Parish Vestry, the Poor Law Commission and the Magistrates Court. Thus, Clayton-le-Woods was a Township in the Hundred of Leylandshire, in the County of Lancashire. In this article, we will trace the history of this little township from a rural backwater to a traffic-filled dormitory town.
Clayton-le-Woods: Facts and Figures
The ancient township of Clayton-le-Woods was bounded west and east by Leyland and Brindle parishes, and south and north by Whittle-le-Woods and Cuerden townships. It was bisected south to north by the river Lostock, and west to east by an ancient packhorse road that linked Leyland, Brindle and Blackburn (today’s Lancaster Lane, Sheep Hill Lane and Radburn Brow). It was bookended by the two branches of the Wigan to Preston turnpike road, that was established in 1725. The western branch (‘Lower Road’) is now the A49, while the eastern branch (‘Higher Road’) originally ran along Chorley Old Road to Radburn Brow, but a more direct ‘bypass’ was opened in 1820, and is now the A6.
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| Clayton-le-Woods circa 1800, showing existing roads and lanes, and the most significant roads built since then |
For most of its history, Clayton-le-Woods was a sparsely populated rural area. In 1800, the population of the township was 700, and in 1901 it had increased only slightly, to just over 1000, with a density of 1.73 people per hectare. But by 2011, the population of the slightly bigger Civil Parish of Clayton-le-Woods had risen to 14,532, with a density of 18.8 per hectare, and its character had become suburban rather than rural (the increased area was largely due to taking over from Brindle Parish the land on which Clayton Brook village is sited). Clayton-le-Woods’s remaining countryside is now concentrated in Cuerden Valley Park, bordering the river Lostock.
Clayton Manor and Clayton Hall
As its name suggests, in early medieval times Clayton-le-Woods was part of a large area of woodland that stretched along the hilly terrain between the Lancashire plain and the West Pennine moors, through Whittle-le-Woods and Chorley as far as Horwich. Population increase during early modern times led to an increased demand for farmland, and bit-by-bit that woodland was cut down. Today, none of the ancient woods remain.
From the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, the Manor of Clayton-le-Woods was in the possession of the de Clayton family. Their seat was Clayton Hall, a medieval moated manor house situated on a ridge overlooking the river Lostock. Old field names offer glimpses of life in the medieval manor. Two fields between the hall and the river were named ‘Cunnery’ and ‘Rabbit Hills’, indicating that rabbits were being bred for meat and fur (‘Cunnery derives from ‘coninger’, an old word for a rabbit warren). An adjacent field had the strange name of ‘Kill Caiis’. Mary Atkin argues that it came from an old British term meaning ‘land belonging to the Serjeant’. In medieval times, the Serjeant was an official who was responsible for law and order, and the smooth functioning of a Hundred. It was a hereditary position, and Atkin suggests that the de Claytons acted as Serjeants for Leylandshire, their land being close to the centre of the Hundred.
By the seventeenth century, the Manor was held by the Anderton family, relatives of the owners of Euxton Hall. The Andertons were Catholics, and during the Civil War, James Anderton commanded a Royalist army that was defeated at Preston in 1643. His land was confiscated, but returned at the restoration of the monarchy.
By the nineteenth century, the Manor had passed to the Bootles, Lords of Skelmersdale and later Earls of Lathom. They were absentee landlords, and Clayton Hall became a farmhouse, occupied for much of the century by the Scotson family. By the 1970s, it had become derelict and dangerous, and despite its historical significance it was demolished, its site designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument.
The land north of the Leyland-Brindle road was mainly owned by the Parker family of Cuerden Hall, which as the name suggests, is in the adjacent Township of Cuerden. A noteable member of that family was Robert Townley Parker, Unionist M.P. for Preston in the latter years of the nineteenth century, and a prominent freemason.
Agriculture and Textiles
In the mid-nineteenth century, there were sixteen farms in Clayton-le-Woods. The largest by far was Clayton Hall, which extended for 250 acres. Most of the others were small, twenty acres or fewer. They were primarily pastoral dairy farms, producing milk, and sometimes butter and cheese, for the growing population of Preston and other urban areas. There was also some arable farming, and Clayton had a small water-powered corn mill, that dated from the sixteenth century. The land bordering the river Lostock was water meadow, growing grass for winter feed, and a few farms had orchards.
Manor
Farm, on Preston Road, is typical of Clayton-le-Woods's many small nineteenth century
farms, now a domestic dwelling surrounded by newer development
Pastoral farming was neither labour intensive, nor very remunerative, and there was a centuries-old tradition of farmers and labourers boosting their income by making textiles. Indeed, historians are agreed that a key factor in south Lancashire becoming the centre of the cotton industry in the nineteenth century was the long-standing tradition in the area of domestic textile production. In east Lancashire, woollen cloth was made, and in the central belt, fustians, which had a linen warp and cotton weft. In the western districts, including Clayton-le-Woods, linen cloth predominated. A survey by John Hallam found evidence from old documents of flax spinning and linen weaving in the township, and some evidence from field names that flax (the raw material of linen) was being grown in the vicinity of Sheep Hill Lane. Surprisingly little is known of the organisation of linen production in Lancashire in early modern times, but it is assumed that it was a family affair, with children preparing flax, their mothers spinning thread, and fathers weaving cloth on domestic looms.
In the second half of the eighteenth century, cotton spinning was mechanised and moved into factories. This massively increased production, and also produced stronger thread, suitable for warp, and allowing all-cotton fabrics to be made. Cotton cloth soon replaced linen and fustians, and Clayton-le-Woods’s home workers switched to cotton textile production. While home spinning died out, weaving was not mechanised at the same rate, and for some fifty years domestic hand-loom cotton weaving became a prominent occupation across southern Lancashire, including in Clayton-le-Woods. Purpose-built handloom weavers’ cottages proliferated throughout the area, with loomshops either on the ground floor, or in basements. Wives who formerly would have spun thread took their turn at the loom. Production was managed by middle-men known as ‘manufacturers’, who supplied home weavers with yarn and took the finished cloth to merchants in Manchester.
In Clayton-le-Woods, handloom weaving was concentrated in two hamlets, Clayton Town and Clayton Green. Clayton Town was situated in the area known as Clayton Bottoms, adjacent to the river Lostock, and including Clayton corn mill. A little community developed there in the nineteenth century, with an inn, the George and Dragon, a smithy and a grocers’ shop. Clayton school was nearby, originally on the northern side of Sheep Hill Lane, then moving to a former Primitive Methodist church building on Back Lane (the site is still occupied by Clayton-le-Woods Primary School).
The Clayton Green hamlet centred on the crossroads where Sheep Hill Lane and Radburn Brow met the turnpike road. There was another smithy, and later a post office in the former toll house. St Bede’s Catholic church and school, established in the 1820s, was a short distance up the road. Clayton-le-Woods has always shared an Anglican parish with Whittle-le-Woods (with the parish church in Whittle), but there are Catholic churches in each, reflecting the strong tradition of Catholicism in the area.
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| The one-time hamlet of Clayton Green was centred on the junction between the Wigan to Preston turnpike (Preston Road) and the road from Leyland to Brindle (Sheep Hill Lane, to the right of this picture, and Radburn Brow, to the left). The building on the opposite side of Preston Road was a toll house, and later Clayton's Post Office. In the 1970s, a new road linking Leyland and Brindle was built (Clayton Green Road and Westwood Road), and this junction was blocked off for through traffic |
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| Radburn Brow, looking towards Preston Road. The row of terraced houses on the right, now much altered, were originally handloom weavers' cottages, with ground floor loomshops. There was once a smithy to the right of the cottages |
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| I can't vouch for the date on this building on Preston Road, but it was certainly a smithy in the 1840s, before apparently being replaced by the one on Radburn Brow |
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| Prior to the late nineteenth century, Preston Road passed through open countryside, with occasional farms and 'gentleman's residences', such as Copper Hey House, owned for much of the century by the Garstang family |
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| The Halfway House was built in the 1820s as a coaching inn on the 'new' turnpike. The sign on the wall is of a rather later date |
Handloom weaving held sway until the 1840s, when powerlooms became viable and weaving mills opened across the area. At the 1841 census, there were many handloom weavers in Clayton-le-Woods, and it was still a popular occupation in 1851. By then, however, numbers were reducing, and in several households, while parents continued to weave on handlooms, their adult children were described as ‘steam loom weavers’, walking each day to work at Farington Mill, Lostock Mill or Kem Mill in Whittle-le-Woods. By the 1860s, handloom weaving had more or less died out.
The decline of handloom weaving precipitated the decline of Clayton Town. Its smithy had closed in the 1840s, and by the 1890s the George and Dragon had closed down, as had the corn mill. The former handloom weavers cottages lingered into the early twentieth century, housing farm labourers or mill workers, but were eventually abandoned. Today, there is little evidence left of the once thriving community by the Lostock.
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Remains of the hamlet of Clayton Town. This wall, on the north-west side of the river Lostock (looking from Lancaster Lane), is all that is left of the George and Dragon inn, which closed before 1890
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| The waterwheel housing is all that remains of Clayton corn mill. It apparently dated from the sixteenth century, and closed down before 1890 |
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| Beside the path through Cuerden Valley Park from Lancaster Lane towards Whittle-le-Woods (and opposite the corn mill), can be seen the remains of a short terrace of handloom weavers cottages, known as Mill Street. They had basement loomshops, and survived until the 1920s |
Cotton Mills in Clayton-le-Woods
There were two cotton factories in Clayton-le-Woods, both near the border with Whittle-le-Woods. I wrote about them in my article, The Cotton Industry in Whittle-le-Woods, as I felt they sat within Whittle’s ‘economic area’. To summarise: Lower Kem Mill, originally water-powered by a lodge that took its water from the Lostock, dated from the 1780s and was involved in the ‘finishing’ trades – bleaching, dyeing and printing. In the early twentieth century it was owned by Albert Cunliffe, who built himself a fine house, ‘Claytonfields’, on the hill overlooking his factory. The mill burned down in 1914 and was not rebuilt. Swansea Mill, a specialised weaving mill, was built over the Carr Brook, the eastern boundary between Clayton and Whittle-le-Woods. Its owner was J.N. Boothman, once a two-loom weaver, who also owned mills in Blackburn. He too built himself a house, ‘The Pines’, on Preston Road at Clayton Green. It was later a hotel and is now the site of Lidl supermarket. Swansea Mill closed in the 1960s and now hosts small businesses.
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| The ruins of Lower Kem Mill were partially restored in the 1990s to provide a feature for Cuerden Valley Park |
‘Ouses, ‘Ouses, ‘Ouses
In the 1950s, Jim Copper, a countryman and folk singer, took part in a radio programme about his life. Having reminisced about the ways of the countryside and farming he remarked, “Now there are ‘ouses, ‘ouses ‘ouses on the land we used to plough”. He lamented, “It makes me prostrate with dismal!”.
Jim Copper was talking about his home village of Rottingdean in East Sussex, but he could easily have been talking about Clayton-le-Woods. After the 1939-45 war, cotton textile manufacturing was dying out in Lancashire, and agriculture was less of a priority. At the same time, the population was increasing, and farmland in Clayton-le-Woods began to be eaten up by housing estates.
The process began before the war, with ‘ribbon development’ of houses along Lancaster Lane and Preston Road, then accelerated in the 1960s, when new estates were built around Lancaster Lane, Preston Road and Clayton Green. Demand for housing was not however assuaged, and in the late 1960s, plans were put forward for a New Town in Central Lancashire, embracing Clayton-le-Woods.
Central Lancashire New Town (CLNT) was designated in 1970, the last of the new towns established in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s. It was conceived as a way of relieving population pressure on Manchester and Liverpool. Rather than proposing a brand new urbanisation, in the mould of Milton Keynes or Skelmersdale, it aimed to bring together Preston, Chorley and Leyland into a single city of some 420,000 inhabitants (an increase of nearly 200,000) by the millenium, with new developments around the periphery, and in intermediate areas such as Clayton-le-Woods. A development corporation was set up to manage the project, with its headquarters at Cuerden Hall.
The ambitious plans for CLNT were diluted almost straight away, by changing economic and political priorities. A re-evaluation of government funding for new towns in 1976, led by new concerns that existing inner-city areas were becoming neglected, resulted in a reduction in the proposed population increase for CLNT to just 23,000. In the 1980s, the Thatcher government, no fans of major public sector projects, privatised new towns. CLNT’s development corporation was wound up in 1985.
The main legacies of CLNT within Clayton-le-Woods were firstly, the construction of Clayton Green road and Westwood road (and the blocking to through traffic of the old Leyland-Brindle route along Sheep Hill Lane and Radburn Brow), which facilitated development around Clayton Green; and secondly, the construction of the new ‘village’ of Clayton Brook. This was designed to be self-contained (and rather cut off from the rest of the parish), with high-standard mixed housing, shops and amenities and green space. Today however, despite scoring well above average for quality of housing, services and living environment, some areas of Clayton Brook are among the most deprived in Chorley Borough, and in the 10% most deprived in England.
Conclusion
Clayton-le-Woods is these days made up of four main dollops of housing: Clayton-le-Woods estate (around Lancaster Lane); Clayton Green; Clayton Brook; and the southern area around the A6. The centre and focus of the modern parish is, well, ASDA – today made even less attractive than it was by being surrounded by drive-through fast-food outlets. Clayton-le-Woods is a functional dormitory town, with just occasional reminders of its agricultural and textile-producing past. But there is always the fine green expanse of Cuerden Valley Park, created as a public amenity in 1992, and the ‘lungs’ of the neighbourhood.
That is, if you don’t mind car parking charges.
Or dogs.
Trades Directories available at Historical Directories of England & Wales - Special Collections Online
Hallam J (1985) The Surviving Past: Archaeological finds and excavations in Central Lancashire. Countryside Publications
Timmins G (1977) Handloom wavers' cottages in central Lancashire. University of Lancaster
