Bolton from Queens Park

Industrialisation changed Bolton forever. From the 1790s the small market town burst into life, factories sprang up and people flooded in from rural Lancashire and Ireland to work in them.

In the first half of the 1800s the pace of change was quick and unchecked. Conditions for the working majority were grim: working hours were long, housing was squalid and overcrowded. Sickness, malnutrition, poverty and really bad sewage were some of the characteristics of industrial life.

As the 1800s wore on the wealthy moved out of the town centre into grand houses. Slowly, the town’s infrastructure caught up with its early growth, and the townscape we know began to take shape.

"Let us stand in Bolton Park, which is like an isle of dingy green in a black sea, the charm of the place being utterly obscured by the fact that from whatever part of it you raise your eyes meet a prospect of smoky towers. Looking south, we can count nearly 200 tall chimneys, rising ugly over a mass of brick buildings, that look as if they had stood for years in a climate where it rained ink every day….In 1770 Bolton was a fair hamlet; a hundred years have made it into a ugly town."