At least one author has penned an excellent and detailed account of the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Company’s locomotive works at Horwich, near Bolton, Lancashire. Reference is made to M. D. Smith’s Horwich Locomotive Works, a product of Wyre Publishing, 1996. Smith’s book is a wellillustrated account of the rise and fall of the Works from its opening in 1886 until closure in December 1983.
The book includes a bibliography of books related to the Horwich Works, some well-known authors among them: John Marshall, O.S. Nock, G.E. Holt, Alan Earnshaw and Eric Mason. To repeat what has been already written would be trying the patience of readers, and is not the purpose of this article. Instead, the development of Horwich as a railway town is seen through the eyes by an army of newspaper reporters who observed and faithfully reported what they saw for the benefit of thousands of newspaper readers. The Bolton Evening News is particularly informative because the Works was very much on its home patch.
No apology is made for making full use of the reports, although abridgment is used where necessary. The mantra ‘let the original words speak for themselves’ applies in this article and is designed to relate the Horwich story from the mid-1880s to 1904.
Descriptions of events at Horwich form the substance of history and are mentioned here; included are many long-forgotten nuggets of news, which make up the daily and weekly goings-on at the railway factory and in the town generally. This is a study of the gradual transition of Horwich from village to town.
The Horwich branch line
The 1.4-mile branch line to Horwich opened for goods traffic on 15th July 1868 and a small terminal station opened on 14th February 1870. Before the advent of the Works, Horwich possessed 3,471 inhabitants in 1861 and was an industrial village with an economy based upon cotton textiles, bleaching and dyeing. Even as early 1848 Samuel Lewis describes Horwich in A Topographical Dictionary of England in the following manner:
“Horwich, a chapelry in the parish of Deane, union of Bolton… 4 miles WNW of Bolton, on the road to Chorley and Preston, containing 3,773 inhabitants. The population is chiefly engaged in extensive bleaching-works and cotton mills. Here is a station of the Bolton and Preston Railway.”
The Bolton & Preston Railway became a constituent of the LYR/London & North Western Railway on 26th July 1889. The station Lewis refers to was Blackrod. The branch line presented a ready-made rail outlet for the Works in 1886.
The inception of Horwich Works
By the close of the 1870s it was announced that the Manchester & Leeds Railway Company’s locomotive works at Miles Platting, Manchester, was too small and lacked any possibility of enlargement. Two leading lights, John Ramsbottom and William Barton Wright, were set the task of locating suitable sites for a new factory. Various sites were considered: Broadfield, Bury, Moston, Castleton, Mirfield, Brighouse, Horbury Junction and others in the Wakefield and Goole areas. All were deemed unsuitable. The company surveyor, Elias Doming, mentioned the estate at Horwich was to be auctioned. This was readily considered: there were supplies of water, an available labour force, underlying coal measures and a fairly central location.
News of the LYR’s intention to construct a locomotive workshop appeared in, 27th June 1884. It is a lengthy report and is worth repeating in part:
