You are standing on Winter Hey Lane Horwich. Winter Hey Lane was named after a field that was situated on the eastern side, where the ‘Old Station Park’ is today.
The field in 1620 was known as Horrock’s Winter Hey, it was part of the ancient Gorton Fold Farm, Gorton Fold cottages still exists on Church Street.
The small hamlet of Horwich consisted of farms & bleach crofts with only 300 residents before 1777.
This is when the Ridgway’s arrived and started to develop their Wallsuches Bleachworks, thereby setting the town on the path towards ‘industrialisation’.
The turning point came in 1884 when the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway bought land in the town on which to build its locomotive works. Life in Horwich would never be the same again.
The population rocketed from a little over 3000 in 1881 to more than 15000 in 1901. Houses for workers plus shops, pubs, schools and many other buildings were rapidly constructed and by the mid-1890’s (above) the centre of Horwich had been transformed.
All manner of shops and small businesses appeared during the Horwich boom time of the 1880s and 90s. There were wheelwrights, clog, boot & shoe makers and a whole variety of grocery, confectionary, clothing, fancy goods and music shops – the biggest of all shops was the mighty Horwich Industrial Co-operative Society Ltd. Today, it is difficult to imagine how powerful and all embracing the Co-op was with its large multi-functional premises on Lee Lane and over a dozen branches around the town. Until its sharp decline in 1960s-70s, the Co-op was able to offer Horwich residents every facility ‘from cradle to grave’.
In the 1920’s the Old Horwich Market stood on Winter Hey Lane on the site where Barclays Bank stood for many years and is now ‘Justin Kellet’s’ Opticians. Horwich also once boasted an incredible 17 butchers shops and now there is only one, Greeley's. These butchers all slaughter animals on the premises!
Horwich Town Centre still retains much of the identity created when the Loco Works arrived back in 1884 and we are all pleased to see so many shops, offices, restaurant & cafes continuing to operate in the town despite difficult modern trading conditions. All the town’s present day businesses are standing on some remarkable shoulders when it comes to Horwich’s rich & varied commercial past and long may they continue to uphold that tradition.
Thanks to: Neil Rickaby of Bolton Web Design, Craftprint Horwich, J. Dickinson & Sons, Livesey Funeral Service Ltd and Woodley Equipment Company Ltd.
