Turton
A chapelry in the parish of BOLTON, hundred of SALFORD, county palatine of LANCASTER, 4-1/2 miles (N.) from Great Bolton, containing 2090 inhabitants.
The living is a perpetual curacy, in the archdeaconry and diocese of Chester, endowed with £288/9/9d private benefaction, £200 royal bounty, and £200 parliamentary grant, and in the patronage of the Lords of the Manor.
The chapel is dedicated to St. Bartholomew.
There is a place of worship for Unitarians.
The chapelry is bounded by two rivulets tributary to the Irwell; these supply the power for various cotton-spinning, bleaching, dyeing, and printing works, of which the most extensive are the Egerton spinning and dye mills, worked by a powerful water-wheel: at these establishments about one thousand persons are employed. The weaving of cotton, by hand-looms, is extensively carried on by the cottagers.
A manorial court is held twice a year; and there are fairs for cattle, horses, &c., on the 4th and 5th of September, at the village of Chapel Town.
Humphrey Cheetham, Esq., in 1746, endowed a small school for clothing and teaching ten boys: a school-room, with a house for the master, had previously been erected, the former of which was rebuilt and enlarged by subscription about thirty years ago. He also made provision for ten poor boys of this township at Manchester College.
Another school was founded by Abigail Cheetham, who endowed it with property now let for £28 a year, for which six boys are clothed and educated in a school-room built by subscription, the master of which as a dwelling-house rent-free.
A small sum is also appropriated, from Mrs. Smalley’s charity, to the education of poor children at Eagley Bridge school, which was established by subscription, in 1794.
A Roman road passed through this chapelry, in which, among other relics, the remains of a Druidical temple, and the copper head of an old British standard, have been discovered.
Turton Tower, an embattled structure, four stories high, has been the residence of the Orrells, the Cheethams, and the Greames, but is now occupied as a farm-house.
From: A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, Vol. IV, London, 1831, page 340.
Entered here 3 September 2004 by Lynn Ransom Burton.
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