Welcome to the villages of Lostock & Chew Moor

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Chew Moor Village

Chew Moor Village captured by the "Eye in the Sky Camera" courtacy of the Bolton Evening News April 2000

Besides working on the land, extensive coal mining began in Lancashire in the 1600's and certainly by the early 1700's men a women were working pits in the Lostock area.

In the Anderton Account Books covering the period 1705/8 there are expences shown for "sinking a Coal Pitt": "For Timbering ye spades for coal pitts": "For laying 4 roods of troughs for ye sough att ye pitts".

Chew Moor was once just a cluster of cottages, housing the landless labourers, and the smaller tenant farmers. The principal hamlet of the township of Lostock.Whilst Rumworth and other areas of Lostock were divided into larger pockets of farmland, and tenanted by yeoman farmers,

The cottager continued to cultivate his "strip" and graze his pig or his cow on the "common" (the land in which the Lord of the Manor and the villager had "rights in common".) up to the beginning of the 19th century. With the advent of more sophisticated methods of farming which demanded larger tracts of land, Acts of Parliament were being given the Royal Assent permitting common lands to be divided, allocated and enclosed.

The un-enclosed Chew Moor was causing some concern in 1788, for there is a document exisiting of that year, unfortunately not completely legible, that appears to be a copy of a letter written by one of the local Seddons, in which he writes:

"I have proposed a common to be enclosed called Chew Moor betwixt 30 and 40 acres without the trouble of an Act of Parliament..............................
It would be if good if it were proper to inclose Chew Moor for neither the Justices nor the Law could do anything about it. A general meeting of the land owners and proprietors to it shall be called, and if they are consenting it may be done. If the Chew Moor be enclosed my will is to have a few houses builded near the gravel hole which is near the middle of the moor, and land there to support a Sunday School.............................................................................................
If you not do agree to enclose the Moor, I will get some Jews to do it."

1807 - an Act was passed consenting to the "Inclosure of Chew Moor in the Township of Lostock.

The Act appointed two commissioners to apportion the land justly and with regard to individual rights and interests, and on the Inclosure Map of 1808 the various awards are shown, with four acres allocated for the use and benefit of a schoolmaster. These four acres were adjacent to the gravel hole Seddon mentioned in his letter in 1788.

Chew Moor had two gravel holes, the one mentioned above and the other at the Wingates side of the playing fields on St. John's Road. These were important assets, for they were shale beds which provided sand and shale for roads and brick making.

Chew Moor Spinning Mill.

1843- the mill was in possession of James Ramsbottom, but in that year was "burned to the ground, large numbers of people being thrown out of employment". It was rebuilt and according to a contemporary report was the only one in the district to be lit by gas, the management having had their own gasometer erected at the side of the mill.

1850 - the mill was owned by Messrs Platt and Sutcliffe

1889 - taken over by W. H. Holland & Co., Ltd. and a totally different industry was introduced. The products were now soap, boot polish, furniture cream, baking powder, custard powder, and lemon cheese and the firm also had its own printing department.

Sunlight Soap, started by W. H. Lever (later to be Lord Leverhulme) in Bolton. This man was pictured at the handlebars of his 1896 Sunlight Soap delivery bicycle.

1940 - the mill was used as a storage depot for a carpet manufacturing firm when the above firm went out of business and for a time.

1970's - the premises were acquired by Greenham Tool Co. Ltd., Industrial Clothing Specialists.

Chew Moor wakes - first week in August. A travelling fair complete with swings, roundabouts, coconut shies, settled on the patch of land opposite the Duke of Wellington Hotel. Later standing near the Black House Hotel.

In the 1970's plans for a large scale development of Chew Moor village and surrounding areas was defeated. However, some housing development has taken place, but the village still retains much of its charater. The mile or so of farmland and pasture which divorces it to the east from Lostock and westwards to the boundaries of Westhoughton, enables the ancient hamlet to maintain an air of detachment, and its own separate identity.

Census Records for Chew Moor in 1841