Welcome to the villages of Lostock & Chew Moor

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Lostock

The village of Lostock lies approx 3 miles west of the centre of Bolton. Over the years the districts of Lostock and Chew Moor have changed considerably once considered as rural “in the country” when only scattered farmsteads and small hamlets in areas of woodland, marsh or moor existed. Chew Moor being the principal hamlet of the township of Lostock.

The name Lostock is of very ancient derivation and dates back centuries prior to the Norman era. There have been several translations and various spellings of the names Lostock and Chew Moor

Eilert Ekwall's 'Place-names of Lancashire', Manchester 1922 states
Lostock : he suggests OE hlose 'pig-sty' and stoc 'place, farm', hence something like 'pig-farm'. Spellings have resulted in
1212 Lostoc - 1279 Lastok, 1292 Lostok, 1301 Lostoke
Chew Moor: Ekwall guesses at Old English ceo 'gill of a fish', used as Old Norse gil to mean 'a narrow ravine'. or . names in the Domesday Survey of 1086, from the Celtic "Ciu" meaning "a river".

From about the year 1100 until the end of the 1800's the geographical area of these villiages was very different from today. The Township of Lostock was in the Parish of Bolton and the Townships of Rumworth and Heaton were in the Parish of Deane, and all came within the Hundred of Salford.

As a reward for services rendered in the conquest of England, Roger de Poictou was awarded all the land between the Ribble and the Mersey in 1067. Married to a relative of William the Conqueror he led the centre of William's army.

By the early 1500's Lostock had become a manor of the Athertons of Atherton, but in 1562 the possession of the Manor of Lostock became settled for some 200 years when Christopher Anderton bought the estate from the Athertons. (see the Andertons)

Early survey maps of about 1750 show the main highway running from Horwich Moor Road, (Chorley Old Road,) past Heaton Old Hall (Old Hall Farm), down Ox Hey Lane to Lostock Hall.

From Lostock Hall it then continued along "Old Smithy Lane" what is now the lane running through the Municipal Golf Links terminating on Regent Road.. The original lane did not continue as now to Regent Road, but turned off along the road to Morris Fold Farm, and carried on from there running parallel to the Middle Brook before turning and crossing the brook by Rumworth Mill Bridge.

On the side of the road from Lostock Hall to Chulsey Gate, just as you left the Hall, was Lostock Mill and mill pond. Like Rumworth Mill this also was a cornmill for the use of the tenant farmers. In the accounts of the Shuttleworths of Smithills there is an item for barley ground at Lostock Mill in 1586, and the mill is still shown as a definte building on the maps of 1909.

Land north of Middle Brook and west of Bessey Brook up to Wingates Lane and including the hamlet of Chew Moor was the Township of Lostock.

Land north of the Middle Brook and east of Bessey Brook was the Township of Heaton, and the land south of the Middle Brook up to Daubhill and eastwards as far as Deane Church Lane was the Township of Rumworth

The dividing line between Lostock and Rumworth was the stream which runs down from above Pocket Nook, along the east side of Chew Moor Mill, under St. John's Road, and down in a very straight course until it joins the Middle Brook near the Liverpool Corporation Water Works Booster Station.

The road westwards to Chew Moor took a semi-circular route round the back of where the Church of St. Thomas and St. John now stands, before proceeding along the present line of Tempest Road, and continuing past Prospect House and joining Mirey Lane (now St. John's Road and Chew Moor Lane) on its route through the hamlet. Chulsey Gate was a well defined road over to Lostock Hall and Wingates Lane, as was Lock Lane which continued over to Bolton Road,

Maps of 1849 show the scattered farmsteads as:

British History on-line

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The following figures give some idea of the respective sizes of the three townships:-

	Area in Statute Acres	Population
		1801	1861
LOSTOCK	1,426	509	580
HEATON	1,630	677	955
RUMWORTH	1,300	700	1,861

These figures also indicate the effect that the Industrial Revolution had on Rumworth, whilst Lostock remained agricultural and hardly affected. Heaton's residential population grew with the influx of mill owners and industrialists with newly acquired wealth.

Census Records for Lostock 1841

Rumworth Mill Bridge

The original Rumworth Mill Bridge (at the entrance to the Lostock Arms car park) was brick built and narrow but is referred to as some of great importance, providing the only route for vehicle traffic from Horwich to Deane and Bolton. The reference also states "at what date Rumworth Mill disappeared is not recorded, but as a cornmill it would doubtless be one of those provided by the landlord for the use of the tenants".

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Broadgate Farm

The original Broadgate Farm stood at the top of the rise of Junction Road West (Broadgate Lane up to about 1900)

The farm was the seat of the Marsh family from time immemorial and is often claimed as the birth place of George Marsh, the Martyr in 1515. George Marsh was educated at the free Grammar School in Bolton and brought up as a farmer with his father. At the age of 25 he married the daughter of a respectable person in the neighbourhood. Following the early death of his wife, he went to Cambridge and was subsequently ordained. He returned to Lancashire a dedicated Protestant, and preached the reformed doctrins in Deane, Bolton Bury and Eccles.

Unfortunately Queen Mary had ascended the throne and such doctrines were now considered heresy. He was accused and surrendered himself to Judge Barton at Smithills Hall from where he was sent for further examiniation to the Earl of Derby at Lathom Hall. He was subsequently committed to prison at Lancaster and from there was removed to Chester for examination by the Bishop of Chester, he steadfastly refused to recant and when all persuasion failed he was condemned to the stake as a heretic.

On the 24th April 1955 George Marsh was burned. Members of his family were still living at Broadgate Farm until early in 1860. The old farm house of rough stone walls and thatched roof became too dilapidated for habitation and was allowed to tumble down and the farmland was apportioned among the adjacent farms.

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George Marsh Memorial

Town's faith is put to the test

ON THE morning of April 24, 1555, George Marsh was taken from his cell in the North Gate of the city of Chester and conducted by the local sheriffs to a Spital Broughton where a stake waited for him among a pile of wooden faggots.

This was to be the place of his execution. . .

George Marsh was a heretic and he was going to burn. Even at the last moment his faith was tested by a chance of life. An official offered him a pardon if he would recant and abjure his heretical opinions. But Marsh was determined. "Not on that condition," he replied. They chained him to the stake and kindled the fire, which consumed him slowly. His last words were an agonised cry: "Father of heaven, have mercy on me!"

George Marsh was born in Bolton in 1515. What brought him to the stake? And what sort of world did he live in where such sacrifices could be made and such cruelties perpetrated by reasonable people who believed themselves to be doing God's work? The historical over view is simple enough. King Henry VIII, eager for a male heir and also head over heels in love with Anne Boleyn, sought to have his marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled. But because of pressure exerted on the Pope by Catherine's powerful relatives the request was denied. Henry therefore decided to separate the Church of England from the Church of Rome.

The Act of Supremacy was passed in 1534. But this did not make England a Protestant country. Henry remained Catholic in his opinions and practices and was quite capable of incinerating any reformer who went too far. When Henry died in 1547 he was succeeded by his son, the nine year old Edward VI.

During his short reign, religion in England was extensively reformed. The Book of Common Prayer was written, the Mass and various holy days abolished. Edward was an enthusiastic follower of the new dispensation, of the teachings of Luther and Calvin. He hated idols, thought the Mass to be superstition and said of the then Pope that he was "the true son of the Devil".

It was against the background of these changes that George Marsh flourished. But, unfortunately for George Marsh, Edward VI did not last for long. In 1553 he died of a respiratory disease which filled his lungs with ulcers. He was succeeded by his elder sister, Mary, the daughter of Catherine of Aragon, a staunch and sincere Roman Catholic who was determined to bring her country back into the communion of the world church. She was also determined to pay back the Protestants and reformers who had made her mother's life such a misery.

On February 9, 1555, Bishop Hooper of Gloucester was burned at the stake. Bishops Ridley, Latimer and Archbishop Cranmer followed, and in all 280 people were executed in the same manner in a three year period. George Marsh was one of them. Not much is known for sure of George Marsh's early years. He was born of yeoman stock -- a yeoman was a small, independent landholder and cultivator -- either at Broadgate Farm, Rumworth or more likely at Marsh Fold in Halliwell.

His parents had him educated, probably at the Bolton Grammar School. He became a farmer, marrying in around 1540. After the death of his wife he felt the urge to study religion and leaving his children in the care of his mother, he became a student at Cambridge University, which was a hotbed of the new Protestant teachings.

Marsh wasn't the only Boltonian at Cambridge, and he wasn't the only one to suffer during the reign of Queen Mary. James and Leonard Pilkington, sons of the lord of manor of Rivington, were Cambridge students, active Protestants, and leading debaters. They fled to the Continent to escape the Marian persecution. So did Thomas, Ralph and John Lever of Darcy Lever. All were Cambridge men, and Thomas Lever was one of the most famous and passionate of the Protestant Reformers. By 1551 he was master of St John's College, but the advent of Queen Mary made his position untenable and he fled abroad.

By the 1540s then Protestantism was already strongly established in Bolton, for all that the county of Lancashire was renowned throughout England for its staunch Catholicism.

Why should this be?

Some time around this period the antiquarian John Leland visited Bolton and this is the entry he made in his itinerary, published in 1558;

"Bolton-upon-Moore Market stondeth most by cotton and coarse yerne. Divers villages in the Mores about Bolton do make cottons. Nether the site nor the ground abowte Bolton is so good as it is abowte Byri. They burne at Bolton some canale, but more se cole -- of which the pits be not far off. They burne Turfe also."

"Se cole" is of course sea coal and there is a mention of it being dug in Bolton as early as 1337. "Turfe" is peat, and the "cottons" referred to are in fact a type of woollen goods. But if Bolton stood (stondeth) mostly by its manufactures as early as the 1540s, then this might explain the strength of Protestantism in the town.

It seems certain that Bolton was more than a farming town even in the 16th century. We may imagine farm labourers and their families spinning yarns in their cottages up on the moors and sending them down to be retailed in the Market, which was held every Monday in what is now Churchgate. The landlords probably supplied the raw material and then sold the finished product on.

We have seen that a fulling, or a cloth cleaning mill was established by Lawrence Brownlow on the banks of Eagley Brook as early as 1483. Already Bolton was to some extent "industrialised". This would have made it the ideal seedbed for Protestantism. The trade in bulk yarns and "cottons" would have brought Boltonian merchants and businessmen into contact with natives of the southeast and especially London, where belief in the doctrines of the Swiss domiciled John Calvin was strong.

So as cotton was exported, Protestantism was imported and Bolton was well on the way to becoming the "Geneva of the North". In 1557 the Protestants of Bolton resisted the payment of tithes (a tax in which a 10th part of yearly income was surrendered) to the Catholic Church reinstated by Queen Mary. The leading offenders included four Cromptons, one Bradshaw and a Mr Robert Bolton.

George Marsh graduated from Cambridge in 1551 or 1552, and became quickly first a curate, then a deacon, and then a priest. He did not preach in Bolton or Lancashire (there was probably no need -- James Pilkington and Thomas Lever did preach in Bolton, and probably to good effect) but rather in London and Leicestershire, and quickly made a name for himself.

When Mary came to the throne he decided to flee abroad, but first he returned home to Lancashire to visit his family and friends. This proved a fatal miscalculation. Marsh, whose London preaching had brought him to the attention of the Earl of Derby, was arrested in March 1554. Actually it seems likely that the people who arrested Marsh did not want to burn him at the stake, rather they wanted to return him to the Catholic fold.

His interrogations began with Andrew Barton in the Green Chamber at Smithills Hall -- where Marsh left the famous footprint which can still be seen. He was moved to interrogation at Lathom Hall by the priests Robert Brassey and Richard Gerard. Interrogations were conducted gently, the aim being to convince him of the error of his ways. Even when he was condemned at Chester, Bishop Choates gave him repeated chances to recant. But George Marsh remained true to his beliefs and the flames took him.

From the Bolton Evening News, first published Tuesday 16th Sep 2003.
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