In 1870-72, John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Worsley like this:
WORSLEY, a village, a township, a chapelry, and a sub-district, in Eccles parish, Barton-upon-Irwell district, Lancashire. The village stands on the Bridgewater canal, and on the Manchester, Tyldesley, and Wigan railway, 6½ miles WNW of Manchester; and has a post-office‡ under Manchester, a r. ...
station, a modern court-house for petty sessions, a literary institution, and nine schools. The township includes four other villages or hamlets; contains W., Ellenbrook, and Swinton chapelries; carries on cotton manufacture, iron-working, brick-making, and extensive coal mining; and has three churches, a school-church, several dissenting chapels, the Manchester industrial schools, a national school, and charities £16. Acres, 6,240. Real property, £36,315; of which £5,200 are in mines, £23 in iron-works, and £48 in gasworks. Pop. in 1851, 10,189; in 1861, 11,875. Houses, 2,232. The manor was known, at the Norman conquest, as Workedesly; belonged then to Elias de Workedesly; came to the Duke of Bridgewater; and , with W. Hall, belongs now to the Earl of Ellesmere. The Hall was built in 1840-6, after designs by Blore; is in a florid variety of the Tudor style; was visited, by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1851, by the Queen again, in 1857,-by the Prince of Wales, in 1869; and commands an extensive view A memorial column to the first Earl of Ellesmere crowns an adjacent height. A splendid system of tunnel navigation, connected with the Bridgewater canal, commences in the village; had the effect, when completed, of reducing the cost of conveying coals and other heavy goods 100 per cent.; and possesses great interest to geologists, for examining the strata which it traverses.-W. chapelry was made ecclesiastically parochial in 1863. Pop., about 2,300. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Manchester. Value, £250.* Patron, the Earl of Ellesmere. The church is recent, and in the decorated English style; and has a lofty spire. There are three small dissenting chapels.—The sub-district consists of W., and Clifton townships, and comprises 7,060 acres. Pop., 14,015. Houses, 2,597.
Worsley through time
Worsley is now part of Salford district. Click here for graphs and data of how Salford has changed over two centuries. For statistics about Worsley itself, go to Units and Statistics.
GB Historical GIS / University of Portsmouth, History of Worsley, in Salford and Lancashire | Map and description, A Vision of Britain through Time.
URL: https://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/place/356
Date accessed: 25th April 2024
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