Bolton 1844
ISBN 1-903004-86-1
Size 500mm x 548mm
Uncoloured size 600mm x 658mm

The map shows Bolton at an important transition in its history, transforming itself from a small market town into one of the major British industrial centres of the 19th Century. Bolton is the home of Samuel Crompton, inventor of the spinning mule, who opened his first cotton mill in the town in 1780. The cotton industry has continued to expand dramatically in the intervening years with the evidence of many mills and several bleach works sited in the fields around the old town centre. Several other industries, attracted by the coalfield on which Bolton stood, are seen to be operating in the area such as Burnden and School Hill Chemical Works, Springfield Paper Works and the Coronation Foundry in Hanover Street. Originally linked to the sea and the wider world by the 18th Century canal, the town has only just been connected to the developing Victorian railway network and the map reveals dramatically how the lines sliced through the ancient field and road pattern.

Despite the burgeoning industry which, over the next fifty years, will turn Bolton into a grimy Northern mill town, there is still in 1844 a feeling of charm and space with open countryside still only half a mile from Deansgate. The parkland of gentlemen's residences are seen within a mile of the centre of town. By the end of the century this area will be dominated by serried rows of terraced housing and smoky large scale industry.