Bolton

Bolton grew rapidly as a textile and metal-bashing town during the 18th & 19th centuries. The Spinning Mule was invented here: it spun yarn into cotton thread faster and more efficiently than earlier processes, to feed the great hungry looms, and in its heyday there were 50 million Mules in Lancashire alone. A few were still in use for specialist fine yarns until the 1980s, but the Lancashire cotton trade collapsed in the 1950s, unable to compete with cheap imports. Bolton and similar towns slumped.

In 1974 Manchester and its surrounding towns, including Bolton, were separated from Lancashire and became Greater Manchester. Bolton is nowadays mainly a commuter town for the big city. With a population in 2011 of 194,189 Bolton may well be "the biggest town in Britain" but its bids to be recognised as a city itself continue to be rebuffed.

The town's traditional dialect is more "Lanky" (Lancashire) than Mancunian. You're unlikely nowadays to hear "thee / tha / thi" for "you / your" unless ironically, but you might hear "owt" (anything), "nowt" (nothing), "summat" (something) and "reeght" (right). Thus, a trivial matter is dismissed as "summat 'n nowt." Residents of Westhoughton are dubbed Keawyeds - cow heads; there's a bovine legend about this but it's probably from their victory banquet after Waterloo in 1815, when they roasted an ox and paraded the skull as "Old Boney".

• Visit Bolton tourist information.

By plane: Manchester Airport (MAN ^IATA) has a huge range of flights. An hourly direct train from the airport takes 40 min to Bolton, otherwise change at Manchester Oxford Road.

Trains run to Bolton frequently from Manchester Victoria and Manchester Piccadilly, 20 min, with a walk-up single costing less than £5. The train from the airport continues north from Bolton to Horwich Parkway, Preston, Lancaster, Carlisle and Glasgow or Edinburgh. Bolton has two trains per hour from Blackpool via Preston, and two per hour from Wigan.

🌍 Bolton Interchange is central, 5mins walk from the Town Hall.

🌍 Horwich Parkway is next to Bolton Wanderers football ground and Middlebrook retail park.

There are also small station halts at Lostock, Westhoughton, Hindley, Daisy Hill, Blackrod (for Horwich town) and Hall i' th' Wood.

By bus: National Express runs three times a day direct from London Victoria, taking six hours.

From Manchester, Bus 8 runs from Shudehill Interchange every ten min, taking 50 min (don't use Bus 37, which takes 90 min). There are also frequent but slow buses to Bolton from Salford, Bury, Rochdale, Blackburn, Preston, Chorley and Wigan.

The bus station is attached to the north side of the railway station.

By car for town centre exit M60 / M61 onto A666. For the football stadium stay on M61 to jcn 6.

Bolton is not on the Greater Manchester tram network, so use the bus for outlying places. Bus 525 runs to Hall i' th' Wood. Buses passing near Bolton Wanderers football ground are the 505, 575, 915, 918 and 996, or you can take the train to Horwich Parkway.

• 🌍 Bolton Town Hall, opened in 1873, is a confident statement of municipal pride, in neoclassical style with a baroque clock tower. Leeds and Portsmouth city halls were built to the same pattern. The elegant Le Mans Crescent behind was added in the 1930s.
• Museum, Art Gallery and Aquarium, Le Mans Crescent BL1 1SL (by Town Hall). M-Sa 9AM-5PM, Su 10AM-4PM. Visitors particularly enjoy the Ancient Egyptian collection. There's an aquarium in the basement. Free. (updated Aug 2019)
• The famous Fish and Veg Market, the newly developed Market Hall and Churchgate are worth visiting.
• Bolton Parish Church is Victorian. Samuel Crompton lies in the graveyard.
• 🌍 Hall i' th' Wood, Crompton Way BL1 8UH (a mile north of Bolton off A58). Mar-Oct: Tu 10AM-4PM, Sa noon-4PM. 16th-century mansion, timber-framed with stone additions, used not as a single home but as multiple lets for 17th- and 18th-century cottage industry. One of those occupants was Samuel Compton, who designed his "Spinning Mule" here. This helped textile processes grow bigger and bigger, into "dark satanic mills", and the days of cottage industry were ended. The Hall fell into disrepair but was bought up by Lord Leverhulme the "Sunlight Soap" tycoon, who gifted it to the town. (updated Aug 2019)
• 🌍 Prestolee Aqueduct is a four-arched stone aqueduct built in 1793 to carry the Manchester, Bolton & Bury Canal over the River Irwell. The canal climbed from Manchester over Pendleton to Prestolee where it branched, to Bolton and to Bury. This section is still in water and you can walk along the towpath but it's not navigable: work is under way to partly restore it.

• 🌍 Turton Tower, Chapeltown BL7 0HG (On hill 4 miles north of Bolton on B6391). Mar-Oct: W-Su 10AM-4PM. Odd-looking building, which started out as a 15th-century pele tower, then a stone mansion was added in late Tudor times. It was derelict by the 19th century but restored, with Dutch gables covering the stonework. With extensive gardens. It's nowadays within Blackburn, but is easiest accessed from Bolton, with Bromley Cross rwy station a mile or so south. Adult £6. (updated Aug 2019)
• 🌍 Holy Trinity Church (Anglican) is in Horwich. Consecrated in 1831, it's an example of a "Commissioners' church" (aka a "Waterloo" or "Million Act" church). These were an initiative following the end of the Napoleonic wars to revive the decrepit Church of England, to be a national thank-offering for victory, and by Christian moral teaching to prevent a Jacobin-style revolution in Britain.

• 🌍 Octagon Theatre, Howell Croft (5 minute walk from bus and rail stations), ☏ +44 1204 520661, info@octagonbolton.co.uk. Modern producing theatre with flexible (in-the-round, thrust, and end-stage) main stage supplemented by studio theatre. Touring productions and stand-up comedy supplement in-house productions. (updated Nov 2022)
• Parks and countryside: central in town are Queen's Park and Moss Bank Park.

🌍 Moses Gate Country Park, also known as Crompton Lodges, is on the Farnworth & Little Lever road.

🌍 Eatock Lodge in Westhoughton is a small wooded nature reserve on "The Hoskers", a reclaimed colliery site. Also nearby is Cunningham Clough, a bosky gully with lots of scrubs for the dog to fossick in.

• St Gregory's Social Club, 13 Church Street, Farnworth BL4 8AG, ☏ +44 1204 573168, +44 7513 897949. M-Th 7-11:30PM, F-Su 5PM-midnight. The one Phoenix Nights was based on. It's variously a function suite for events like weddings and funerals, a TV sports venue for big matches, an event space and has visiting acts. (updated Aug 2019)
• Watch football at 🌍 Bolton Wanderers. They were promoted in 2021 so they now play soccer in League One, the game's third tier. Their home ground, capacity 28,800, is called the "University of Bolton Stadium" but is better known as the Macron or Reebok. It's on Burnden Way BL6 6JW, next to Middlebrook retail park five miles west of town centre. In 2022 the stadium hosted games in the Rugby League World Cup, postponed from 2021.
• Walk in the West Pennine Moors. Their most prominent features Rivington Pike and Winter Hill TV mast are across the boundary with Chorley. Great views across the North West - on a clear day you can make out Blackpool Tower and the mountains of Wales.
• Ironman UK Triathlon. Held in Bolton in early July. General entry from £550. (updated Dec 2022)
• Bolton Food & Drink Festival is held over the August bank holiday weekend. The next is expected to be in Aug 2023.

• Town centre retail areas are the Market Place (the former market hall) and Crompton Place (formerly the Arndale Centre). There's also a large Marks & Spencer on Deansgate.
• The edge-of-town retail park is Middlebrook, near the football stadium towards Horwich.

Bolton is home to the University of Bolton (formerly Bolton Institute).

As of June 2021, Bolton has 4G from O2 and Three, and 5G from EE and Vodafone.

In an emergency call 999 or 112 for Police, Ambulance, Fire Service or Coastguard. Call 101 to report concerns to the Police that do not require an emergency response.

• Manchester is an unmissable lively city, an easy day trip from Bolton.