Worsley

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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.

John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72)