Chorley Then & Now

Once a major cotton spinning town, there were at one time over twenty mills in Chorley. The first steam-powered cotton mills and the Lancaster Canal to the east of the town were built in the late 1790s and the railway was connected to Chorley from Bolton in 1841. The Royal Ordnance Factory was established in 1939 and produced ammunition until winding down in 2002. Since then the biggest housing development in Lancashire has been taking place on the site: the building of a complete new village called Buckshaw. Despite the loss of some heritage, Chorley still has three mills in use locally, as well as Astley Hall and Park, the new Yarrow Valley Country Park and Healey Nab. In this book a wonderful collection of old photographs are compared and contrasted with modern equivalents, unveiling amazing changes and unexpected similarities.