Pendlebury

For other uses, see Pendlebury (disambiguation).

Template:Infobox England place with map Pendlebury is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of the City of Salford, Greater Manchester, England.

Lying about 5 miles to the north-west of the city of Manchester, and about six miles south-east of Bolton, Pendlebury together with neighbouring districts of Swinton and Clifton, formed the Borough of Swinton and Pendlebury.

Geography and administration

Civic history

The Borough of Swinton and Pendlebury was amalgamated into the City of Salford in 1974 as a result of local government reforms.

Prior to this, Swinton and Pendlebury was a municipal borough of the administrative county of Lancashire, which contained Pendlebury along with Swinton and Clifton. Swinton and Pendlebury received its Charter of Incorporation from the 18th Earl of Derby on September 29, 1934 at a ceremony in Victoria Park, Swinton (at that time the council meetings were held in Victoria House in the park).

Incorporation of Clifton into the Borough of Swinton and Pendlebury was a result of the abolition of the predecessor, Barton-upon-Irwell Urban District.

Pendlebury sits almost midway between Manchester and Bolton and is neighboured by Irlams o' th' Height and Prestwich in the county of Greater Manchester.

In terms of representation at Westminster, the district is presently part of the Eccles Constituency which will be reformed in the next General Election. Due to population movements, the Boundary Commission for England has recently opted to reduce the number of MPs who cover Greater Manchester, with Pendlebury becoming part of a newly defined Salford and Eccles Constituency. The other Wards in the new constituency will be Claremont, Eccles, Irwell Riverside, Langworthy, Ordsall, Swinton North, Swinton South, and Weaste and Seedley.

History

Early history

Pendlebury's records go back to 1201 when it was linked with the Manor of Shoresworth, the original derivation having been "Pendleburg".

When Swinton and Pendlebury received its Charter of Incorporation in 1934, the new borough council required larger premises and launched a competition to design a new town hall. The winners were architects Sir Percy Thomas and Ernest Prestwich. The land of the former Swinton Industrial Schools on Chorley Road in Swinton was purchased for £12,500 and the foundation stone of the new town hall laid there on 17th October 1936. The town hall opened for business on September 17, 1938 and is now the administrative headquarters of the City Council that was created in 1974.

Industrial Revolution and coal

The northern edge of Pendlebury saw extensive coal extraction from several pits up until the closure of Agecroft Colliery in the 1990s. Agecroft was opened in 1960 following an investment of £9,000,000 and seven years of establishment works - making it the first new pit to be sunk in Lancashire after the Second World War. Agecroft stood on the site of Lumn's Colliery that was itself abandoned in 1932 and had an unusual arrangement of winding gear, which was concealed in three huge towers - the tallest of which was 174 ft high. The colliery exported much of its coal to the CEGB's Agecroft Power Station, via a purpose designed conveyor system that included a dedicated bridge across Agecroft Road.

Active mine workings finished in 1990, and the Agecroft Colliery site is now the home to a business park. Predecessors to Agecroft Colliery included Wheatsheaf Colliery (located next to the A666 (Bolton Road) on a site that now hosts a McDonald's fast food restaurant), Wet Earth Colliery (in Clifton) (featured in several of Lowry's works), the aforementioned Clifton Hall Colliery (in Clifton) which was on the south side of Lumns Lane and Newtown Colliery). The Kearsley, Clifton, Pendlebury and Pendleton Miners' Association was established in 1888 and became the Pendlebury Branch of the National Union of Mineworkers in 1959. With the decline of the industry, the once popular Pendlebury Miners' Club was inevitably demolished in the 1990s.

Landmarks

St Augustine's Church (C of E)

The architectural highlight of the town is the Grade 1 listed gothic style St Augustine's Church, which was built by George Fredrick Bodley between 1871 and 1874 and is widely acknowledged as his finest work. The churchyard contains a memorial to the 178 men and boys who lost their lives in the Clifton Hall Colliery disaster of 1885. The church itself became known as the 'miners' cathedral'. The vicar at the time of the disaster was said to have conducted funerals all day ( 64 of the victims are buried at St. Augustine's ). The disaster was due to an underground explosion of firedamp - Clifton Hall Colliery eventually closed altogether in 1929. In May 2006, St. Augustine's became the focal point of a campaign by English Heritage to save 19 places of worship in Greater Manchester from falling into dilapidation.

Agecroft Hall and the Langleys

Another interesting building with links to Pendlebury is the Tudor style Agecroft Hall which was erected of half-timbering on a stone base close to the River Irwell.

The hall was the Manor House to the Prestwich family until Johanna de Prestwich married Robert de Langley - subsequently the Langleys, formerly of Middleton, are recorded as residing at Agecroft Hall in 1389. The Langleys went on to be a powerful local family for several centuries with major land holdings right across the area.

Sir Robert Langley played a part in the deposition and murder of King Richard II of England, and was appointed as Rector of Radcliffe in 1385 and the following year was made Dean of York, an appointment that was blocked by Pope Boniface IX. On his death the larger portion of Sir Robert's manor and estates went to his elder daughter Anne which subsequently became part of the Reddish estates through marriage, and his extensive land holdings in Polefield (Unsworth, now part of the Metropolitan Borough of Bury) passed to his other daughter Dorothy. Thus by the estates passing to the female descendants of the line, the Langleys were subsumed into other families including the de Traffords and Daunteseys through marriage.

The Langley family history had already achieved notoriety by the early 15th century, when in October 1404, Charles Langley was elected Bishop of London and Archbishop of York, despite opposition from Rome - the Pope went on to excommunicate Langley as well as the King who promoted him. In the 1662 Hearth Tax returns, Agecroft Hall was recorded as having 11 hearths out of a total of 35 in the whole of Pendlebury.

At the end of the 19th century industrialisation swept through the Irwell Valley. Coal pits were opened all around Agecroft Hall, railway tracks were cut across the manor and the sinking of an abandoned colliery made a dirty lake on the edge of the estate. The house fell into disrepair and was sold at auction in 1925 to Mr & Mrs Thomas C. Williams. The structure was dismantled, crated, shipped across the Atlantic Ocean, and then painstakingly reassembled in Windsor Farms, Richmond, Virginia, USA. Today, Agecroft Hall stands re-created, in a setting chosen to be reminiscent of its original site in Pendlebury near the River Irwell.

The Langley name is still honoured locally by having several streets named after them as well as the Langley Mill and Langley housing estate in Middleton.

Present day

Pendlebury still features a mix of industrial and residential areas despite having lost all its mines and most of its mills, along with the once mighty Gerrard's factory on Pendlebury Road just south of the Manchester to Wigan railway line.

The Acme Mill that was so important in shaping Lowry's perceptions and which was the first spinning mill in the UK to be entirely electrically powered, was situated off Swinton Hall Road but demolished in the 1980s to make way for a housing estate.

Also now demolished is Agecroft Power Station, which stood on the site currently occupied by Forest Bank Prison. Development of the neighbouring site of the former Agecroft Colliery into an industrial park has helped to provide some replacement jobs.

A major modern day employer is the Dorma Group situated in Lees Street (off Station Road) and the Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service also has its headquarters in the town.

Royal Manchester Children's Hospital

Pendlebury has been the home for the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital since 1873. However the RMCH is set to close (along with its sister hospital Booth Hall) with its functions relocated to a newly developed site alongside the pre-existing Manchester Royal Infirmary.

Sport

In the world of sport, St John's Churchyard (C of E) is the resting place of Geoff Bent, former resident of the district and one of the Busby Babes at Manchester United FC who perished in the Munich Air Disaster of 6th February 1958.

St. John's is also the resting place of the legendary captain of Swinton Rugby Club, Jim Valentine who was an England rugby union international during the late Victorian era. He was tragically killed by lightning at Barmouth on Monday, 25th of July 1904 whilst on holiday, four days before he was due to celebrate his 38th birthday. His 48 tries for "The Lions" in the 1888-89 season still stands as a club record.

The world famous former home of Swinton RLFC, the Station Road ground, which held numerous internationals and major rugby league matches before its closure in 1992 was in fact based in Pendlebury. Boundary Road that marked the traditional divide with Swinton can be found on the southern side of the Manchester-Wigan railway line that ran behind the former main stand. (However, the true and actual Swinton Parish boundary is a little further down Station Road where the row of terraced houses ends and the B&Q car park begins). The site of the ground, which was home to a squash club in its later years, is now a housing estate. After an exile of 14 years, Swinton Lions announced in August 2006 an intention to return to Swinton and Pendlebury (M27) at a site adjacent to Agecroft Road, Pendlebury.

Despite carrying the name of a different suburb of Salford (which featured the club's earlier home), Langworthy ARLFC have been based in Pendlebury (at Rabbit Hills playing fields, Bolton Road) for over 20 years, whilst their local rivals Folly Lane ARLFC operate little more than a mile away on the Blue Ribbon field between the ends of Fraser and Heron Streets and the Manchester-Wigan railway line. Both clubs have produced many players that have gone on to join rugby league's professional ranks.

Local side the Pendlebury Coyotes won the Amateur's World Championship in inline hockey at under-21 level in 2006 and were runners up in the World Championship at senior level.

Transport

Pendlebury is the starting point of the infamously labelled A666 (Bolton Road) road which runs through the district and was the main route between Manchester and Bolton prior to the opening of the M61 motorway.

Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal

For the majority of Pendlebury's time as a mining town, the Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal that was fully opened in 1797 provided the main means of transporting the coal away from the collieries. Many of the collieries set up ad-hoc tram-ways to link themselves to the canal. Coal was taken to wharves at Bolton, Bury, Radcliffe and Salford, as well across the River Irwell to Manchester. As late as 1905 over half a million tons of coal a year was still being carried. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many lengths of the canal subsided due to under-mining; maps from 1881-2 show areas of coal that ran beneath the canal that were bought by the canal company in order to safeguard it from subsidence. The canal progressively became disused from 1924; it was finally closed in 1961, though coal was still carried for a short distance in Bury until 1966. A canal restoration society was founded in 1987 and the society persuaded Bury, Bolton and Salford councils to protect the line of the canal from development - restoration was announced by British Waterways in 2002.

Railways

Pendlebury was served by a Pendlebury railway station on the Manchester Victoria to Wigan line for over 80 years, until its closure on Saturday 1st October 1960 by British Railways due to low usage. The Irlams o' th' Height railway station, which was in the eastern extreme of the borough at the bottom of Bank Lane, had been closed for similar reasons 5 years earlier.

The former Station Hotel on Bolton Road, still stands opposite the location of Pendlebury station but has been rebranded as the Isis Italian Restaurant.

Perhaps ironically, the surviving Swinton railway station is also located in Pendlebury, meaning that the town once featured 3 railway stations within its boundaries.

Pendlebury also featured a link between Patricroft on Stephenson's 1830 Manchester to Liverpool line and Clifton Junction, until the Black Harry Tunnel collapse of 1953. The collapse caused 5 deaths and saw 2 houses disappear from Temple Drive in neighbouring Swinton - the line never reopened although much of its length is now a recreational footpath.

Notable residents

Pendlebury was once home to two pre-eminent names in the arts who, at different times, lived in houses next to each other on Station Road - painter L. S. Lowry (1887 to 1976) and actor Sir Ben Kingsley (born 1943).

Laurence Stephen Lowry

L. S. Lowry lived at 117 Station Road, Pendlebury from roughly 1912 to 1948, his parents having moved there from the Victoria Park area of Rusholme in south Manchester when he was 9. Following the death of his mother in 1939, Lowry suffered depression and the house fell into disrepair and was ultimately reposessed by the landlord, following which he moved to Mottram-in-Longdendale in Cheshire.

It was during his years in Pendlebury that Lowry produced the majority of his famous works, having been inspired by the industrial scenes about him. It has been reported that, having missed a train from Pendlebury station, Lowry came across the changing of shifts at the nearby Acme Mill and marvelled at the spectacle - this being the moment he decided that industrial scenes were fitting for further work. His picture 'Pendlebury Scene' showed an aspect of Acme Mill from George Street.

In addition to the famous 'one hit wonder' by Brian and Michael, Lowry's life has been celebrated by construction of The Lowry at the regenerated former Manchester Docks Salford Quays. His name has also been adopted for a neighbouring shopping centre the Lowry Outlet and Salford's first ever 5 star hotel the Lowry Hotel. Although it has to be said that the grandiose nature of these developments may well have passed the man himself by!

Sir Ben Kingsley

Sir Ben Kingsley (real name Krishna Bhanji) was born in Scarborough, but undertook his education at Manchester Grammar School whilst living at 119 Station Road, Pendlebury. One of Kingsley's two sisters and his mother still live in the area.

Ryan Giggs

Pendlebury was the childhood home of Manchester United FC's Ryan Giggs, who came to the area when his father Danny Wilson switched codes and signed for Swinton Lions RLFC from Cardiff RUFC. As a junior Giggs learned his trade at Deans FC in neighbouring Swinton and attended Moorside High School.

External links

• Swinton and Pendlebury, Local History article from Salford City Council.
• Pendlebury Coyotes, Pendlebury Coyotes Inline Hockey Team
• Swinton Lions, Swinton Lions RLFC
• Central Manchester and Manchester Children's University NHS Trust, Information on the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital