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Westhoughton railway station

Former Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway stationsNorthern franchise railway stationsRailway stations in Great Britain opened in 1848Railway stations in the Metropolitan Borough of BoltonUse British English from February 2017
Westhoughton
Platform furniture, Westhoughton railway station (geograph 4531848)
Platform furniture, Westhoughton railway station (geograph 4531848)

Westhoughton railway station is one of the two stations which serve the town of Westhoughton, in the Metropolitan Borough of Bolton, Greater Manchester, north-western England. The station is 15+1⁄2 miles (24.9 km) north west of Manchester Piccadilly.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Westhoughton railway station (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Westhoughton railway station
The Moretons,

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Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 53.5558 ° E -2.5233 °
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Address

Westhoughton

The Moretons
BL5 3QX , Wingates
England, United Kingdom
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Platform furniture, Westhoughton railway station (geograph 4531848)
Platform furniture, Westhoughton railway station (geograph 4531848)
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Nearby Places

Westhoughton Mill
Westhoughton Mill

Westhoughton Mill or Rowe and Dunscough's Mill, in Mill Street in Westhoughton, near Bolton in the historic county of Lancashire, was the site of a Luddite arson attack in 1812. The mill was built in 1804 by Richard Johnson Lockett, a Macclesfield man who lived at Westhoughton Hall. He leased the mill to Thomas Rowe of Manchester in 1808. During 1811 and 1812 Luddites had been attacking powered mills throughout the English North and Midlands to such an effect that the government in February 1812 passed the Frame Breaking Act making the damaging of powered looms punishable by death. Skilled weavers lost their livelihoods when production moved from a domestic system to new manufactories causing severe hardship and unrest among the workers. Unemployed weavers joined the Luddites believing their only hope was to destroy the machines. The government repressed rebellion by punishing offenders severely. In 1812 Luddite disorder around Manchester reached its peak.On Friday 28 April, a large crowd of weavers and mechanics gathered in Westhoughton with the intention of destroying the power looms in Rowe and Dunscough's Mill. The Scots Greys, deployed in Bolton by the government to quell unrest, were sent for but all was quiet when the contingent arrived and they returned to their quarters. Soon after they left, the factory and its contents were set alight and when the military returned the premises were destroyed and the culprits had disappeared. Some rioters gathered in the village in the evening demanding food and drink or money and the military was recalled and the Riot Act was read. Information about the ringleaders was collected and 24 men were arrested and sent for trial at Lancaster Assizes. Some were discharged but, "for having wilfully and maliciously set on fire and burnt a Weaving Mill, Warehouse and Loom Shop in the possession of Thomas Rowe and Thomas Dunscough at Westhoughton", Job Fletcher, James Smith, Thomas Kerfoot and Abraham Charlson, were sentenced to death and hanged and nine men were transported. After the Luddite act, manufacturers avoided the township until Chadwick's Silk Mill was built in the early 1850s. Westhoughton Hall was attacked at the same time.According to James Thomas Staton's account of the incident in The Brunnin' o' Westhowtun Factory (1857), government spies were embedded among the workers and the mill's management had set a trap to ensnare discontent workers by inciting violence among them; some researchers believe this scenario to have been likely.The mill was rebuilt after the attack and converted to a corn mill, until it was bought in 1840 by Peter Ditchfield, a cotton manufacturer who restored it to a cotton mill. On his death in 1854 the mill, by then employing some 40 people, passed to his son, Peter Ditchfield, jnr. After many years of spinning cotton and making flock, production ceased and the mill stood empty. It was eventually demolished in 1912 and the site is still (2017) a vacant lot.

Daisy Hill railway station
Daisy Hill railway station

Daisy Hill railway station serves the Daisy Hill area of Westhoughton, in the Metropolitan Borough of Bolton, Greater Manchester, England. Daisy Hill is one of the principal stations that lie on the Manchester-Southport Line, between Southport and Manchester. The station is located 14 miles (23 km) west of Manchester Victoria with regular Northern services to these towns as well as Salford, Swinton and Hindley, with onward trains to Kirkby and Southport. Due to considerable housing development in the area, it is now a well-used commuter station and (according to official Strategic Rail Authority figures) has in the past vied (with Atherton railway station and Walkden railway station) for the position of the most used station on the line. In the period 2004 to 2012 passenger usage has more than doubled. The slight drop in usage in 2006-07 may be due to statistical correction rather than genuine decline. A substantial increase in usage (2008–09, see SRA figures right) was reported. Part of this was explained in the SRA notes as an attempt more accurately to include local (transport executive) tickets. In the 1970s the service was sporadic, yet the railway station was fully staffed. This continued until recent times. Until 2008, Daisy Hill railway station (unlike the then more frequently used next railway station of Hindley and the railway stations of many other major towns and even cities in Britain) was continuously staffed from before the first train to after the last – just over 18 hours. Since 2008, however, the railway station ticket office has closed at 7.25pm (having opened at 6.25am). This is still a longer period of staffing than many other stations in the United Kingdom. The town's other station (Westhoughton railway station) which, until recently enjoyed an even greater patronage, has been unstaffed since 1974.