A look at the future

THIS series of articles has been about the history of Bolton and the people who have lived here. How is the long, varied story of the town on the moors relevant to its modern inhabitants?

Are there lessons to be learned -- or was the series simply just a collection of pretty interesting stories?

We started our tale in the prehistoric period, in the chilly days following the end of the last Ice Age, when the glaciers had only just melted.

On the high moors, Mesolithic nomads and reindeer herders left scatters of flints which are still found in peat fire breaks to this day.

This provides the proof to clearly show our region has been inhabited, on and off, for about 10,000 years.

We saw that builders of the late Stone Age and the subsequent Bronze Age left memorials which lasted into our times, such as the stone circle at Cheetham Close and the burial mounds at Round Loaf and on Winter Hill.

Discoveries on a more human scale from those distant times included bronze spears, knives and palstaves and inscribed pots.

There was certainly a settlement of sorts in the Bolton area at least 5,000 years ago.

Roman roads skirted our town, and modern roads follow their lines even now.

The area in-between probably supported several Iron Age farmsteads, and the people, who lived there -- our ancestors -- were citizens of a great empire, which spanned the known world.

When the Romans left the Saxons arrived and they brought with them the name of "Botheltun".

This in itself shows our town has had its name (or something very like it) for at least 12,000 years.

We have recently been celebrating the town's Charter, which was granted to Bolton in 1253 at the instigation of William de Ferrers.

We should not forget that this Charter, and the permission to hold a market that was granted two years earlier in 1251, did not create Bolton. They simply recognised the existence of a going concern.

By 1251 Bolton was long established.

Industry came early to the little town on the moors.

Coal was being mined in the Fourteenth Century.

Coarse yam was being spun in the Fifteenth Century, and Lawrence Brownlow set up the first fulling mill on the banks of Eagley Brook in 1483 and used the proceeds to build Hall-i-th-Wood.

By 1550 Bolton "stood" by its coarse yams and cottons.

In the Seventeenth Century the emphasis shifted to fustians.

With industry came close contacts with the outside world, and especially with the great market of London and its new ideas in politics and religion.

We have seen how Bolton became the Puritan "Geneva of the North", how it produced its own Protestant Martyr in the form of George Marsh, how it stood for Parliament in the Civil War and how it paid a terrible price when Prince Rupert's forces sacked the town in 1644.

We also saw that not all of Bolton was Puritan.

There were those who stood for the King and the Old Ways.

In the Eighteenth Century the town produced several notable Jacobites, people like Francis Anderton and Peter Moss.

As Puritanism became Methodism and as John Wesley was being both listened to reverently by the serious minded and heckled and pelted by mobs of sinners and Sabbath breakers, two men of genius helped change the world forever.

From Richard Arkwright, sometime publican and peruke manufacturer on Bradshawgate, came not only the water frame but also the factory system.

His near contemporary, the shy and upright Samuel Crompton invented the spinning mule that allowed Britain to corner the market in fine-spun cottons.

The work of these two, and others, led Bolton into its Victorian heyday, when it was a key part of the sprawling Cottonopolis which made Britain's cloth before breakfast leaving the day free for the rest of the world.

Victorian Bolton was full of pomp and circumstance.

Its typical buildings were the Town Hall and the Parish Church.

Its most extraordinary son was William Lever, with his empire of trade and his remarkable, philanthropic achievements.

But for all its glories, Victorian was also a time of grinding hard work, belching mill chimneys and the sort of poverty scarcely imaginable today.

When the cotton industry slumped after the First World War the country was plunged into depression.

Bolton suffered, and was recorded in its suffering by the Mass Observation team, led by Tom Harrisson.

Mass Observation, and especially the atmospheric photographs taken by Humphrey Spender, tend to colour Bolton's image to this very day.

The ignorant from Southern parts of the country still tend to think in terms of cobblestones and the clatter of the clogs in the morning.

When Bolton turns up as the location for a television show it is almost invariably portrayed as a sink of industrial decay and urban alienation. Of course the glorious exception to this rule is the Bolton grown comedy series Phoenix Nights.

So what is to be learned from all this?

First, Bolton is durable.

It has lasted for a long time, through depressions, recessions, slumps, civil wars and world wars.

No matter how bad times may seem its people soldier on and usually come up trumps at the end.

When disaster strikes -- when the Cavaliers stormed the barrier, when the Pretoria Pit exploded killing more than 300 men and boys, when Zeppelins rained bombs on Deane or when a dreadful crush killed 33 at Burnden Park -- the reaction is quiet and dignified.

People grieve and get on with it.

That is why Bolton has lasted so long, and why it will last for a long while yet.

Second, Boltonians are still inventive and successful.

The tradition of Arkwright and Crompton, is by no means dead.

People from our town flourish in all fields.

We produce or educate scientists, celebrities, musicians, industrialists, writers and actors.

Think of Robert Shaw, Frank Finlay, Sir Ian McKellen, Shirley Anne Field. Then there comes Peter Kay, Sara Cox, and Badly Drawn Boy.

And names to add to Bolton's illustrious list of notables also includes Bill Naughton, Steve Gallagher, Jonathan Gash, Sir Harry Kroto, the Foster brothers, the Warburton family, to name but a few.

We also seem to produce a large proportion of Britain's best chess players, with Nigel Short shining on the international stage.

Individual ingenuity drives progress.

It will continue to do so.

Finally, Bolton is complex.

Its people come from all over and are oddly sensitive to the general mood, making the town a key barometer for General Elections.

As recently as 1992 we returned two Conservatives -- Peter Thurnham and Tom Sackville, to one Labour politician -- the late, lamented David Young.

As the country swung to Labour in 1997, so did Bolton.

But it could just as easily swing back again.

As a whole, Boltonians don't go in for dogma.

They prefer to consider the issues and vote for the party that seems to have the strongest grasp on reality at the time.

Combine these three traits -- perseverance, inventiveness and a willingness to think twice -- and you have not only the key to Bolton's past but also the way ahead to an interesting future.

As the placard read during the Commonwealth cycling events at Rivington -- "Wish you were here. No Ferret Racing, No Flat Caps, No Smoking Chimneys, Just Sun and Scenery. . ."

. . . And plenty of history, and a future.

Mind you, that was before it started raining!