Bolton

Bolton ( BOHL-tən, locally BOH-tən) is a town in Greater Manchester in England. In the foothills of the West Pennine Moors, Bolton is between Manchester, Blackburn, Wigan, Bury and Salford. It is surrounded by several towns and villages that form the wider borough, of which Bolton is the administrative centre. The town is within the historic county boundaries of Lancashire. A former mill town, Bolton has been a centre for textile production since the 14th century when Flemish weavers settled in the area, introducing a wool and cotton-weaving tradition. It was a 19th-century boomtown, development largely coincided with the introduction of textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution. At its peak in 1929, its 216 cotton mills and 26 bleaching and dyeing works made it one of the largest and most productive centres of cotton spinning in the world. The British cotton industry declined sharply after the First World War and, by the 1980s, cotton manufacture had virtually ceased in the town. The town has a population of 184,073, whilst the wider metropolitan borough has a population of 296,169. Bolton originated as a small settlement in the moorland known as Bolton le Moors. In the English Civil War, the town was a Parliamentarian outpost in 1644 in a staunchly Royalist region and, as a result, the Royalist Prince Rupert of the Rhine led the 1644 storming of Bolton of 3,000 Royalist troops, which is also referred to as The Bolton Massacre, with 1,600 residents perished and 700 were taken prisoner. Bolton Wanderers football club now play home games at the Toughsheet Community Stadium in Horwich. Cultural interests include the Octagon Theatre and the Bolton Museum and Art Gallery, as well as one of the earliest public libraries established after the Public Libraries Act 1850. Bolton is of high strategic importance, being the location of missile production for the Ministry of Defence through the MBDA facility at Over Hulton.