Earlestown
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Earlestown Town Hall |
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The Viaduct seen from the Sankey Valley Country Park |
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Detail of the viaduct from third arch |
Earlestown forms the western part of the former urban district of
Newton-le-Willows, but is now in the
Metropolitan Borough of St Helens,
Merseyside,
England.
The town is named after
Hardman Earle (
11 July 1792 -
25 January 1877) who was the Chairman of the
London and North Western Railway. The railway leased the
Viaduct Foundry from Messrs.
Jones and Potts. The foundry was so named because of its proximity to the viaduct Stephenson built so that the
Liverpool and Manchester Railway could cross the Sankey valley. The foundry became ever busier and the houses that were constructed to house its workers became the town. The other major employer was
coal mining.
In
1862 locomotive building was concentrated on
Crewe, while Earlestown became the major wagon works. By
1900 it was producing 4000 new wagons, with 13000 major repairs, along with 200 new horse-drawn vehicles. At amalgamation into the
LMS,
mass production methods were introduced. The works provided all of the railway's needs for ironwork, and continued into the first half of the
twentieth century. At the
1963 rationalisation of
British Railways, Earlestown was closed, and the work transferred to
Horwich.
Earlestown has a market, an impressive town hall and a
railway station with frequent services to
Liverpool,
Manchester,
Warrington and North
Wales.
Earlestown also has a town centre containing many shops, a scattering of pubs and even a nightclub called Xenon (Also known as Chasers).
Earlestown is also well located as far as the road network is concerned, being close to junction 9 of the
M62 motorway, junctions 21A, 22 and 23 of the
M6 motorway, and the
A580 East Lancashire Manchester-Liverpool road.
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www.earlestown.com*
www.newton-le-willows.com
