Barrow Bridge Village
Barrow Bridge was a model village, in the township of Halliwell in Bolton, Greater Manchester,
Late 18th century: John and Robert Lord opened a cotton mill using water power from the Dean Brook to drive Crompton's mules. The brothers built 13 cottages near the mill for their workers.
1830 Thomas Bazley and Robert Gardner bought and demolished the mill, replacing it with Dean Mills, twin six-storey steam-powered mills situated on the east side of the brook at the entrance to the village.
By 1835 there was a cotton spinning and doubling mill.
Gardner and Bazley also created a model village on the hill-top, accessed by a flight of stone steps, with rows of cottages, a shop and an educational institute. Houses for the managers were built a short distance away, overlooking the brook.
1836 there was a co-operative shop managed by a committee of workmen from the mills. Wages were paid on Friday evenings and Saturday half-day closing was applied in the mills to permit shopping by the mill workers' wives. It turned into a self contained economic, social and educational community.
1840 Benjamin Disraeli visited the village in 1840; it is the basis of the fictional village Millbank in his novel, Coningsby, published in 1844.
1851 On October 11th the Prince Consort visited the village.
1861 William Callender bought Dean Mills. He attempted to revive its mutual improvement society and regularly addressed his workers on the values of literacy and self-help. He died in 1876.
The mill closed in 1877 because of a legal dispute amongst Callender's heirs which was only resolved in 1889. As a result the workforce was dispersed, and Barrow Bridge, the erstwhile model community, was soon known as Lancashire's ‘deserted village’.
Many of the cottages remain in this beauty spot, along with the mill's chimney.
1913 the mill was demolished.