Bolton developed as an important market town and centre of cloth production in the Middle Ages. The town was later besieged in the English Civil War and when the town fell to Royalist forces the heavy death toll became known as the Massacre of Bolton. In the years after the Civil War the town recovered and during the Industrial Revolution became one of the leading cotton spinning centres worldwide. Other complementary industries developed and a civic building and improvement programme through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries housed and provided facilities for the workforce. In recent decades manufacturing has dwindled, and Bolton is regenerating itself as a commercial and service centre.Illustrated throughout, this accessible historical portrait of the transformation that Bolton has undergone through the ages will be of great interest to residents, visitors and all those with links to the area.
