Historical Jottings on some Smithills Farms

Just a few notes about six farms on the Smithills Estate: Green Nook, Cunliffes, Gilligants, Chadwicks and Higher and Lower Tongs.  If you are interested in the history of the farms and people in this area you may also be interested in the book Lives & Times of the Smithills Estate.

1850 OS Map - Some Smithills Farms

Green Nook

On the 1769 plan of the Smithills Estate, Green Nook is described as ‘John Cunliffe's Higher House' (his Lower House being Chadwick's Close).  It measured 29 acres, 3 roods and 22 perches and included a third part of Wimberry Moor.

Barnabas Dearden was the farmer there from 1851, who was a colourful character - previously a collier, and a father of eleven children.  In 1866, he got into trouble for being drunk in charge of a one-horse cart, and then again for leaving his cart on the road without any person in charge.   He complained in court, ‘It's wrung that, but I'll noan travel on th' road as that policeman is on, or has owt to doo wi’.  He died in 1880, aged 77, after falling from his cart and being run over.  He had visited Bolton on Saturday morning, but his horse and cart turned up back at the farm without him.  His wife went to search for him and found him dead on the road.

Cunliffes Farm 

Cunliffes is situated on Colliers Row Road, the old Bolton and Nightingale turnpike road.  It was previously called Chadwicks according to the 1769 plan of the estate; it was likely part of the land leased by Samuel Chadwick in the 1720s.  Stephen Cunliffe was the tenant in the 1760s, and the farm later adopted his family name.

In the mid-1800s, it appears to have been divided into two parts, one of 26 acres and the other 13 acres.  The smaller part was farmed by John & Mary Aston between 1841 and 1871, while the larger part was occupied by Thomas and Mary Brown and family from 1861.  Thomas Brown died in 1883 leaving an estate valued at £2,465.  Their son John Brown and his wife Amelia had taken on the farm by that time, and it continued in their family for another generation.   Janet Brown married James Kershaw, and that family were still operating as dairy farmers there in the late 1940s.

Gilligants Farm

The earliest record found of Gilligants is in the Halliwell Township book in 1746, when William Pendlebury was paid two pounds and two shillings for preventing it from being settled, presumably by unlawful trespassers.  Pendlebury remained interested in the farm, and in 1762, he leased it from Edward Byrom of Manchester, the owner of the Smithills Estate.  He also leased Sheepcote Green, which bordered the south side of Gilligants.

His daughter, Eleanor Pendlebury, married Richard Pilkington (1731 – 1797) of Stocks Farm in Horwich.  Pilkington was both a farmer and the local joiner, making fittings for neighbours’ houses, doors and windows, carts and weaving frames.  Benjamin Mayoh of Turton started subleasing Gilligants from Richard Pilkington in 1783, moving there to live with his wife Ann and their family a few years later.  They lived there for twenty or so years, into their sixties; Ann died in 1808, and Benjamin in 1814.

Chadwick Close

Situated off Coal Pit Road, it was probably part of lands occupied by Samuel Chadwick when the Smithills estate was sold in 1723.  On the 1769 plan of the Smithills Estate, the farm was recorded as the ‘lower house’ of John Cunliffe, who also leased Green Nook.

Thomas Cooper was resident at Chadwicks Close from 1802, and James Cooper from 1813 until his unfortunate demise in 1843 - freezing to death on the moors having gone to get a pair of clogs mended, and then gone drinking on the way home.   The farm was later tenanted by the Tonge and Shuttleworth families through to the early 1900s, with family connections going back to the Coopers who had moved there a century earlier.

Lower Tongs

In 1713, Lord Falcounberg granted a lease of this part of Lower Dean, adjoining Langshaw Ford Bridge, and a quarter part of the moor known as Higher or Great Dean.  The leaseholders were two yeomen, Ralph Fogg of Blackrod and James Smith of Newton, and the farm was said to have been previously in the possession of James Pendlebury.

By 1769, Ralph Tong was the tenant, the farm being then known as “Fog’s & Bolton’s”.  It would later become known by his name.  Ralph Tong died in 1804.  The returns for 1806 show that it was rated at £9 per annum and had a loom-shop.  Henry Rushton and his wife Betty were the tenants from 1814 until at least 1819.    Later came James and Mary Sewart, who were resident for thirty years between 1841 and 1871.  John and Mary Taylor then occupied the farm between 1881 and 1901.

Higher Tongs

Higher Tongs did not exist at the time the 1769 map was drawn up, the land being then part of the farm occupied by Ralph Tong.  He died in 1804, and Richard Ainsworth, the owner of the Smithills Estate, divided the land into two tenements.  Higher Tongs farm was built, the new farmhouse being nearer to the turnpike road (Collier’s Row Road), which had recently been made.

David and Ruth Cooper held Higher Tongs from the 1830s, and it stayed in the possession of that family until 1880.  James and Catherine Brown were the next tenants, both of them having come from local farming families - he from Pendleburys, she from Old Harts.  James Brown died in 1895 and Catherine remarried to Elijah Lonsdale.  Henry and Alice Winstanley were the tenants by 1911 and remained there for at least twenty years.