Blackburn

Coordinates: 53°44′42″N 2°28′37″W / 53.7449°N 2.4769°W / 53.7449; -2.4769

Blackburn ⁱ/ˈblækbərn/ is a large town in Lancashire, England. It lies to the north of the West Pennine Moors on the southern edge of the Ribble Valley, 9 miles (14 km) east of Preston, 20.9 miles (34 km) NNW of Manchester and 9 miles (14 km) north of the Greater Manchester border. Blackburn is bounded to the south by Darwen, with which it forms the unitary authority of Blackburn with Darwen; Blackburn is its administrative centre. At the time of the UK Government's 2001 census, Blackburn had a population of 105,085, whilst the wider borough of Blackburn with Darwen had a population of 140,700. Blackburn had a population of 106,537 in 2011, a slight increase since 2001. Blackburn is made up of fifteen wards in the Northeast of the surrounding borough.

A former mill town, textiles have been produced in Blackburn since the middle of the 13th century, when wool was woven in people's houses in the domestic system. Flemish weavers who settled in the area during the 14th century helped to develop the woollen cottage industry.James Hargreaves, inventor of the spinning jenny, was a weaver in Oswaldtwistle near Blackburn and the most rapid period of growth and development in Blackburn's history coincided with the industrialisation and expansion of textile manufacturing. Blackburn was a boomtown of the Industrial Revolution and amongst the first industrialised towns in the world.

Blackburn (ancient parish)

Coordinates: 53°44′56″N 2°29′06″W / 53.749°N 2.485°W / 53.749; -2.485 Blackburn was a large parish in Lancashire, England. The parish had numerous townships and chapelries, which were administered separately from the core Blackburn area, and became recognised as separate civil parishes in 1866. The parish formed part of the Blackburn hundred.

The other parishes were:

References

Blackburnshire

Blackburnshire (also known as Blackburn Hundred) was a hundred, an ancient sub-division of the county of Lancashire, in northern England. Its chief town was Blackburn, in the northwest of the hundred. It covered an area similar to modern East Lancashire, including the current districts of Ribble Valley (excluding the part north of the River Ribble and east of the Hodder, which was then in Yorkshire), Pendle (excluding West Craven, also in Yorkshire), Burnley, Rossendale, Hyndburn, Blackburn with Darwen, and South Ribble (east from Walton-le-dale and Lostock Hall).

Much of the area is hilly, bordering on the Pennines, with Pendle hill in the midst of it, and was historically sparsely populated. It included several important royal forests. But in the 18th century several towns in the area became industrialized and densely populated, including Blackburn itself, and Burnley.

Early history

The shire probably originated as a county of the Kingdom of Northumbria, but was much fought over. In the Domesday Book it was among the hundreds between the Ribble and Mersey rivers ("Inter Ripam et Mersam" in the Domesday Book) that were included with the information about Cheshire, though they are now in Lancashire and cannot be said clearly to have then been part of Cheshire. The area may have been annexed to the embryonic Kingdom of England following the Battle of Brunanburh in 937.