Hats off to the Red Rose County!
Lancashire Day is celebrated on 27 November, marking the day in 1295 when King Edward I called the first representatives from Lancashire to Parliament.
The borders of Lancashire were changed by the Local Government Act 1972. But here are some of the people, places and heritage from the historic county of Lancashire, which included Liverpool and Manchester.
1. Sporting endeavours: the Dick, Kerr Ladies Football Team
This photograph, taken in 1918, shows women assembling seaplane wings as part of the war effort.
They were employed by Dick, Kerr and Company at their factory in Preston.
The factory established a women’s football team in 1917. It would become the greatest women’s team of the era, even becoming the unofficial World Champions.
The team’s most famous player was Lily Parr: a woodbine-smoking winger who would later become an LGBTQ+ icon.
In 2019, she was the first female player honoured with a statue at the National Football Museum.
Crowds for women’s matches often eclipsed those watching the men’s game. Despite this popularity (or maybe because of it), trouble was looming.
In 1921, the Football Association banned women from playing at all of its affiliated grounds. The FA resolution stated that:
…the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and should not be encouraged.
Extract from the Football Association Resolution 1921.
The ban was finally lifted in 1971, but it would be another 37 years before the Football Association issued an apology for its actions.
Today, half a century after the ban was lifted, women’s football is more popular than ever. In this context, it’s easy to forget the struggles and discrimination faced by the early pioneers of the women’s game.
2. From mill to music hall: how the humble clog hit the big time
Well into the 20th century, the Lancashire clog was standard apparel amongst the county’s working classes.
Every community had its clog maker. The photograph above shows the thatched premises of Peter Ranicar in Leigh, shortly before its demolition in the 1890s.
The clatter of innumerable clogs is the distinguishing feature of Lancashire manufacturing towns.
J.F. Fraser, ‘Life in a Lancashire Cotton Mill’ in ‘The Windsor Magazine’, 1899.
Clogs were comfortable, inexpensive and very hardwearing. They also sparked a whole new cultural phenomenon.
Lancashire clog dancing relies upon the tapping of the toes and heels, originally in time to the repetitive rhythms of looms and other industrial machinery.
Over time the clog dance made its way out of the mill and into the music hall. Without it, the world may never have known the films of Charlie Chaplin.
In 1898, aged just 9, the young Charles Chaplin secured his first professional break when he joined ‘The Eight Lancashire Lads’, a troupe of child clog dancers who toured the music halls of Great Britain. And the rest, as they say, is history.
3. Wartime spirit: the Liverpool Blitz
During the Second World War, Liverpool together with the Wirral was the most heavily bombed area outside of London.
The first raid took place on 28 August 1940 and lasted for three nights. In the months leading up to Liverpool’s ‘Christmas Blitz,’ there were over 50 raids.
During another attack, 166 people died when an air-raid shelter in Durning Road suffered a direct hit. Winston Churchill described this as the ‘single worst incident of the war’.
The photograph above shows the remains of Lewis’s Department Store following the May Blitz of 1941. The seven night assault devastated the docks, Liverpool city centre and the surrounding areas. It left over 1,700 dead and 1,100 injured.
Lewis’s was rebuilt in 1947. Above the main entrance of the new store stands a bronze statue, ‘Liverpool Resurgent’, by Sir Jacob Epstein, commissioned to mark Lewis’s centenary in 1956.
The sculpture depicts a nude male figure striding forward on a ship’s prow, symbolising the city’s renaissance after the horrors of the Second World War.
4. Workers’ playtime: Wakes Week holidays
In Lancashire, Wakes Week was holiday time.
Each town had its own holiday week or fortnight, during which the whole town ground to a halt and emptied of its inhabitants. Factories, shops and offices all fell silent.
Wakes began as religious festivals. Later, during the Industrial Revolution, the Wakes tradition morphed into a holiday. It was the time when workers could escape the dirt and drudgery of their usual existence.
With the coming of the railways, entire communities uprooted their everyday lives and travelled en mass to enjoy their Wakes holidays by the seaside. As a result, Blackpool became the world’s first specialized working-class holiday destination.
Blackpool may no longer be the main destination for Lancashire’s holidaymakers, but Wakes Weeks are still a popular time for Lancastrians to go in search of sea and sun.
5. Time and tide: the shifting sands of Morecambe Bay
Morecambe Bay has one of the largest expanses of tidal sand and mudflats in the United Kingdom. It can be a dangerous place for those unfamiliar with the bay.
Since the 16th century, the Crown has appointed guides to escort travellers across the quicksands and fast-flowing tides of this famously treacherous bay.
The ‘Queen’s Guide to the Sands’ receives an annual salary of just £15, with the added perk of rent-free accommodation at Guides Farm, overlooking the estuary.
The bay is rich in cockle beds. These beds have been fished for generations by the people of Morecambe Bay.
The photo above shows a man and boy using the traditional horse and cart to gather shellfish. The boy is looking longingly towards the attractions of Morecambe in the distance!
In 2004, the world’s gaze fell upon this far-flung part of North West England when 23 people were drowned by the incoming tide whilst collecting cockles. The vast majority were undocumented Chinese labourers.
The tragedy led to the introduction of tougher restrictions on labour abuse. Further legislation came in the form of the Modern Slavery Act (2015), which sought to combat illegal trafficking, exploitation and slavery in the UK.
6. Politics and popular music: Manchester Free Trade Hall
Manchester’s Free Trade Hall has long associations with political and cultural reform and it was here that the militant suffrage movement began.
In 1905, Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) disrupted an address by the Liberal politician Sir Edward Grey. The pair were imprisoned when they refused to pay the resultant fines.
Their action drew the attention of the media and swelled the ranks of the WSPU. It marked the beginning of civil disobedience and direct action in the ‘Votes for Women’ campaign.
Speaking in 1908, Christabel Pankhurst said:
It may be that history will judge us as not being altogether ladylike, but we shall have won the vote, and that is what we are fighting for.
Christabel Pankhurst, speaking in 1908.
In the post-war era, The Free Trade Hall was home to two of modern music’s most fabled gigs.
By 1966, Bob Dylan was moving away from his acoustic, folk roots to embrace an electric sound. This change polarised Dylan’s fans. During his appearance at the Free Trade Hall, a member of the audience likened the shift to the betrayal of Christ. The infamous ‘Judas!’ cry went down in rock folklore.
Ten years later, the Lesser Free Trade Hall hosted punk pioneers the Sex Pistols. The gig, on 4 June 1976, was organised by two members of the newly formed Manchester band The Buzzcocks. Only around 40 people turned up, but amongst them were future members of Joy Division, The Fall and The Smiths.
All came away inspired to make their own music, and the music they created has inspired countless others over the decades.
Further reading
- Listed Libraries of the North
- Working from Home: England’s Domestic Textile Industry
- The Making of the North: 6 New Uses for Magnificent Mills
Great blog, many thanks for sharing!
Fascinating insight into the County’s history.
A fascinating article, thank you.
However, the LGA 1972 was only concerned with administrative areas. The Historic County of Lancashire has never been abolished, nor has its geography been altered. Liverpool and Manchester remain in the Historic County of Lancashire.
I can assure you there’s many in Bolton, Manchester and all the towns about, and Barrow and Ulverston too, who celebrate our ‘reet gradely’ county. No boundary every changed for us; that’s just lines for the clerks pushing papers, not for real folk.
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‘The Wirral’ what?
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Do you mean ‘the Wirral Peninsula’ (a thing), or do you mean ‘Wirral’ (a place)?
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