Earlestown

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Earlestown Town Hall

The Viaduct seen from the Sankey Valley Country Park

Detail of the viaduct from third arch

Earlestown forms the western part of the former urban district of Newton-le-Willows, but is now in the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens, Merseyside, England.

The town is named after Hardman Earle (11 July 1792 - 25 January 1877) who was the Chairman of the London and North Western Railway. The railway leased the Viaduct Foundry from Messrs. Jones and Potts. The foundry was so named because of its proximity to the viaduct Stephenson built so that the Liverpool and Manchester Railway could cross the Sankey valley. The foundry became ever busier and the houses that were constructed to house its workers became the town. The other major employer was coal mining. The Loco Works was called Vulcan Foundry and the houses, constructed to house it's workers, were called 'Vulcan Village'. This village is separate to Earlestown, about a mile and a half away towards Winwick.

In 1862 locomotive building was concentrated on Crewe, while Earlestown became the major wagon works. By 1900 it was producing 4000 new wagons, with 13000 major repairs, along with 200 new horse-drawn vehicles. At amalgamation into the LMS, mass production methods were introduced. The works provided all of the railway's needs for ironwork, and continued into the first half of the twentieth century. At the 1963 rationalisation of British Railways, Earlestown was closed, and the work transferred to Horwich.

Earlestown ows its location - indeed it's existence - to early transport links such as the nearby Sankey Canal and the Liverpool to Manchester railway. Other industies followed and significant employers in the town included the Sankey Sugar works and the Simon Vickers Engineering works. Additionally, the Lyme and Wood pits - located at either end of what is now the "slag heaps" - employed hundreds of men between them. Sadly, the sugar works closed some years ago (parts of the factory remain, including the warehouse) Simon Vickers remains (trading under a different name) but employing a fraction of the workforce of times gone by.

Earlestown has a market, an impressive town hall and a railway station with frequent services to Liverpool, Manchester, Warrington and North Wales.

Earlestown also has a town centre containing many shops, a scattering of pubs and even a nightclub called Xenon (Also known as Chasers). It is also well served by many fast food outlets offering a good range of Indian and Chinese dishes.

Earlestown is also well located as far as the road network is concerned, being close to junction 9 of the M62 motorway, junctions 21A, 22 and 23 of the M6 motorway, and the A580 East Lancashire Manchester-Liverpool road.