Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire

Description
Oswaldtwistle, a town and an extensive township in Whalley parish, Lancashire. The town stands on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, and on the East Lancashire section of the L. & Y.R., contiguous to Church village and railway station, 3 miles ESE of Blackburn, and 22 from Manchester. It is built chiefly of stone; is supplied with water from works constructed in 1865 ; carries on industry in extensive cotton factories, printworks, potteries, collieries, stone quarries, and a large paper mill; and has a post, money order, and telegraph office (T.S.O.) under Accrington, a parish council consisting of fifteen members, three churches, four mission-rooms, several dissenting chapels, a town-hall, and Conservative and Liberal clubs. The parish church of Emanuel was built in 1837, and enlarged in 1867 by the addition of a chancel and transepts; it has also a nave and an embattled western tower. The church of St Paul was built in 1885, is in the Early English style, consists of chancel, nave, aisles, and a bell-turret, and has about 800 sittings. The town-hall was built in 1891, and contains assembly rooms for public meetings. The dissenting chapels are Congregational, Baptist, Wesleyan, Primitive Methodist, Swedenborgian, and United Free Methodist. The township contains also the hamlets of Belthorne, Cocker Brook, Stanhill, and Knuzden. Acreage, 4863 of land and 20 of water; population, 13,296. Peelfold, where the first Sir Robert Peel spent his early years, is in the parish of Knuzden. There is a cotton factory at Knuzden Brook, and a Congregational chapel in Belthorne. There are three ecclesiastical parishes in the township-Emanuel (constituted in 1837; population, 7434), St Paul's (constituted in 1885; population, 5142), and St Oswald's, Knuzden (constituted in 1880 ; population, 2144). The livings are vicarages in the diocese of Manchester; gross value, £380, £300, and £171 respectively, with residences, excepting Knuzden.