Ena Mills

The sun shines on Ena Mill in Atherton across the fields from where Bruce and I were trotting along the footpaths. A formerer cotton and coal town in the South West of Lancashire, sadly, today there are no more mines and no more cotton producing mills. Ena Mills is now a retail development with the ubiquitous cafe within.

But archaeologists have uneathed evidence of much earlier settlements. Romano-Celtic coins have been found as well as evidence of a Roman road which linked forts at Manchester and Wigan and also revealed that mining had been carried out on the site since at least the 14th century. A ditch dating back to the Bronze Age also revealed human activity in the area 4,000 years ago.

Atherton was famous for over 600 years for the manufacture of nails, a particular type of which were known as sparables or "sparrow bills" because of their shape. The foundries which replaced the nailworks made machines for the cotton mills early in the Industrial Revolution.

The principal landowners in the early days were, naturally enough, the Atherton family. The "pedigree" is thought to go back to Robert de Atherton who was Sheriff of Lancashire in the reign of King John. Nicholas Atherton was a retainer of the famous John of Gaunt and William and Nicholas Atherton were present at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415.

One in an occasional series of Lancashire Mills