Horwich Works

Starting Point - Horwich Parkway station. Finishing Point - Blackrod station. Distance 2.9 Miles

Horwich Works opened in 1887 replacing an earlier facility at Miles Platting near Manchester as the main engineering facility of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway. It continued as an important engine works under the London Midland and Scottish Railway and British Railways. The last steam locomotive was built at Horwich in 1957. In 1964 locomotive maintenance was moved to other sites and the Horwich works concentrated on carriage maintenance and container wagons until the works was closed in 1983. In true 1980s fashion the once vast engineering site became the Horwich Enterprise Park, an industrial estate of several smaller units in the former buildings. Many of the buildings became increasingly run down over the years and in more recent years most have been demolished for redevelopment as housing More information about the works can be found in the Wikipedia article

I visited the site in 2019 as some of the remaining buildings were about to be pulled down to make way for a link road for the new housing. Only a few of the works buildings around the north end of the site are to remain including the former office building, now named Rivington House. This last remnants of the works being designated a conservation area.

Google Map

1929 Map

We started at Horwich Parkway station and walked past the modern retail and residential developments to reach Chorley New Road, heading north towards Rivington House. Along Chorley New Road were the older terraced houses that would once have housed the workers from the engine works. The streets are all named after key figures in steam engine manufacture. In one gap in the old housing on the north side of the street the modern Aspinall Court occupies the site of the Mechanics' Institute that once stood at the centre of the works' community.

Turning left for Rivington House this was once the main entrance gate for the works.

Below - Rivington House, once the offices for the Horwich Works.

Below - On the south end of the complex that included the office building was once the stores.

Below - Looking along the former stores building some of the railway lines can be seen in the concrete. Behind can be seen remnants of the by now much truncated erecting shops that still stood at the time.

Below - Another look at the stores building.

Below - A closer look at the railway tracks, note the narrow gauge track, this was part of the extensive 18 inch gauge internal railway system used to move material around the works site.

Below - Late 1970s map of the works complex from the Graces Guide website.

Below - The building shown on the above map as the Millwrights Shop and Pattern and Joiners Shop

The Gap between the various shops that once had the railway lines that connected the various parts of the site.

Below - The north end of the rows of buildings that once stretched for nearly half a mile. Another similar building once stood on the right of the picture.

Below - Shown on the above map as the Carriage Repair Shop and the Container Paint Shop.

In the above picture a security cabin can be seen, at this point I got chased away by security staff even though this is a view from a public road and similar was readily available just by looking on Google Streetview, in fact Streetview still showed many of the buildings that had already been demolished. The above buildings have themselves since been demolished too.

Having seen all we could of the remains of Horwich Works anyway we continued to Blackrod station for a train road. Station Road still crosses the overgrown trackbed of the branch line in to the works. The M61 also crosses over the former works branch on a bridge. In 1985 locomotive 47491 was named Horwich Enterprise at the works to publicise the future use of the site but with the sale of the complex from BREL to developers Parkfield Group in 1988 the rail connection was lifted in 1989.