Historian Paul Salveson, visiting professor in Worktown Studies at the University of Bolton who has a doctorate in Lancashire dialect literature, takes a look at how tales of Tonge Fold entertained mill workers across Lancashire

Allen Clarke, the Bolton-born dialect writer better known as Teddy Ashton, described it thus: “Tum Fowt is a very little hamlet (it’s noan Shakespeare’s Hamlet mind yo’) abeaut a mile east o’Trotterteawn, or Bowton, an’ lies between t’latter place an’ Bury, just off th’heigh road. Th’River Tonge crawls close by, an’ there’s a cemetery a toothri yards off, wheer a lot o’deead folk lives.”

Today’s Tonge Fold seems an innocuous place, yet it has a remarkable history.

The Bolton News:

It was immortalised by Allen Clarke in his Tum Fowt Sketches, published in the early 1890s as ‘penny readings’. They had thousands of Lancashire mill workers laughing at the exploits of Bill and Bet Spriggs and the other denizens of Th’Dug and Kennel pub, based on The Park View Inn. The building still survives, as a private home.

James Taylor Staton first made Tum Fowt famous in Lancashire literature. He was born on Bradshawgate in 1817 and was orphaned as a young child. He was educated at Chetham’s College and became deputy editor of The Bolton Evening News.

The Bolton News:

Staton’s dialect sketches were published in his Bowtun Loominary, Tum Fowt Telegraph un Lankishire Lookin Glass before ceasing publication in 1864 due to the privations of the Lancashire Cotton Famine. He died in 1875 and is buried in Tonge Cemetery.

A classic Staton character was Bobby Shuttle, a handloom weaver. History suggests that handloom-weaving had died out in Lancashire by the 1850s, but a handful of the craftsmen continued to eke out a living into the 20th century. Bobby was a fictionalised example of them.

Allen Clarke said that: “Tonge Fold, historians show, was a noted handloom weaving village. Here, the now unpurchasable caddow counterpanes were made, and the Tonge Fold weavers were, it is said, the most truculent, quarrelsome crowd in the district.”

The counterpanes were also known as caddow, or ‘caddy’, quilts and Bolton Museum has some rare examples of them, dating back to 1794. There is a display of quilt making in Bolton Interchange by artist Kate Maddison.

The Bolton News:

The mid-19th century marked the peak of caddow weaving in Bolton, and a powerful Counterpane Weavers’ Association existed for a time.

Many quilts were exported to the United States and some of the weavers went too as the fortunes of handloom weaving declined.

Tonge Fold even had its own festival - Oak Apple Day - marking the anniversary of Charles II’s escape from the Cromwellian armies at the Battle of Worcester by hiding inside an oak tree.

The village celebrated the event in style. It was less about royalty so much as an excuse for a party.

Weaving stopped for a week and large crowds came to sample the villagers’ home brew. The ‘Nominy’, a sort of rhymed proclamation, was read each year and included the lines:

“The lively genius of Tonge Fold in trade,

Which has for many ages been,

As all the world throughout proclaim,

The first origin of counterpanes.”